Travelling in a Coronaworld: Summer 2020 in Germany

A few days ago, I returned home from a five-week journey through Germany with a few stops in Austria and Switzerland. While much of the world is still in lockdown mode, I am lucky to come from a European country that has handled the pandemic well and is now allowing people to travel to a number of European countries. While I was gone, numbers did rise again, but when I left it seemed that certain countries had the pandemic under control. Therefore, I felt it was safe to travel within neighbouring countries with similarly low cases and good healthcare.

I chose Germany. A country I’ve been to countless times, but never actually spent one day as a tourist. I’ve driven through the country many times to get to other countries and I’ve spent many December weekends at their cozy Christmas markets, but I had yet to do any sightseeing in Germany. I hadn’t even seen one of their 46 UNESCO sites! Well, that certainly changed this summer.

I left Denmark on July 20th after four months of no international travel – the longest period I’ve gone without travel since 2015! I had enjoyed myself in Denmark and I was surprised that I didn’t constantly yearn for travel. But it was the greatest feeling when I could finally throw on my backpack and cross the border to Germany.

I spent my first two weeks travelling with friends and family, first at a Stone Age gathering with a bunch of nerds like me, and then for a week with my family in Stralsund and Rügen. For those first two weeks, I didn’t notice many differences between pre-corona and post-corona travel, apart from the masks that are mandatory in Germany. I wore the mask whenever necessary but otherwise, it felt like any other holiday.

It wasn’t until my family dropped me off in Lübeck for a five-day stay that I noticed how different it is and may be for a long time. I stayed at a hostel in an eight-bed female dorm, the only option I could afford in the city. Only four of the beds were occupied and I was told that this was due to the corona restrictions. I thought it was great as it made it much easier to keep a safe distance to others.

Staying in a dorm, I was hoping to meet other travellers like me. Maybe some backpackers that also miss their previous carefree travel life and had decided to explore their home country or neighbouring countries for the summer. But I didn’t meet any backpackers. The other women in my dorm were there to either look for apartments or to work. I was also always the only one hanging out in the common room. The best part of solo travel – meeting other like-minded people – had perished.

I noticed the same in Munich where I stayed in a female dorm for two nights, and also in Weimar where I stayed in a mixed dorm for a night. No other backpackers. I was forced to get used to a new type of solo travel, a lonely one. I had to get used to being completely alone on my travels.

My loneliness was cured by days spent in nature, on islands in the Baltic Sea and in the mountains. As much as I tried to avoid it, I did have to take a few trains and busses, but I wore my mask and had two seats for all except one train ride so keeping a distance was easy.

For the last two weeks of my journey, I rented a car and drove solo around the Alps and Central Germany, an epic roadtrip that took me to some of the most beautiful corners of my neighbouring country as well as to a few pockets of Austria and Switzerland.

I drove just under 2,000 kilometers from Munich to the German and Austrian Alps, to Lake Constance, the German exclave of Büsingen am Hochrhrein and the Rhine Falls in Switzerland, through the Black Forest to the Bahá’í House of Worship near Frankfurt, through Bavaria to fairytale villages and up to the Harz Mountains, to just north of Berlin to visit a friend and back down to Magdeburg where I dropped off the car on August 23rd, ending my five-week journey.

While I had many amazing moments on this journey and I am glad that I decided to go, it was also challenging in the sense that I only rarely had meaningful conversations with other people, and in the sense that an ongoing pandemic constantly had me sanitizing, wearing a mask, keeping my distance to other people and often feeling lonely. But this seems to be the new normal. Either I live with it or I change the way I travel. I’m still not quite sure. But one thing I do know is that I need to prioritize seeing more of my neighbouring countries (and my own country!). Germany surprised me in so many ways. It is so beautiful beyond the Autobahn, something that many Danes have yet to discover.

When I crossed the border back into Denmark, the train stopped and three policemen entered. For the first time in my life, I had my passport checked when entering my own country from another EU country. I couldn’t help but worry that this is also the new normal for years to come. The borders that were already way too restricted beforehand have become even more restricted, and who knows how long this will last or if it will get worse. But I have to stay hopeful.

I do realize how lucky I am to be able to travel safely within parts of Europe. Most people around the globe couldn’t even travel before the pandemic, and even more can’t travel now. Over the next few months, I will be sharing my stories from this summer adventure with you all. I hope that a little virtual escape can give you all hope that someday, we will be free and safe to explore the beautiful earth we live on.