Lecco, Lombardy - Italy

I took a week long holiday from work for a trip to the North of Italy. A friend of mine and I decided to take a little hiking trip around Lago di Como and its surrounding mountainous areas.

It’s been more than one year since my last post - it’s crazy how fast a year seemed to have gone by. A lot of things happened this year, but I also feel like I’ve done nothing.

I’ve moved to a new city, a new country. I took a break from university, quit university, started a new job, moved with a new job, quit my job, got a new job, moved into an apartment, changed to a new apartment. I traveled to different cities, worked from these cities. And yet, so much of what I remember is sitting at home in my chair: COVID19. CONFINEMENT. Where did all the time go?

For me, writing about my hiking trips is a great way to break down my life into smaller manageable chunks, to reflect on what’s happened (while desperately holding onto time, to not let it slip away so fast)

The problem with not hiking more frequently is that I suddenly have to reflect back on one year of my life - that’s 1/60th of my life if I lived up to 60, which is like 1 minute our of an hour, or 1 hour of my weekly working hours. That’s a lot. I need to break it down into smaller chunks. It’s just like splitting the cake into million bite sizes so you can enjoy it million times, rather than swallowing it in a couple of gulps, right?

I took a flight from Berlin to Milan, and from there took an hour bus to the city center from the airport. From Milan, Lecco was only a 40 mins train ride to the north. It took me half a day to get there from the doorstep of my apartment in Berlin.

For the first 3 nights, we stayed in Lecco in a very nice Airbnb (20 euros/person/night) and explored the area. I was mostly down with a diarrhea and a bad case of urinary infection coupled with heavy period and lower back pain with shooting Sciatica nerve pain down the back of my legs. I was either sitting on the toilet or on a yoga mat or sideways in my bed, but I found the city very beautiful and despite being so physically broken, mentally I was in a surprisingly good place (or let’s write it down like that to remember it that way)

Since I felt a little bit better, we decided to move along the lake upward towards the north and camp out.

I spent so much of my time indoors due to the COVID-19 pandemic and felt so alienated from the outdoor life. But solitude during confinement felt so familiar - kind of like the solitude I always appreciated during my hiking trips.

Anyways, during the time I was there, I was not so much in a walking condition so I mainly ate and slept and ate again and slept more by the lake with an occasional walk here and there, a trip to the hospital for urinary infection meds and just lots and lots and lots of PIZZA!!!!!

I did miss the mountains though - that was confirmed (Berlin is so flat - it’s amazing for biking but then you also miss doing roller coaster rides on hilly slopes).

And another thing I did miss was doing solo hikes - hopefully I start planning some hikes of my own so I can reflect more regularly.

The tourist information office had amazing selection of maps (topographic ones with routes and route difficulties, very detailed) so I suggest visiting if you’re thinking of hiking around the area or exploring in general.

I also only discovered the topographic map feature on maps.me. It’s AMAZING, mind-boggling and eyes googling (is that a word?).

The weather goddess had been on our side the entire week and we had no rain, no cloud for the entire duration. I am astounded by her generosity - it’s probably due to my very good behavior in the past year. I no longer believe in Santa Clause, but I can believe in weather goddesses.

As much as I had enjoyed my first vacation, I was relieved to be back in Berlin, to be back home. Or maybe it was the fact that Berlin had begun to feel like home that made me relieved, I don’t know.

This became a very lazy rambling or sorts rather than an informative blog that I had set out to make this whole collection to be, but hope this is a good reminder to my future self of what and how I was feeling today as I’m writing this, that is to say, I’m really truly quite happy with how my life turned out to be at this moment (despite everything that had happened this year) to the point where I sometimes wonder if this could really actually be my life right now.

The fact that I can truly believe that I’m glad to be alive - that just makes me so happy.

(Listening to Call Me By Your Name soundtrack (the book is set in North Italy after all) and some swing jazz. )

The end of a random blog that was not much about hiking but more of a mind-wondering-wandering writing. Good night.