Journey interrupted - health first

As the title suggests, the plane actually took off for Down Under without us on board.

It was a very emotional time for us, the decision was very difficult. But today we are sure that it was the right decision.

One of the main reasons we didn't return home earlier was that we were dreading the drive home. Our ordeal trip back to Switzerland went like this:

1. From Sundsvall (Sweden) 4.5 hours and 2 changes to Stockholm
2. 7 hours waiting time in Stockholm
3. 15-hour FlixBus ride to Hamburg (without sleep, because overnight)
4. An overnight stay in Hamburg to catch up on some sleep
5. 13-hour FlixBus ride to Zurich (again overnight and without sleep).

For those wondering why we didn't just take the plane:

• When you're sick and have no energy at all, getting the bicycles airplane-ready is an almost impossible task. Bicycle box search, take apart bicycles, pack bicycles, pack luggage, etc. and then at the end still somehow come with the whole lumber to the airport 🙈. On the FlixBus, we can just throw the bicycles and luggage in underneath.
• Price-wise, the FlixBus is about 4 times cheaper!

Even after three visits to the doctor in the north, we still do not know what we are ill with. Our guess is Long Covid or other viral disease/s. Since we did not feel any improvement, partly for weeks, we got to do it with fear! Will this never get better? It was insanely hard to comprehend that we mutated from being top fit, athletic and healthy to two people who felt 100 years old. In the worst days, we could leave the bed at most for toilet visits and cooking. Not like the flu for a few days, but for a few WEEKS!!!

After we had a low again thanks to the strains of the journey home, it's been going steeply uphill for a week 😃. What certainly accelerated our recovery was being able to see our family and friends again, distracting ourselves from the illness, and continuing to get plenty of rest and relaxation.
We have also had very good experiences with our cocktail of medications (plant-based):

Meanwhile, we have the strength again to be on our feet for half or even the whole day. Our walks are also getting longer 💪🏻😅.

We have found a good place to stay and if things continue like this, we are confident that we will be able to fly to Australia in 1-2 months. All good things come in threes 🙈.

In the very difficult times for us, we often drew from our last trip, especially the time in Georgia. Also today the newly published video of Dario & Lisa (erfahrung-der-welt.ch), with whom we were on the road in Georgia, was a huge motivational boost: