I’ve given this quite some thought: What should I do in September, when I will have at least 2 weeks of holidays? No university, no work. I do want to do SOMETHING.

So I thought about going to Bretagne or Normandie.

I thought about traveling to England.

I thought about visiting Denmark.

And then, without much thinking, an interesting idea popped up in my head: What about a hike? Not just your average one day, 5 hours, hike. A hike with a real start and a real end. Two different cities. Two different regions of Austria, even. At first, I thoght about St. James’ Way. There are two variations of it in Austria: the Western Way, from Vienna via Salzburg to Innsbruck and on towards Spain, and the Southern Way, from Graz via Klagenfurt to Innsbruck and on. This of course posed the question: how would I get to Graz?

I will walk the Via Sacra, from Mödling (just outside the city of Vienna), in Lower Austria, to Mariazell, in Styria. From there, the Mariazeller Weg, on to Graz.

According to the Tourism Associations of the regions, each part will take about 5 days of “not too hard hiking”. So it will be 10 days of walking, plus one day of relaxing in Mariazell, and one or two days in Graz.

I’m SO excited about it!