Travel with Spirits

Tag: Camino de Santiago

  • Sustainable Travel in Europe 🌍

    Sustainable Travel in Europe 🌍

    From Pilgrimage to Low-Carbon Movement by Interrail and Beyond

    A Slow, Grounded, and Cultural Way of Moving Through Europe

    For a long time, travel meant arrival. Flights, itineraries, destinations, checked off one by one.

    But over time, I began to understand something more essential: what shapes a journey most is not where we go, but how we move.

    This series traces my shift toward sustainable travel in Europe, not as a set of rules, but as a lived practice shaped by the body, time, and low-carbon movement.

    It began with walking. And it continues, still unfolding.

    🥾 Walking: The Body as Teacher

    When body becomes the vehicle.

    In the spring of 2025, I walked the Camino de Santiago from Zamora. Three weeks of near-zero-carbon movement redefined my sense of distance, time, and presence.

    Before walking the Camino, I traveled the way most modern travelers do. I chose the fastest way to arrive. Flights, connections, time zones. As if the journey only truly began once I had “arrived.”

    But after walking for weeks, I felt something I had never felt so clearly before: The body needs time in order to enter a place.

    When movement slows down, the senses awaken. Terrain, climate, distance, fatigue, none of these are inconveniences. They are signals.

    That was when I understood that sustainable travel is not only an environmental choice. It is also a form of respect for the rhythm of the body. This is why, after the Camino, I began rethinking the way I move.

    From Camino to Sustainable Travel →

    🛤 Trains: The Low-Carbon Backbone

    Watching landscapes change instead of flying over them.

    From May to July 2025, I traveled across Europe by train, using an Interrail Global Pass. Trains allowed me to arrive gradually, watching landscapes shift in real time.

    The value of train travel is not only its lower emissions. It creates a transition space. A stretch of time where body and mind adjust together.

    On daytime trains, I watched light shift, weather change, temperatures rise and fall. On platforms, I shared waiting time with commuters, families, solo travelers. These ordinary moments brought back a sense of humanity to travel.

    Trains do not erase distance. They make distance understandable. For the body and mind, that is a form of gentleness.

    Traveling Europe by Train: Learning to Arrive Slowly →

    🚂Night Trains: Time Reimagined

    Sleeping while the land moves.

    Not every journey needs to pause at night.

    Night trains dissolve the opposition between movement and rest. Instead of losing time to airports, artificial light, and exhaustion, I sleep while the land continues to move.

    There is something profoundly gentle about waking up in a new country without rupture. No sudden dislocation. No abrupt transition. Just continuity.

    The body travels. The mind rests. And arrival feels aligned rather than imposed.

    Night Trains in Europe (coming soon)

    ⛴️Ferries: When the Sea Replaces the Sky

    The sea as transition, not empty space.

    Not every crossing requires flying.

    Ferries transform the sea into a visible passage rather than an empty gap between destinations. Standing on deck, watching the coastline slowly recede, I can feel departure happening in real time.

    Arrival unfolds the same way, gradually, perceptibly. The sea is no longer something to be bypassed. It becomes part of the journey itself. In that slowness, distance regains meaning.

    Ferries as a Gentle Crossing (coming soon)

    🚌🚏 Buses: Beyond the Railways

    Not romantic—but real.

    Not every place is connected by rail.

    In parts of the Balkans and other peripheral regions, buses are not a romantic choice, they are the only realistic one.

    They may not be punctual. They may not be comfortable. But they exist within the everyday lives of local people. Choosing them, for me, is a form of practical sustainability.

    Not pursuing ideal systems, but selecting lower impact, more human ways of moving within real conditions.

    When railways end, movement does not stop. It simply becomes more grounded.

    Traveling by Bus Beyond Railways (coming soon)

    🌆 Cities in Between: The New Space of Transition

    Slow travel happens in the in-between.

    The greatest gift of slower movement has been rediscovering the in between.

    Not the landmarks. Not the destinations. But the spaces between cities and countries that are usually ignored.

    In these transitions, I learned to accept uncertainty, delays, waiting. I began to understand that time is not wasted. It is a container. These experiences cannot be replicated by air travel.

    Cities in Between (coming soon)

    🍷🥂☕️🍻 Drinks on the Move: Culture in Motion

    Shared tables. Moving landscapes.

    Movement is not only about distance. It is also about ritual.

    Coffee on cold platforms at dawn. Beer after long days of walking. Wine in dining cars while fields blur past the window. These small drinks are not indulgences. They are anchors.

    They root me in a place without spectacle or performance. They invite conversation, or quiet observation. They turn anonymous transit spaces into temporary living rooms.

    Tasting something local between destinations is one of the most grounded forms of cultural connection. It is not about consumption. It is about presence.

    Drinks on the Move: Tasting Europe Between Destinations (coming soon)

    If travel is an extension of life, then sustainable travel is the choice to let that extension coexist rather than extract.

    Perhaps what we are truly trying to reach is not a particular city. But a way of moving that feels more aligned with ourselves, and more respectful of the world.

  • From Camino to Sustainable Travel 🥾

    From Camino to Sustainable Travel 🥾

    It has been almost a year since I set off from Zamora in late March and began walking the Camino de Santiago.

    Those three weeks on the Camino did not give me clear answers at the time. Instead, they planted something quietly. Over the months that followed, that seed slowly grew, reshaping how I understand travel, movement, and arrival.

    Spring on the Camino, when the river slows, my pace follows.

    In 2025 Spring, I chose to walk the Camino step by step with my own body. Later, I spent three months traveling by train and short-distance cruises within Europe, moving gradually from city to city. This rhythm made something very clear to me: when movement slows down, the body, emotions, and awareness are able to arrive together.

    I used to travel very differently. I moved frequently between continents, Europe, the United States, Asia, often within short periods of time. Those journeys were efficient and exciting, but they left me feeling fragmented. My body would already be in a new time zone, while my thoughts were still lingering on the continent I had just left.

    At dusk, the landscape changes slowly—an invitation to pause.

    The way I traveled in 2025 was not only about reducing carbon emissions. It became a shift in how I live. When I stopped rushing to cross distances and allowed myself time to truly enter a place, something inside me softened and aligned.

    On the Camino, I often walked alone. My footsteps landed on dirt paths and stone roads, passing through open fields, forests, streams, and quiet villages. The yellow arrows appeared again and again. They did not rush me or promise a destination, they simply pointed forward.

    The arrows don’t point to an ending, only to the next step.

    And yet, I was not always alone. Along the way, I met pilgrims from many different countries. Sometimes we walked together; sometimes we simply shared a short pause. Language was not always necessary. Under the same sun and with the same tired legs, understanding came easily.

    In the afternoons, we would stop at small village bars, cold, freshly poured beer, simple tapas on the table. Spanish sunlight spilled across the wood surfaces, a light breeze passed through the streets, and time felt generous. These ordinary moments became some of the clearest memories of the journey.

    Cold beer, olives, and a pause that feels exactly right.

    The train journeys and short European cruises that followed continued this same rhythm. Cities were no longer places I skipped over; they were connected, one by one. Outside the window, landscapes changed gradually, and my thoughts were given space to settle.

    This way of traveling feels gentler, to the environment, and to myself. It is not about achieving perfection or zero impact, but about making conscious choices before each movement.

    Now, I find myself drawn to this kind of travel, where movement is not only about reaching a destination, but about practicing a way of living that can be sustained over time.

    When the body, mind, and spirit arrive together, the world opens itself in quieter, kinder ways.

    This article is part of my Sustainable Travel Series, exploring how movement, culture, and low-carbon choices reshape the way we travel in Europe.