June 21, 2010
I was supposed to write this post weeks ago, after we had bought tickets for the trip. But I'm lazy and out of practice writing, so I just kept putting it off. And then we were actually on the trip, so it seemed somewhat unnecessary, but now, circumstances have made the idea of communicating what we're doing useful, again.
Originally, we wanted this to be a big hiking trip. We both got so tired on the round the world trip of lugging the gear for both hiking and city-going, without really getting a chance to fully experience either. So okay, we thought this trip, we'll just do one thing.
We started looking at the UK, because they have some great long-distance trails, but then David pointed out that he wanted to do some backcountry camping and the UK is so evenly packed with people, backcountry doesn't really exist. And then we remembered the E4, one of Europe's long-distance trails that we'd first heard about in Greece, when we met some French hikers. But the E4 is huge, so narrowing down which portion we were going to hike became a priority. There happens to be a very good site for the Hungarian portion of the E4, locally called the Blue Tour, so we decided: Hungary, it is.
But then, doing further research, a lot of the Blue Tour turns out to be through farm land, which is not super for hiking: you have to ask permission to camp, and Hungarians apparently all have big guard dogs, etc. But right next door is Austria, which we knew had great hiking, in part because my friend Monika's family is from there and she goes back quite often. So we bought tickets into Vienna. And then two weeks before we were to leave we had dinner with several friends, including three who are from Bosnia. And Bosnia is so close to Hungary, we could just pop down, especially since Edvin was going to be there with his parents, anyway. So the trip expanded in scope to include Bosnia.
And then we got here. And it started to rain. It turns out there's a big system that's come up from Italy, which has turned the beginning of summer into something more closely resembling early spring: wet and cold. And I don't know if you know this, but hiking in the rain is frowned on for good trail preservation.
All of which is a big leadup to say: we leave for Munich tomorrow. Since the trip has already been forced away from hiking, we thought we should embrace it as it is, and enjoy some more cities. I don't know what we'll do after that--the weather may be clearing, which means we might get some hiking in, still, but who knows. We'll have a good time either way, I'm sure.
