MÜNCHEN-BERLIN WANDERUNG

Walking from Munich to Berlin is such a sizeable challenge that anyone who undertakes it must have a very good reason. I was motivated mostly by a longing for freedom. I wanted to break ties that bound me, and I wanted to become healthy from this long hike at the same time that I broke all the ties binding me to Munich. I succeeded in walking over 1,000 km. [620 miles] to Berlin, taking the back roads, all on foot, with no trains or conveyances used. Daily I put long stretches of road behind me. I saw many beautiful landscapes, met friendly people, farmers and workers, and here and there Gypsies. I got along well with all of them, and we had good conversations. There is a lot less difference between people than is commonly supposed. I must say that people are the same everywhere. There are some differences, of course, but these stem primarily from character and temperament, and those same variations occur everywhere.

For an airplane, this is a laughable stretch, only about two and a half hours from Munich to Berlin. But it took me three and a half weeks, wandering as I did through hop-fields, over mountains, across the Danube, through forests and little villages, and again over mountains, from the heights of which everything looks so terribly tiny. - Oskar FISCHINGER, manuscript, n.d.