After crawling through customs at the port of Ancona, I found myself once again at a crossroads — quite literally. With no onward ticket, no plan other than to head to Paris, and no real idea which direction to walk, my first task was to find north. The hope, as always, was to hitch a lift. I gave it a long hour by the roadside, standing in the Italian dust watching indifferent Fiats and overloaded lorries fly past. Just as I was ready to admit defeat and trudge back to the station in search of a train, fate intervened.
A VW campervan pulled up beside me. Inside were Roland and his girlfriend, Jutla — total strangers — who saw me stranded and took pity. Not just a short ride up the road, but all the way to Bad Kissengen in North Bavaria.
I climbed in, grateful and slightly dazed, and off we went — up the spine of Italy, across the Alps, and into Germany.
☁️ The Road North: Ravioli, Radios and the Return of Cold Air
We lunched on ravioli, shared stories, and cruised to a soundtrack of decent music. As the day wore on, we approached the Italian–Austrian border, stopping briefly to change money — where, for the first time in nearly three months, I felt the cold.
After a Greek summer of sweat, sun, and dust, that crisp alpine air was almost a shock. We passed through Brenner Pass, the mountains folding up around us, and caught sight of the massive Europabrücke (Europe Bridge) just before Innsbruck — an epic, sky-slicing piece of engineering, stretched above valleys and treetops. Roland pointed out a castle nestled at the foot of the mountains: once the only access through the Alps during winter, before motorways and flyovers came along.
🍺 A Bavarian Detour and a Pub Full of Cowboys
By 9 pm we reached a junction, and Roland turned to me and asked, “Left or right?” I shrugged and said left, and off we went — a spontaneous detour to Nusdorf, deep in southern Bavaria.
We parked up and headed into a local pub. It was packed with loud, beer-throated Bavarians — and when we walked in, it was like a Western: everyone stopped talking and stared at us. Roland leaned over and muttered, "That’s just how Bavarians are..."
The place was brilliant. Proper food, deep wooden booths, and best of all — real beer. Not the bottled Amstel I’d been drinking in Kythera for the past three months, but deep, earthy Bavarian lager. The kind that tastes like someone actually cares about it.
“More beer?” Roland asked after our first pint, and it didn’t take much convincing. Four pints later, I fell asleep in the back of the van, full, warm, and happily worn out.
🌧️ Nuremberg, Rain & a Midnight Rescue
We made a brief stop in Nuremberg, then continued north as night fell and the rain came down. Sometime in the early hours, Roland and Jutla gently woke me. We’d reached Bad Kissingen, a spa town in northern Bavaria. They didn’t want to leave me on the side of a motorway in the cold and dark, so they put me up at their flat, insisting I sleep properly.
We arrived at 4:30 in the morning, the kind of hour where streets are empty and the world feels paused. I crawled onto their comfy couch, grateful beyond words.
🧭 From Coastline to Castles
In a single day and night, I’d gone from Mediterranean coastline to alpine valleys, from staring hopelessly at a road in Ancona to sipping Bavarian beer in a pub where the walls practically smelled of history.
It’s the kind of journey you can’t plan — the kind that only happens when you’re travelling light, saying yes, and following strangers into the next story.
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