KICK-ASS From Basement to Billions: The Story of JUST-EAT and My Life as an Entrepreneur

By Jesper Buch and Mai Bakmand

In 2000 Jesper Buch sat in Oslo and wanted a pizza. He searched online for a pizzeria, but to no avail.
This gave rise to the idea that later would become just-eat.dk. Countless hours in a pizza-reeking Toyota Sports Van, constant pressure, and a natural, congenital entrepreneur spirit led him and his team through ups and downs, and when he sold his share of the company ten years later, Just-Eat was a major success, generating billions.
Jesper tells the story, no holds barred, about his wild youth, his showdown with his alcoholic father, and the rise of Just-Eat. Via the story of Just-Eat and the company’s unique atmosphere of accomplishment, he passes on his best pieces of advice to other entrepreneurs. From how to crush the competition to the details of handing over the reins to a new managing director after eight years of round-the-clock work. He talks about motivation, will, and friendship. About doing what it takes – whatever it takes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jesper Buch
• Release date: Oct 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9788799687213

Jesper Buch

In 2000 Jesper Buch founded one of the world's biggest E-commerce successes which is known today as just-eat.com (Group). The company started in a basement in a small town of Denmark and was breaking even in 2004. In 2005 Jesper decided to do it all over again and went to UK where he founded just-eat.co.uk. Besides being the CEO of UK he also managed to start up in Holland, Iceland, Sweden and Ireland. Just-Eat went on London Stock Exchange and the valuation around 7B USD. In 2011, Jesper decided to walk "Camino de Santiago, 850 km from France to North-West Spain"​. In Sep. 2012, Jesper released his first book “Kick-Ass” about his personal story of the 10 years it took to build Just-Eat. In Feb. 2013 and most years up to 2017, Jesper was the most searched for top leader on the web in Denmark. In March 2013 Jesper was selected as "Young Global Leader 2013"​ by "World Economic Forum."​ Jesper and his portfolio have been directly or indirectly involved in around 20 Series A fundings, B funding an C fundings as well as many seed- and bridge fundings. Jesper Buch was awarded the "Pioneer Award 2014"​ for his work with internetcompanies in Denmark. Jesper Buch won "Investor Of the Year 2014 + 2017"​ in Denmark and Investor of the year, peoples choice 2014 + 2017"​ in Scandinavia @ Nordic Startup Awards In 2015 Jesper Buch was rated no. 27 on WIRED ́s top 100 list of most influential tech people in our world, across Europe. Jesper is the first danish dragon in the program "Dragons Den" / "Shark Tank". The show is on national channel DR1 - season 1+ 2 + 3 in 2016 Jesper Buch became citizen of the year in his home town Kolding. Jesper began his speech tour and have been doing over 200 speeches to around 150.000 people during 2016-2018 In 2018 Jesper released his second book “All In” In 2018 Jesper received the E-Award in Spain in the category: “Tech person of the year”

Book preview

KICK-ASS

From Basement to Billions

The Story of JUST-EAT and My Life as an Entrepreneur

© Jesper Buch and Mai Bakmand 2018

Copyright: © Jesper Buch and Mai Bakmand, Aarhus 2018

Sats: Digital Xpress, Oechsle/Bakmand

Cover: Digital Xpress

Cover Photo: © Morten Germund/Scanpix

Editor: Dennis Drejer

ISBN: 978-87-996872-1-3

(Smashwords version)

Published in 2018

Orange Ink

Please respect and support the work of the authors. Don’t copy the book for other people.

If you received an illegal copy, then buy the book and read it with good conscience.

KICK-ASS

FROM BASEMENT TO BILLIONS

THE STORY OF JUST-EAT AND

MY LIFE AS AN ENTREPENEUR

JESPER BUCH WITH MAI BAKMAND

contents

Introduction

Buen Camino

My great hike 2011

From second-hand toys to 14-year-old grill bar manager

Childhood 1975-1990

Crazy times

Youth1990-1995

From first class runt to first lieutenant

Military life1995-1998

The restaurant and the love that disappeared in alcohol

Lanternen in Blokhus1998-1999

The Daisy spirit and the idea at the embassy

Thebirth of Just-Eat1999-2000

The adventure begins – the organization is built up

Just-Eat 2000-2001

From bad system to good system

Just-Eat2002

An extension of the family

Just-Eat2003

1000 orders per day

Just-Eat2004

Just-eat.co.uk

Just-Eat 2005

Déjà vu

Just-Eat 2006

Further growth is always an option

Just-Eat 2007

Entrepreneur versus corporate

Just-Eat 2008-2009

Financial independence and new love

Just-Eat 2008-2009

Parting ways with the baby, meeting with the blood brothers

LeavingJust-Eat 2010-2012

Outro

Winter 2013-2014

My website

Contact and thanks

Introduction

My class at Skanderup Friskole were referred to as ‘The Angels’, but I’m not at all an angel :). Today I might be a Business Angel on the south coast of Spain, and I’ve always tried to be a decent person, but I’m also a rebel. I’ve lived my life on the edge in the coolest possible sense – driven by my own instinct of self-preservation, always challenging myself in order not to fall off.

I want to share who I am, what I believe in, and how I’ve made it to where I am today. I’m talking to fellow entrepreneurs, to people who think the life of an entrepreneur is exciting, and to the ordinary Joes and Janes who like a good story with drama, intrigues, ups and downs, betrayals, defeats, progress, and success. None of these will be disappointed, but if you believe that entrepreneurial success is just a matter of getting a good idea, think again. You need to believe so passionately in your idea that you set aside yourself, your family, friends, and girlfriend; you must make everybody understand and accept that they’re of secondary importance in the years it’ll take you to become a success. If you think I’m full of myself, you’ll discover it’s my self-confidence shining through – I’m definitely not afraid of the typical Danish who-do-you-think-you-are attitude. I pull no punches and my language is unlike what you’ll read in most other books, but I’ve never been in favour of doing things in a certain way because, hey, that’s how we usually do.

A few of you out there will probably think, What a conceited jerk – you can’t possibly have enough material for an autobiography when you’re only 36. My reply is: Stop being narrow-minded, you’ll miss out on so much. It doesn’t matter if I’m 15, 36, or 150 – the bottom line is that it’s pretty unique to establish a basement business in Kolding and turn it into a billion KRONER venture in just ten years.

One of the reasons for my personal success, I think, is that I’ve always regarded everybody else equally: Fat people, skinny people, rich, poor, pizzeria owners and managing directors. I sympathize with everybody and I have just as much respect for the small-scale restaurant owner fighting to stay in business as for high-rollers doing business for millions. As long as they’re passionate. All human beings are equally justified, and I haven’t been rolling in money always. Just ten years ago I was living in a so-called ghetto and had to sell bottles at the end of the month to be able to buy pasta and ketchup. I still wake up sometimes and pinch myself and think, Goddamn, Jesper, it’s crazy what you’ve achieved; you’re just a hillbilly from the back of beyond!

I can’t say whether this book is about me or Just-Eat, because for ten years I was Just-Eat, and Just-Eat was me. Two inseparable entities. But the story shouldn’t be exclusively about me, so I’ll give you the most important and best learning tools I can: a series of good advice, thoughts, approaches to doing business and making money, rules of life, and experiences I’ve had, learnt the hard way, or just always known. The general heading for these passages are Golden words; they’re easy to find and easy to skip if you just want to read the story and have no intentions of becoming an entrepreneur yourself.

Friends and business connections also get their say. Not just the backslappers and the yes men, but also people with whom I’ve had violent disagreements and who have a totally different view. But the story is mine, the perspective is mine, and what you see is what you get, if you happen to run into me some day. I’m not a complicated person, but I’m dedicated, and when I want to do something, I’ll do it – whatever it fucking takes.

I’m a hard-core perfectionist, my only idol is Steve Jobs (R.I.P.), and I only want to work and be with kick-ass people. I only have one life, which probably will be shorter than average considering my constant speed, but I love my life and I’ve never wanted to exchange it for any other life. I’d rather live strong and die young than live to be 110 without ever kicking ass.

My parents didn’t exactly pack me in pink cotton wool, but let me learn for myself, both in terms of personal experiences and business concepts. What? Business concepts as a child? What about matchbox cars? you might be thinking. I probably did play with matchbox cars, but I also did business from a very tender age, not because I had to, but because I couldn’t help it.

As an indication of the growth of Just-Eat, the three infusions of capital in 2009, 2011, and 2012 are shown here.

I have entrepreneur DNA and that’s a really central point in this book and something which I shall return to often.

One of my purposes in writing this book has been to describe what takes place in a business when it moves from being managed by entrepreneurs to corporate. In the case of Just-Eat from when I was a trainee with the Danish embassy in Oslo and cursed that I couldn’t order a pizza online, to building up the concept and the brand, first in Denmark, then in England, Holland, Sweden, and Ireland – and later as a world-wide corporation. In 2011 Just-Eat was named European Superstar by GigaOM Euro 20. My big dream was that Just-Eat should become the largest online service in the world in terms of providing a link between fast-food restaurants and consumers – and that dream came true while I was shareholder. In this chapter you will see the first three capital infusions in Just-Eat; the amounts are interesting because they illustrate the growth rate of the company value. As my chairman of the board, HC Mejer, says:

While recession and crisis ruled the day in Denmark, the USA, and the rest of the world, and it was impossible to open a newspaper without reading about budget deficits and looming bankruptcies because of diminished competitive power in relation to the rapidly growing Eastern economies, a couple of small ads for Just-Eat.dk were inserted in various places.

Fasten your seat belts, because I’m about to take you on a turbulent journey. The forecast indicates stormy conditions, high pressure, entertainment, warmth, cold, plenty of fuel, and full speed ahead.

Buen Camino

My great hike 2011

When I’d sold my last shares in Just-Eat in 2011 and had become a multimillionaire, I wanted to walk. Yes, walk. I wanted to ramble along the Camino with the purpose of getting my head together and collecting my thoughts again.

Like most of my ideas, the Camino decision was made spontaneously. It’s a pilgrim route from medieval times, stretching 835 kilometres from St. Jean Pied de Port at the foot of the French Pyrenees in the east to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in the west. On the way you spend the nights in primitive albergues made available by various small towns and municipalities, where you sleep in bunk beds in dormitories. Overnight accommodation in these costs between five and ten Euros. Present day pilgrims, peregrinos in Spanish, walk the route for many different reasons. Some are religious, some do it because of the incredibly beautiful natural scenery, and quite a few do it in order to process something mentally or put something behind them.

Towards the end of the route stands Cruz de Ferro, the Iron Cross, where you may physically or mentally unburden yourself. I walked with a stone with the Just-Eat logo – the original one, of course – painted on it, and I wanted to put that down by the cross. I’m not very religious, neither more nor less Christian than the average Dane, but I needed to collect my thoughts. I needed to do the Jesper Buch jigsaw puzzle in a new way, because one of the large pieces had gone missing forever – the Just-Eat piece. I wanted to put the years as Just-Eat entrepreneur and shareholder behind me. I had two additional goals: 1) to get in better shape and 2) to quit smoking.

The hike is obviously extremely physically challenging, but I didn’t really prepare myself for it, except that I bought the necessary equipment and began wearing my hiking boots almost all the time the last week before leaving, because I knew from my time in the army that the most important part of a long walk is to be friends with your boots. I also wanted to push myself to the limit by walking the route faster than the standard tempo, but actually I’d say that the challenge is only 30% physical, but 70% mental.

I flew to the tiny airport in Pamplona, and as soon as I landed I got a taste of the life that awaited me the next month or so – the airport and the town were populated almost entirely by pilgrims with rucksacks. Many begin their walk here, but the REAL route commences across the Pyrenees in France, so I found a couple of Brazilians with whom to share a taxa to St. Jean Pied de Port across the border. I’m not at all impressed by those Baby Caminos who begin further

to the west, and even less impressed by those who set out 150 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela and get a nice diploma as a token of their Camino walk. If you do it, do it right – whatever it takes.

I was going to walk together with a friend from Denmark, Glenn, and we went to the pilgrim office in town and got our pilgrim passes, which would be stamped along the way, and a map of the standard route, spanning 34 days. The first 26-kilometre leg of the tour is by far the most insanely tough of them all. The route climbs to 1200-1500 metres in the first 10 or 12 kilometres. I almost died! Cigarettes, stress, and 4,230 pizzas eaten over the past ten years just got burned out of my body, and at the same time all sorts of thoughts from the entire period bubbled to the surface. The path just went up and up and up, and I really did believe it would be the end of me.

But the view from the summit was worth it. Words cannot describe how amazingly beautiful it is, and that was merely the beginning of a series of incredible scenarios. I never thought the world could be so beautiful. I did think, however, that the worst was behind us now when we’d reached the summit, but I was wrong – very wrong. I obviously didn’t know what hilly terrain really meant, but this was a far cry from our gently rolling Danish landscapes. There was a narrow, steep, makeshift path down through the woods on the other side of the mountain, and we were still 13-14 kilometres from our goal. My calves ached as my muscles produced masses of lactic acid, my legs hurt, my feet hurt; it felt as if I totally smashed all my muscles that first day. And to make matters worse: When we reached the first day’s planned destination, we thought, hey, we’re young, let’s do another 8 or 9 kilometres. That was a very bad strategy. When we stopped after 35 kilometres I was almost feverish and slept very badly, even though my body was completely whacked. It tried to regenerate, but it couldn’t. Each morning the first 6-8 days I woke up almost unable to move my legs. The slightest movement hurt enormously and I had to struggle to even get out of bed. My legs felt like one big pulled muscle, which was an indication that my muscles were growing bigger, and while it hurts like hell, it’s in no way dangerous. I also suffered from an onset of an infection of the tibia, something I never even experienced in my four years in the army.

It was the founder of dating.dk, Morten Wagner, who’d convinced me to go through with the walk, because he benefited enormously from it himself, and I remember calling him before I went to sleep the second night, lying in a bunk bed in a dormitory filled with other people’s rancid boots, sweaty T-shirts, and wet towels. I felt homesick for the first time in 25 years – last time was at a taekwondo camp when I was 10 and had to spend a night away from my parents. It was probably also 25 years since I’d last had two days in a row to actually think about how I was doing. It was unpleasant to have to sleep among all these people I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. I asked myself: What the hell am I doing here when I can afford any holiday in the world? And I said to Morten Wagner: What the hell have you gotten me into? I’m hurting all over, I’m feverish with pain, I can’t move, and I’m lying here staring at the walls in a dormitory that looks like something from an old Romanian orphanage! Yep, that’s how I felt too, he said. Where are you? I explained, and it turned out that he’d had exactly the same experiences and thoughts in the exact same place. Just keep at it, he said, and I answered: Keep at it? You better bloody believe it! I’m not gonna listen to you bragging the rest of our lives that you’ve done something I haven’t. And, by the way, I’ve decided to do it ten days quicker than you!

I pushed myself way too hard, especially in the beginning, and I honestly don’t think it’s that painful for people who just complete the trip in the recommended time.

This dismal sight made me homesick for the first time in 25 years.

On the third day I had a massive crisis. I only walked 15 kilometres and kept thinking, this is bad, I’ll never make it – and Glenn got far ahead of me. But the next day he got problems with his hip, and then I outran him. Actually we split up after four days, because I wanted to complete the trip faster than him; he was more interested in the social aspects of it all, cooking together with other walkers and having a beer or two with your roommates at the albergue before lights-out at 9 or 10 pm, when everybody just passes out from fatigue. I wanted to be by myself, collect my thoughts on the new puzzle of my life, spend maybe an hour or so with other people in the restaurants in the evenings, but otherwise just be alone, taking care of myself both physically and mentally. And I didn’t want to cook after walking all day, when you could buy three courses for max 10 Euros at all the albergues.

There were no hard feelings, and that’s one of the amazing aspects of the Camino. You feel within yourself when to press on and when to slow down, and for me it felt right to walk alone. It’s your Camino, the saying goes, as it is a personal, individual experience that everybody should try to get a personal result from. Each time you meet or pass another walker, you greet each other with a Buen Camino, but otherwise it’s utterly up to you whether you want to turn the walk into a social process or something more introspective, as I did.

A Buen Camino from a total stranger may provide you with a boost when you’re down, when your legs hurt, your body hurts, your soul and head hurt, and you just feel unable to carry on. The fact that I chose to push myself to do the walk faster than most others entailed that I didn’t spend more than two or three nights with the same people, so it really did become my Camino. Not in an arrogant way, and everybody fully respected that I didn’t feel any need to interact too much with other people’s thoughts, because many other pilgrims felt the same way. But the experience itself nevertheless creates strong bonds, even though you don’t speak. Things become simpler while superficiality disappears. Nobody knew that I’d just made a bundle, and that was a great feeling.

I learned to ignore pain, or at least deal with it. It hurts all the time; if it’s not your feet or legs, it’s your shoulders, your back, or your neck, because you’re wearing your rucksack every step of the way. It was a nightmare, but at the same time we were all in the same boat, so it stopped being a cause for embarrassment that everybody walked about looking like they’d crapped their pants due to pain. It ceased to matter, and the only cure was to move on; it doesn’t hurt as much to keep walking as it does to begin walking. After ten days my legs felt much better, and even though it still hurt – like a bitch – it was just too great an experience to push myself like that, and not least to discover that my unwillingness to do so gradually turned into joy at the prospect of setting out again. I was looking forward to the calm, the spectacular scenery, the small villages with their churches and an almost medieval atmosphere, where mamasita sits in front of the house, knitting, while papasita ambles about behind the fence, tending to his sheep. The church bells are ringing like they’ve done for centuries and the birds are singing while the sun rises. Otherwise it’s quiet, totally quiet, and it felt as if I was in another world than the one I was familiar with.

I had asked people to refrain from contacting me by e-mail or text messages. The only two exceptions were that I wanted to know if anything happened to my pregnant girlfriend Renata, who’s half Danish and half Brazilian, or my daughter Fie in Denmark. I didn’t even want to hear from my parents – I figured, if anything happened to them I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway. I spoke with Renata every other day and put small clips from my video diary on Facebook every evening, so that my network could keep up with my adventures, but everybody respected my wish to avoid being contacted. It was important for me to complete my mental journey undisturbed, and I was certain that a new and improved Jesper Buch would emerge as a result.

Depending on the number of kilometres covered I’d arrive at the albergue sometime between 3 and 7 p.m. Then I got my pass stamped, paid for overnight accommodation, found an unoccupied bunk, unrolled my light-weight sleeping bag and laid down for 10-15 minutes, before heading towards the holiest of holy places: the shower. 20-30 minutes of warm water and uninterrupted wellbeing was something every pilgrim treasured; everybody knew how much you needed it. The dirty clothes got washed in the shower and hung to dry on my rucksack; then I put my only other set of clothes on and spent another 20 minutes on my bunk. Then dinner and maybe a little stroll through the village, but otherwise it was just a matter of relaxing and sleeping. That was it – a totally back to basics lifestyle, without e-mails, questions, demands for decisions, and too many choices. Fantastic! The only impulses were myself, the natural world, and people with the same goal as me. And forget about smart clothes and cool hair – it’s damn near impossible to look smart in sweat-absorbing clothes.

The first 10-14 days I didn’t think about the final destination at all, because it was unfeasible to think more than one day ahead when you’ve still got 765 kilometres to go. The middle third part of the route is flatter, and towards the end of that I began to imagine the finish line, even though I knew that the terrain would become hillier again later. But it just wasn’t the idea of completing the trip that fascinated me in this phase. The fascinating discovery for me was that I began thinking in a different way. I was more at ease with myself, and my mental regeneration could commence.

One day I’d walked 40 kilometres in hilly terrain, but when I arrived at my chosen albergue, I was told that it was full. I was utterly exhausted, and I just thought, FUCK, what now? There was only one option: To walk another 8 kilometres to the next albergue. I dragged my dispirited self slowly along the gravel road towards a far-away village. Two peregrinos on bicycles passed – quite a few cover the route on bicycles instead of walking – and as they whizzed by they shouted, Buueeen Caminoooo! For some reason that struck me so hard that I fell to my knees and cried and smiled at the same time. Incredibly weird, but a truly great feeling – it was like getting it all out of my system. I didn’t know why I was crying, but it was a release, and they were tears of relief, because I wasn’t unhappy. Quite the opposite.

Still a LOOONG way to go.

The sun was setting in the horizon, everything was just so beautiful and a total out-of-body experience. The tears flowed freely the next couple of kilometres, and I just really needed to cleanse myself like that. My eyes got misty many times along the way, but never in an unhappy way; I was just moved by my own thought processes and the beautiful surroundings. I had no control over when something suddenly moved me to tears, but it didn’t matter. It was a great release to just let go, even if this release was achieved through thinking and not through talking.

Often I was the last to arrive at the albergues, because I pushed myself and walked a few extra kilometres, and that meant I often got the least attractive bunks, but it didn’t matter. The scenery got increasingly beautiful, or maybe I was able to see it more and more clearly – it really did feel as if a veil was stripped from my eyes.

Scents, sounds, and sights got purer and sharper as my body got stronger each day and I became a more sensitive and whole human being, as well as healthier and happier. I spoke to myself or sang while I scrambled up the hills, because it didn’t hurt anymore, at least like it did when I thought I was going to die in the French Pyrenees. I did have blisters all over my feet, but I didn’t care – it was just a state of affairs that I’d accepted. Towards the end I actually ran up the hills just for the hell of it :). One morning I woke up with a foot that hurt so bad that I thought I had to quit. I considered seeing a doctor, but I knew he’d just advise me to swallow a couple of painkillers and take it easy for a few days. I just didn’t have time for that, so I continued, and I actually did succeed in walking the pain away.

I thought I would listen to a lot of music and mp3 books, but I only got through a single book, which I listened to in the course of a day. Otherwise I just enjoyed being in the company of my thoughts. The book I heard that day was an autobiography by a Danish special ops soldier. I began walking at 6 in the morning and I walked through a forest without meeting a single human being. I passed a military installation and thought that life was wonderful. At some point a wild dog followed me. He walked maybe 10 metres away from the path and stopped whenever I did and walked on when I did. It was just like bloody Dances with Wolves!

I got lost twice. Once I’d left the path to pee and had put my walking staffs against a tree. I walked on for a while and suddenly realized that I’d forgotten the damned staffs. Shit, what a bummer to have to walk back 1½ kilometres to retrieve them. The second time was worse. I’d left the path to check out some object of interest, and I ended up walking an additional 15 fucking kilometres before I found the path again. I was so far away from everything, not another pilgrim in sight, and the village I’d ended up in was totally deserted, a freaking ghost town. It pissed me off to no end and I screamed and yelled for a full minute and beat my staffs against the ground, which caused them to fly into a field of grazing cattle. Dammit, I didn’t need additional cow flap-induced delays. I got hold of my staffs and continued blindly. The path just rose, and every time I thought I’d reached the top, another climb presented itself. In addition, I ran out of water and everything was pure misery. The day ended well, however. When I’d found the right path again, I soon came across a wonderful little stream with totally clear, ice cold water. That was pure paradise and gave me the boost I needed to reach my destination. When I spoke to Renata that evening I was so angry at the 15 wasted kilometres that I said that I’d compensate by taking a cab the first 15 kilometres the next day, so that I’d still be able to stick to my plan. Of course, once I’d slept on it, I didn’t do it, and when I spoke with her the following evening, she said that she’d known I wouldn’t take a cab. Not being I was afraid of losing face, but simply because I needed to be true to myself and my goal. I never drove nor had my luggage carried by anybody else at any point during my trip.

The biggest stress factor was actually not the walking, but rather when I couldn’t sleep because everybody was snoring in the damn dormitories.

This is me, totally busted after 50 kilometres in one day.

My best piece of advice to potential pilgrims is to buy the best earplugs available. I hadn’t bought any, and the snoring pigs all around me annoyed me to no end. Maybe every other night I only got four or five hours’ sleep because of other people’s snoring, instead of recuperating and getting ready for the hardships of the following day. One night I was so desperate that I threw something, just whatever I could get hold of, in the direction of the worst snores in hope of getting a bit of quiet. It exhausted me so much that I decided to spend a night at a hostal, where you get your own bed. I’d decided in advance that this was a luxury I’d permit myself five times in the course of my expedition. I didn’t want to spend more than 1.000 Euros on the entire trip; I needed to prove to myself that I hadn’t forgotten how to live thriftily.

Somewhere around the halfway point on the Camino I met a Brazilian woman, approximately 30 years old, who was just having an amazingly hard time. I had a lot of energy just then, so I decided to walk with her, motivate her, and help her through the last two thirds of that day’s stage. She broke down three or four times, but I kept saying, Come on, you can do it, until we reached the top of the mountain, the sun set, and we completed the day’s trek. But then there were no vacant single rooms at the damn albergue, so we rented a double room and pushed the beds apart. I had no idea who she was, I never even knew her name, but it didn’t matter, because the important thing was that she needed help. The next morning we agreed to meet at the foot of the mountain, but when I’d waited a while, I left her a message at the albergue before I moved on: Have a safe trip, you can be proud of yourself! It was a fascinating experience. You just help each other without talking much about it, because you were all the same boat. I needed help myself one day, when I thought I was getting close to an albergue, but I’d made a mistake and ended up walking a long distance without any water. I met three bicyclists who poured water from their flasks into mine – a truly generous gesture that made it possible for me to continue. When I finally reached my destination I’d walked 58 kilometres that day, and towards the end I was so exhausted that I thought it was a fata morgana when I finally spotted a giant sign with the word HOTEL, but I decided to allow myself the luxury of a decent bed just this once.