One of the best things about my childhood was that I always had enough books to read.
My heroes were never the princes or princesses, sorcerers or knights, firemen or astronauts. Nor was I impressed by cowboys, bandits or sheriffs.
There were three professions with whom I identified: vagabonds (or hobos or vagrants), journalists and private investigators. In that order.
The first hobos with whom I made my literary acquaintance were probably the tiger and the bear in The Trip to Panama by Janosch, who decide to walk all the way to Panama (it is not clear from where, but as a child I naturally assumed that they were also in Germany, where I was at the time). It doesn’t matter that they will never reach Panama.
Later came the adventure novels by Karl May, not too well known in the English-speaking world I believe. The vagrant who is here today and somewhere else tomorrow and who carries all of his belongings in a bindle thrown over his shoulder always struck a more sympathetic chord with me than all the boastful heroes. He epitomized freedom. Then there were the vagabonds in the novels by Charles Dickens and Jack London.
The Good-For-Nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff may be romantic kitsch, but the demonstrative carelessness, which ultimately leads to success, is a modus operandi which I have tried to make my own.
Only later did I find out that such a vagabondish lifestyle is a real option, e.g. by reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer or the three volumes by Patrick Leigh Fermor about his multi-year hike through Europe. “What a life!” I proclaim with admiration when I read biographies like these, before I set out to make more travel plans of my own.
The dreams you had as a child are the best guidance in adult life.
I made it.
The Happy Hermit 