An insatiable urge has always drawn Germans southward, to where supposedly lemons bloom and pizza originates. Pilgrims, mercenaries, and provincial princes who desperately wanted to become emperors have traveled to Italy over the centuries; Goethe, of course, also made the journey, but he only wanted to paint.

Willi Winkler has embarked on a hike through a unique cultural landscape—more than one thousand three hundred kilometers on foot. He has followed old and new pilgrimage paths and experienced an unknown world between highways and vineyards. Like Martin Luther, he sets out from Wittenberg, with Rome in mind and not without fear of the Alps that will stand in his way.

Along the way, he encounters Thuringian AfD sympathizers, Franconian brewery owners, Swabian COVID deniers, Württemberg wedding planners, Vorarlberg bakers, and Swiss daughters of the Rhine. He discovers abandoned Baroque churches and the poetry of industrial ruins, marveling at how patiently his feet carry him. Italy greets him with a hailstorm and then unfolds into the dreamlike beauty of Lake Como. With snow-capped peaks behind him, he descends, as Eichendorff puts it, into blooming Milan.

An adventurous journey that allows one to see the seemingly familiar with new eyes. For stubborn stay-at-homes as well as those hopelessly afflicted with wanderlust.