Winnetou Country

Day twelve, Croatia. Pian del Cansiglio stayed quiet and the clouds stayed put, so I never got the stars. What I got instead was two days with nothing to do but sit in my own company. A few hikers parked on the picnic ground, sorted their packs and went off up the hill.

It is slowly getting through to me that this might work. „Fear is like a chain that ties you up,“ Manoel had said. „Just put it down and leave it where it is.“ So that is what I have been doing, and the odd thing is how well it holds.

What looked like an unclimbable mountain a few weeks ago gets smaller the closer I come to it, even though there are still thousands of kilometres and every one of them could go wrong.

Late afternoon, three hundred kilometres of northern Italy, Slovenia and Croatia behind me. Up in the Croatian hills I drive past a sign that says Winnetou, and I remember that they filmed the Karl May pictures here. It looks the part: mixed forest on hard, broken rock, lakes in a turquoise nobody would believe in a photograph.

I get to the Old Mom's Lodge at Mrzla Vodica near Lokve. Ferdinand, who runs it, has built small pyramids out of wood, and I am to sleep in one of them tonight. His wife Antonia makes soup with potatoes, carrots and meat, and it is very good.

At the table I meet Emma and Hugo from France, on a road trip through Europe, and we talk until the night is used up.

They say the people around you are a reflection of what you are. Stefan, Manoel, Julian, Gernot, Emma, Hugo, Ferdinand, Antonia. If that is true, I am doing better than I thought.