It is the perfect day to leave.

The sky is clear and the sun is bright and it’s warm. As I step outside yellow leaves fall from the trees and crunch under my feet, and everything is golden.

The church bells chime. I’ve been generously hosted. I think of the feeling of clean sheets against my skin, the last time for I don’t know how long.

There is never a way to know how anything will turn out.

There is never a way to know anything.

I have been waiting for this day, I have been counting down to this day and I have been fearing this day. I have dedicated myself to the idea of not knowing my future and having no plans, and here I am. Here we go.

And I’m scared, yet I’m thrilled. I’m excited; I want to try this again.

And then, besides the fear, there is this exhilarating feeling of freedom. I don’t know why I like this: to be moving. I don’t know why something in this suspended, unsafe existence feels familiar. Maybe it’s just interesting, maybe I just like the kick. With every step I feel like I’m getting closer to accepting that I do not know, and I will not know, and whatever will come I will have to solve it as I move along. Embodied philosophy.

With every step that I’m taking, my grasp of the future grows shorter and shorter. I’m entering the one-day-at-a-time mode.

And what this experience gives me I will not know until later, but right now I contemplate my day and my options. I’m accepting that I will probably be sleeping under the sky tonight. I don’t know where it will be, or when. I don’t know if I will get a ride before that or whatever will unfold. I imagine it will be cold because there are no clouds, but I hope it will be dry.

My only problem is that I don’t have a tent or a tarp. I figure it will, somehow, solve itself. I am dedicated to only buying things second hand, and this far no suitable tent has come my way.

I meet a friend in the center of Vienna, we have drinks and chat. “Don’t die”, he tells me as he hugs me when we part. It is already dark by then.

I jump on the metro and I ride it to the last stop. I adjust my backpack and check Google maps, locate the road leading south out of the city, and I start walking.

…

(This story told in pictures.)