Nothing about our month of plans has turned out the way they were supposed to. Every single plan has changed. We are home now and came home much earlier than expected. There are many more blogs to come about each part of what turned into our month of September.

If you are following along at home our original plan was this…

Walking the Jakobsweg/Via Regia (aka German Camino) from Sept. 1 to Sept 15, train to Salzburg after completing close to 400km.

Salzburg Sept. 16-Sept. 18 and then make our way to St. Wolfgang in the Austrian Alps Sept.18-22nd. Train home to Berlin.

Hang in Berlin for a couple of days to wash clothes, pack and go to Serbia on Sept. 25th.

Ana’s sister’s wedding on Sept. 26th and we would be in Belgrade until Sept. 30th. On Sept. 30th we would fly home for Ana to start at her new company on Oct. 1.

Near our start date we found out two important pieces of info. Our flight had been changed for Belgrade and now we were flying home early Oct. 1…not ideal but doable we thought AND the wedding was postponed again due to lots of circumstances. Ok, but we still had our plan.

Then we came home after 5 days of walking to regroup and replan. See the previous blog about the pivot. Still ok. Kind of a bummer but with a much better plan in place…

Plan B or C or something else completely…

Train to Vienna on Sept. 8th and stay in Vienna until Sept. 12.

Sept 12th to Krems on the Danube to hike and taste wine.

Sept. 16th pick up our plans in Salzburg and continue on.

Vienna was amazing and Krems was amazing in a totally different way and we loved every minute (more blogs to come I promise). It fit our life right now in ways we didn’t even know we needed and we could still walk some and enjoy the sun with perfect weather plus both of us wanted to explore these places and eat Austrian goodies and drink Austrian coffee.

Salzburg might have gone according to plan but on our last night we received a phone call from our dogsitter that no dog owner ever wants to get. Our little dog, Luna, had gotten lost. (another blog for another day on how and that whole nightmare).

The next morning we cancelled all remaining plans and by sheer amazing luck or circumstance or whatnot we were able to book a flight home from Salzburg (one flight a day to Berlin) with two remaining seats on the plane and not too expensive.

Plan whatever this is….

And now we are home with one more week off for the both of us. Each day we are trying to do something vacation worthy in the place we live. We are both weary of booking things to cancel and we know the world is still in a major pivot point at all times. We don’t know if cases will spike, we no longer have the dogsitter, and we are flying by the seat of our pants but from the safety of our little apartment in Neukolln.

We are home and making the best of a number of weird situations and I vary between totally bummed and totally relieved and grateful. This city is an amazing city with always more to discover even if I have never felt as though it is my city. There is always more to do here. And to be honest, our community showed up for us in searching for our pup who is safe and at home and with minor injury, thank God! We are grateful and also disappointed but that seems to be the state of the world.

We are lucky to be safe and have each other.

We continue to find out what is open and available, what is safe and not so much and how we enjoy the autumn shifts (although it makes me miss Oregon even more).

All shall be well and yet the art of staycation is a mix of all the feels. I know you know what this is like. We are all in this crazy liminal pivotal space. Try not to be too isolated in it. 😉