why I lie

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This post is about a 20km walk from Traismauer to Hundsheim. I walk next to drift wood all day, and in the evening I have dinner with my dad.

When I woke up the rain had finally stopped. The world was still wet, though. The asphalt was wet, the grass and the trees were wet, and the air was wet.

from China

Right away I ran into Hubert and Mecki, who were cycling in the opposite direction. When they asked me where I had started walking, I told them China. This was new. I had decided to stop lying a few weeks earlier, after the time when Brad and I were staying with Gabor in Szentendre.

“Where are you coming from?” he wanted to know.

Budapest, I told him, catching an odd look from Brad.

“So that’s where you started walking?”

Kind of.

Later that night, when we were sitting in Gabor’s kitchen, Brad apologized on my behalf.

“Chris doesn’t like to talk about it,” she said, and I suddenly felt like a weirdo.

the awkward truth

But she was right. In the beginning, when I was still somewhere in Asia, thousands upon thousands of kilometers from home, I didn’t like talking about my plans because talking about them made me feel embarrassed. I AM TRYING TO WALK TO GERMANY sounded too foolish to say it out loud.

So I had gotten used to telling people that I was trying to walk to some nearby place. To Kyrgyzstan. To Iran. Through Turkey.

“You walked all the way from China? That’s awesome,” said Mecki and Hubert when I told them the truth.

It’s mainly just slow, I said, and that was true, too.

swollen rivers

I walked along the river all day. It was still carrying a lot of driftwood, and I had heard somewhere that ships were not allowed in it because of this. Also, there were supposed to be some flooded areas ahead.

I never got to see them, though. Maybe I was on the wrong side of river, or maybe the flood had already subsided when I got there. I walked until I found a perfect spot with an unobstructed view of the water, then I did my exercises and had lunch.

That’s when my dad called. “Dinner?” he asked me. And dinner it was.

pictures

the walk from Traismauer to Hundsheim:

with Hubert and Mecki

toga dude

I sit next to a heart.

view across the Danube

roadside stretching sesh

the way to walk from Traismauer to Hundsheim

docked cruise ships

couple

Getränkeerzeugung?

a tiny piece of The Longest Way

private property

funky line

restaurant in Hundsheim