To walk along a river that is leaving the city you are about to enter, is an amazing way to arrive somewhere. Not to arrive in a city by train, plane or car, but by walking, by taking all the time you have, by letting all impressions slowly approach you.

From the greens of the riverside, slowly into the civilization of the city-life. There couldn’t be a better way to arrive in Salzburg, I realised while I could see how nature was slowly being submerged.

How I got there was equally amazing. Once again I had a good hitchhiking day. Two cars and three hours was all that it took to travel from Munich to Salzburg. In Munich I got picked up by a Bavarian man (“I am a hard worker without a job”) who spoke all the time without me able to understand a word.

Halfway he dropped me at a rest-area and after taking my rest a woman called me. She was on her way to Hungary with two children and had no problems dropping me at Salzburg. Now that was kind of a new situation. Women taking (male) hitchhikers is not that new, though rare, but a woman taking you for a ride, while she is with two children (also girls) is not something you come across that often.

Someone like this must be a traveler herself. And indeed, this woman from Switzerland saw most of the world, only to go back for a new love she found on her way, after seven (!) years of independent traveling and working.

Traveling is a virus, she said as she dropped me at the edge of Salzburg. And when I asked a passer-by my way into town, I was pointed to a path along the river. A path that made me fully experience the process of ‘getting somewhere’, feeling the virus getting a better grip on me.