With kids? Just go!
Five people with backpacks. Three children. 200 euros a week.
In the summer of 2013, a family sets off on foot – from the eastern Algarve to Santiago de Compostela. Not to walk the Camino. Not to set any records. But to find out whether Portugal might become their new home.
What follows is not a heroic tale, but an honest and humorous account of everyday life on the road, filled with all sorts of places, unexpected encounters, curious experiences and small disasters: nights spent on the beach, new friends, duck discipline, flower-covered waterfalls, bamboo forests, lonely walks through the mist, the forces of nature, the dragon dames, XXL ice-cream cakes, the Rumblemobile, layers of grime, kamikaze mosquitoes, the pilgrim highway – and the big question of whether an entire country can really be discovered on foot.
An autobiographical family travel diary novel about family life, improvisation, melon phobia and the freedom to take new paths – told with a good dose of self-irony, honest thoughts and the conviction that the right answers will eventually find their way to you.
Sketch of Our Walking Route
For a better overview, showing the places that mattered most to us. (And yes, I have cheerfully ignored the actual proportions.)
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About the author
Verena Preiss is originally from northern Germany and now lives somewhere between Germany, Spain and Portugal – although she would probably find it difficult to say exactly where she actually feels at home.
She enjoys traveling, but – ironically – isn’t particularly fond of moving on. Wherever in the world you happen to put her, it usually doesn’t take long before she becomes convinced that this particular place would actually be a rather good place to live. The challenging part only begins when it’s time to leave again.
Over the course of her life, she has, among other things, spent some time living in California, trained as a hotel professional and later as a physiotherapist, worked as a taxi driver and, together with her husband, taught self-defence courses and worked in the field of Restorative Justice. She has also undertaken further training in mediation, coaching and non-violent communication.
And although all of that may certainly sound quite nice, her real specialty probably lies more in jumping in at the deep end and finding out along the way whether it was actually such a great idea after all. Her motto could be summed up as follows: If the direction is right, the path will somehow become walkable. And if not – you simply change course.
These days, she lives and works in several countries, runs a pilgrim hostel, loves forests, the sea and pretty much everything that crawls, flies or otherwise moves … and would describe herself as rather introverted. Which may explain why she perhaps likes animals just a tiny little bit more than people – admittedly, an interesting trait for someone who welcomes pilgrims of all kinds of nationalities to a hostel every day.
Verena Preiss is the mother of three sons, a convinced lover of nature, languages and history … and lives by the principle that if you ask the right questions, the answers will eventually find you. Somewhere along the way.
