(May 29 – June 8, 2026)
I met Bastian my second year living in Finland, as he moved into my old apartment when I transferred out of the first-year furnished room into the long term unit across the hall. Born to a German dad and Finnish mother, he grew up in West Berlin until he would leave for Finland to go to university. We hit it off quite quickly and within several weeks of having met signed up for the same student-organized backpacking trip to hike the Karhun Kierros near the Finnish Arctic Circle, a formative experience both in my life and for our friendship.
Interestingly enough, he set off on his own around-the-world trip about 13 years ago in 2013. When he was traveling through South America in route to meet me in Ecuador as I finished my Peace Corps service, he met a girl named Daniela in Chile. I recall him telling me about her as we spent our first couple weeks together surfing and traveling along the Pacific coast of Ecuador.
One day he then promptly decided to abandon course of our planned itinerary into Peru together and fly back to Chile to visit her again. Of course, I gave him a really hard time about this, but he assured me we would reunite in time to pursue the trekking adventures I had been planning in the Cordillera Blanca a couple weeks away near Huaraz.
He kept his word about returning to the itinerary, but he added another twist – he would be flying her to Peru to join us after our treks when we would pivot to climbing the surreal landscapes of the Cordillera Negra. A bit dismayed by the complete hypnosis he had fallen into, I tried to caution him as any well-intentioned friend would. When I finally met her and we spent a memorable time climbing the labyrinthine spires of Hatun Machay together, I came to see he wasn’t so crazy after all – Ella me cayó bien, también. Bien hecho, hombre.
Fast forward four years to 2017, now a seasoned resident and working professional in Valparaiso, Chile, Bastian married Daniela at a picturesque beach hideaway just north along the coast from there. At his wedding, I gave my toast in Spanish recounting my failed attempts to talk sense into him during those first several weeks of joint travel, and how happy I was to see that he knew better than to listen to me then and how quickly I became convinced he had found someone special soon after meeting her myself.
Not long after, both of them and Rocky, the stray dog they informally adopted off the streets of Valparaiso, moved to Berlin. I would begin regularly adding a stopover in Berlin as part of my European visits to friends in Finland or elsewhere, and seemingly every other trip they would have a new member of the family to introduce to me.
Having lost track of the number of times I have visited Berlin, the nine days I spent there were fairly low key and domestic in terms of tourist activity, but that is not to say boring or uneventful by any means. Mixed in with a couple late nights out to five or even 9am (!) were wonderful days in the park playing with his two children on the playground, teaching them the ukulele, or attending four-year old birthday parties. Of course, I also thoroughly enjoyed pitching in to help with the daily walks of a now elderly Rocky around the block.
They have a beautiful life in Berlin living in a regal old building in the leafy neighborhood of Friedenau of southwest Berlin, which is well preserved as it was spared from the worst of Allied bombing campaigns (the Americans already knew this would be the sector they would control post-capitulation). Most of their daily needs are found in the local neighborhood, including parks, playgrounds, groceries, bars, restaurants, and kindergarten/childcare (which organized by the city costs them a whopping 69 Euros a month! – the thud you just heard was the collective mouth-dropping of the American readership of this blog).
In addition to family time and catching up, I went out for several more bike rides and walkabouts after Critical Mass, including to the Tempelhof airport. Tempelhof served as West Berlin’s lifeline for its 2,000,000 remaining residents and Allied servicemen during the Berlin Blockade as it was the landing space for the famous Berlin airlift that supplied the cutoff city for 15 months between 1948-49. At its peak, one plane was landing every 45 seconds, and it became an early declaration of America’s commitment to preserving democracy and capitalism in Berlin in the face of Soviet attempts to suffocate it into submission.
These days, it’s a thriving green space and sports complex in the middle of the city shielded from development by a vociferous public that will protest any other use, even much needed affordable housing (while still sexy, Berlin isn’t quite as poor anymore). Parts of the terminal building and its adjacent grounds serve as a refugee camp for those displaced by the war in Ukraine or other conflicts.
I also bicycled with Fabian up to Drachenberg (Dragon’s hill). Drachenberg is a forested ‘mountain’ on the outskirts of the city ring where the Allies piled up all the post-war rubble and reforested the resulting landfill. Right next to it, on another such artificial hill is Teufelsberg (Devil’s Hill), host to the decrepit and graffitied remains of the CIA listening station used to spy on D.D.R. (East Germany) and Soviet communications during the Cold War. It is now a museum and open air art gallery with organized tours, but when I visited in 2009 Bastian took me scaling over fences and up rickety, make-shift ladders to gain access into the facility and onto the epic, somewhat post-apocalyptic rooftop.
Bastian also informed me that we needed to volunteer at an organized work day at the micro-brewery his now adult ‘youth’ group runs in the basement of a nearby church. Yes, you read all of that right. A project that began about a decade ago, their group of seven remaining members have matured it into a sophisticated operation that supplies them with seasonal beers throughout the year and serves as a perfect private social gathering space, complete with an inner courtyard. Some might consider it the ultimate man cave, though families of the group are welcome.
Not being able to lend a productive hand to the brewing process, I helped another of his friends with a garden improvement project in which we set out utilizing remnant piles of cobblestones to lay a new patio. While we made initial progress, the project was not completed that afternoon. Seeking a sense of pride and manner to leave my contribution as an honorable guest member to the braukeller, I carved out time throughout the week to go back and finish the job. If I struggle to find work upon return from my Journey to Nowhere in Particular, I have surely buffeted my credentials as an artisan stone layer now.
On the last evening I treated them to dinner at a Nepali restaurant nearby and said goodbye that night as my train towards the Polish Tatra moutains would depart quite early the following morning. Travel is not always about seeing new and exciting things, rather sometimes more about simply experiencing the lives of the people you care about in the places they live.
Going forward, my trip will begin to take on a new flavor and course. My destinations for the foreseeable future will not have close friends welcoming me at their doorstep, and the countries I will begin to traverse will exhibit cultures and languages much less familiar to me. It’s both exciting and a bit melancholic.
In just these first few weeks on the road (err, train track?), I would be lying if a significant part of me didn’t rather simply want to rent an apartment where I have these communities of friends and settle in for somewhere between a month to forever. I assured myself with the excitement to come of new places to discover and interesting people soon to meet, knowing also that I can always come back at the end of my initial trip should I feel the pull strong enough.
Auf wiedersehen, mein guter freund!
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