Europe, Mountains, and a Very Old House

I have been in Europe for quite a while now, and after leaving The Gambia, it actually took me some time to get used to everything being green again and, maybe even more noticeably, everything being available again. Suddenly you walk into a supermarket and there are endless versions of everything, you can get pretty much whatever you need whenever you need it, and after the last months in West Africa I have to admit that I truly enjoyed that for a while.

I first spent some time in Berlin, where I also had the chance to show Nike around a little bit, and from there we drove together to Poland to visit some places connected to my family history. After that I stayed another couple of days in Berlin before eventually moving on to Switzerland, which is where I have been spending most of my time since.

And Switzerland has been absolutely beautiful. I think this is probably the hottest and driest summer I have ever experienced here, which is obviously not particularly good for nature or for the farmers, but for me, spending as much time as possible outside and in the mountains, it has been an absolute treat.

In fact, I started running again, and I am now somewhat on a mission to become a trail runner once more after being pretty lazy for the last ten years. I used to run quite a lot, and with the mountains right outside the door here, I figured there really isn’t much of an excuse not to start again. So whenever I have the time, I put on my shoes, head up into the mountains and slowly try to convince my legs that this is something we used to enjoy doing.

And well, as you can probably imagine, a house that old comes with a few surprises. You start working on one thing, discover something else underneath it, and suddenly the small job you thought you were going to finish that day has turned into something quite different. There is enough to do that I decided to stay here all the way until the end of October, when I’ll finally fly back to The Gambia.

Thinking About Santana Again

And of course, the closer that gets, the more my thoughts are slowly moving back toward Santana. So far Jibril seems to be taking really good care of her. He has sent me pictures, and I also had a video call with him while he was on the boat, and from everything I can see she seems to be doing just fine.

I can also feel that I’m getting more and more curious about being back on the boat. It’s not really anxiety, and at the moment I’m not particularly worried about her either. It’s more this feeling that after a couple of months of mountains, houses, supermarkets and European life, I’m starting to wonder what it will feel like to step back onto Santana and return to life on the river.

But there are still a few weeks to go, a lot of work to be done on an old house, and hopefully quite a few more kilometers in the mountains before then.

So that’s it from my side for now. How is your summer going? What have you been up to?