I spent three months on the St. James trail, the Camino de Santiago, through Switzerland, France and Spain. It has been a fantastic journey with incredible people I met and the beauty of the landscape. In this article I reflect on the connection between the Camino and its cultural legacy and share some of my highlights along the way. Prepare for lots of images :-) Art Historian meets adventure...
I am announcing a mini sabbatical from August until the end of October 2016 to hike over 2000 km on one of the oldest cultural routes of Europe: The Camino de Santiago. In our age that is obsessed with achievements, production and efficiency, once in a while, I feel the need to slow down and check if my values, my imagination and my bodily sense of being are still aligned. We measure our days and plans with our gadgets, we are constantly optimizing our routines to become some sort of super human. Sometimes I think that modern life moves faster than our thoughts are able to follow and we jump to conclusions because we lack time to really think about events or experiences. To take a long-distance hike means to measure everything in a human scale again and to refuse to accelerate on the pace imposed by technology.
It's been an unique experience to visit Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Floating Piers in Italy. After the 16-days-long visiting period, the temporary installation will be completely recycled. In the end there are just memories and images of the visitors, and here I am sharing my experience.
I had the enormous pleasure to organize a one week delegation trip Mid-September 2018 on behalf of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs. The purpose of the trip was to facilitate conversations between the creative economy, fine arts, design and creative entrepreneurship between Bavarian and Scottish creatives.