Camp in Germany // Beach Time Sweethearts

Recently, my BFF Jurga, her boyfriend and I decided to go camping for a weekend - wherever, doesn't matter, as long as it's in the nature, it's green, close to the water, kind of calm yet giving a summer holiday feeling. Last minute, just the day before leaving, we heard about this awesome place on the Baltic Sea coast called Prerow - a fisherman village on a peninsula, combining a lagoon-like calm sea on the east, yet rough waves on the west side of the peninsula, a forest in between, soft sand and our campsite on the edge of the dunes. For us, two Lithuanian girls, this place was giving a very rare sense of a Baltic homeland site, it was mind blowing to recognise something we grew up with on another countries shoreside like the preserved architecture of little wooden houses, the landscape of the shore, a pine tree forest just along it.  

We stayed at the Regenbogen Prerow Campsite. As we checked in very late, for some magical reasons we got the very spot we actually were wishing for - at the very corner on the last bit of the campsite, where our two of the four neighbours were a dune (with the sea 100m behind it) and a young growing pine forest. Moreover - we got located next to the nudist beach :-) So I could finally get one of those pictures out of my tent that I was always dreaming about when diving into Pinterest scrolling too much. However, absolutely everything was perfect about that weekend - coffee in the sand, rain in the night time, sun all day long, braless suntanning, campsite cooking, hot water showers and, of course, a lot of amazing scenery filled with love and kisses for my photographic delight.

It wasn't my first time at the German part of the Baltic Sea. But all these years we've been fast to book flights to anywhere in Europe for hikes, roadtrips, beaches and longing for distant corners with high peaks, hot springs or long sandy stripes of beach. But I had to realise how little I actually know Germany and how much it has to offer nature wise if you know where to look for it. If you have any advice, top 5 must experience nature locations - share it with me, please. I'll mark them up in my map and save my weekends for them.

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Walking the St.James Way Part 2/3

People in their life paths are looking for home. A place they feel comfortable and safe in. There’s many things, places or sounds, that make me feel home. Like music - I am always overall happy discovering music to which listening I feel connected to the divine, making me feel absolutely safe, enjoy the present moment, and actually feel home, with and in the music. Like this calm morning on the last day of the year with a candle listening to Clem Leek.

Then there are places, call it countries, cities, seasides, countrysides and forest, a place to have a base for. For me I’m still working on that one. Or rather I approach my search by letting the right base place find me rather than me intensively (and frustrated) looking for one. I rather hope that my life paths will bring me to the right base place for me, the little vagabond soul.

Then there is travel. To be more precise - the way of travelling. The views we love and feel absolutely inspired with. Moreover, views that make us feel once again connected with the divine. The path becomes the goal of the travel. And here, my friend, I’m happy to say I found a path which is a goal itself. A road that can feel like home in a very strange way when approaching it on your own two feet, step by step, always to the west.

I only had one week of time to walk a tiny part of the spanish St. James way, the less known route in the North Spain. And here we go - walking, sleeping in a sleeping bag, showering in a different bathroom every evening becomes something me and many travellers are aiming for. At the walk, a good nights dinner, a mild weather, the possibility to refill your bottle with drinkable water are just a few things which quite often depend on a coincidence or simply good luck. And it’s never the same diner nor café nor shop, as the path keeps on going and your feet keep on walking always towards the sunset land. All you have and need fits in a backpack and weights less then 10 kg. You travel and hike light. You feel light in your soul and get to see, how little a man actually needs to get a feeling of light and sweet happiness.

It is not something extreme to walk the path, but it is something where you have to have a flexible mind and needs. And once you let go and take things as they come, the comfort is all yours. You notice that there’s always a way - just let go of planing and the circumstances will provide what’s needed. For me all this and walking one direction is the ultimate comfort zone, travel with a direction but without a strict day plan is my comfort zone, my feeling of home, for now.

Here are some impressions of how my path went on with a few comments here and there.

When I entered this eucalyptus forest above I couldn't resist but start my little self portrait series of the way. No man was passing for around 45 minutes so i had the chance to locate the camera in a few different positions and try out the remote control app on my phone, as the Fuji camera has a Wifi option. When i reflect back I can say it was probably my most intense photographic trip yet, combining landscape, mood and self portraiture. On the way to Santoña you have to cross a lagoon with a little boat. It's just a 10 minute ride but it was overall amusing, I was smiling to myself as the mono speaker of the boat was roaring all over the shore some 80s music, "She's a Maniac" to be precise. Mind the super cool officer of the boar.

On the right side of this photo you can see the edge of the albergue i was staying that night. Three people all together, the easiness of the not overfilled North Way of mid November.

that morning i woke up at 5 a.m. to catch the sunrise and make some early hour photography.

A little café in the harbour area of Santoña for an espresso. A slightly weird mood, yet very filmic.

Other than expected it was a very cloudy foggy cold morning when i reached the empty beach after passing a prison on the way. But I enjoyed the arising feelings inside me - i could do what ever i wanted on that empty, still asleep space. So I started singing 'Hallelujah' to myself.

The yellow arrows of the St. James Way - even on rocks, hidden in very narrow jungle like rocky paths. Once in a while I was making jokes with my self that I could be the Dorija (Dorothee) fallowing the yellow arrow (brick) road :-)

To the East..

..and to the West, the path direction.

My loyal Deuter Backpack, patiently and without any complain waiting there for me to get finished with the self portrait experiments. A backpack, especially a good one, might become ones only friend on a long term trekking. Mine pretty much became my best friend. Carrying all the necessary stuff (and unnecessary stuff of a not yet experienced traveler) and my camera equipment, she (she's a female to me) didn't give me any sort of shoulder or back pain at all. At all! What did start hurting were my hips, then my leg muscles, some other deep muscles in the inner knee and after all my feet with three big blisters at the same time. But that was the last day of the hike, and that's a completely different story. Yet after all - it was all a nice sweet pain as a reminder that I am actually walking on my own.

Reasons I Like to Fly

a few iPhone snaps of my flight yesterday. usually - and this was not an exception - flights bring me headache, neck-ache, nose-ache, back-ache. but then there are those parts of the flight, incomparable with anything else, always worth taking those disadvantages.. like passing the mountains, peaks full of snow, seeing borders of lakes in between forests, landing close to big cities, long bridges above wide rivers, imagining how the Antarctic looks like when it's all oh so white, and sunsets from up in the sky, in the SKY! this time i saw a very friendly cloud dragon playing with the sun up above. i love to fly because of those few minutes passing the clouds and almost touching them - they are just a few centimetres away from me, just behind the frosted airplane tin..