Slowly, very slowly. My feet feel as if they were twice as thick. My legs are a rock-hard muscle package that hurts with every step. I’ve never taken part in a marathon, but I suppose I am feeling like a 42-kilometer-runner on the day after the race – with the difference that more than two marathon distances stick in my bones, literally. From Wednesday, 8 a.m. to Thursday, 7.55 p.m. I hiked 96 kilometers. And I have reached my goal: from Cologne Cathedral on the Way of St. James to Aachen Cathedral within 36 hours, including an overnight stay. Five minutes before the time that I had set before I reached the gate of Aachen Cathedral. The mission “Power pilgrimage for Nepal” was accomplished.

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“We feel very sad to see ‘Ground zero’ of this huge school building”, says Sunil Krishna Shrestha, representative of the German aid organization “Nepalhilfe Beilngries” in Nepal. As reported before, the devastating 25 April earthquake had damaged the “Gerlinde and Ralf School” in the small mountain village of Thulosirubari so badly that it had to be demolished. The ruins had posed a danger to the children who had continued to play there after the quake. Meanwhile, the destroyed school building, where about 700 students from the region around the village had been taught before the quake, was leveled to the ground. “We were able to recover windows, doors and a few school desks and boards from the rubble”, Arjun Gatraj, the chairman of the school management committee at Thulosirubari, writes to me, adding that the old bricks could not be saved because the IOM (International Organization for Migration) had used heavy machinery to demolish the building.

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