SVEN HARDT
I didn’t set out
to become a pilgrim.
Pilgrim, charity hiker, and author weren’t roles I ever set out to take on.
They emerged along the way. Step by step. Route by route.
And much of it began long before I knew where this path would eventually lead.
On the day of departure. January 2019.
The point where everything changed direction
For me, everything was fine.
Then, suddenly, two sentences were hanging in the air. Both came from the same woman.
“I want to grow old with you.”
And later:
“I need some distance.”
I didn’t set out because I wanted distance. And I didn’t set out because I was done with my life up to that point.
I set out because I had hope.
And I set out with a promise. When I said goodbye, I told my five-year-old daughter that I’d be home again by her birthday at the latest. That promise became my guiding thread.
My destination was Santiago de Compostela. About 2,500 kilometers. At the time, I had no idea what would come of this journey. I didn’t want to become a pilgrim.
After just a few days, I was already back on a train heading home. I believed I had failed.
Then a message came from her:
“You wanted to walk this path, so walk it!”
I didn’t go home.
That’s the point where not just my direction began to change. The reason I kept going wasn’t the same anymore, either.
I kept going.
From my first Camino to more than 14,000 kilometers
More than 14,000 kilometers on European trails, mostly pilgrim routes.
The kilometers aren’t the story. Mostly, they show how much the path has become part of my life by now.
After my first Camino, I first went back to an ordinary life. Over the following nine months, quite a bit changed. I started my studies, and in November 2019 I set out on the Camino again. I wanted to look back and see what had changed since my first time on the path.
Even after this second Camino, I didn’t know what the path had in store for me. I kept following my instinct, set out again, and kept returning to an ordinary life.
By my third Camino at the latest, it was clear to me: the Camino would always stay connected to my life.
But it was the charity hike that first showed me how far this connection went. Over months and thousands of kilometers, being on the road was no longer a time-limited Camino I would return home from.
The path itself had become my everyday life.
Today, that has turned into more than 14,000 kilometers on European trails. In 2026, the Via Stellaris Octo-Rosa became a route of its own. And on January 6, 2027, the Dreikönigstour begins as the next big journey.
Together with my son on the Camino near Konstanz. This is where the idea of Charity-Hiker began to grow further.
Why charity is part of it
The idea of combining the big hike with a good cause came to me during a stay at Katharinenhöhe.
Shortly after, I was out with my son on a stage of the Jakobsweg near Konstanz. We were both wearing the same hiking shirts. I noticed how many people spoke to us, smiled, and stopped.
What if we could use that attention to give attention to others?
Not attention for us — but for children and families affected by cancer.
Hope, a smile, and attention — that’s what we wanted to pass on.
That idea slowly grew into Charity-Hiker. In December 2023, we founded Charity-Hiker e.V.
Today, Charity-Hiker is an independent nonprofit association, separate from my personal brand and my commercial activities.
What the path has to do with my work
On the road, I didn’t learn which path is right for other people.
If anything, I learned how little I can actually know about that.
People can walk the same route, see the same places, walk through the same rain, and sit at the same table in the evening — and still experience something completely different.
What was an important insight for me can be meaningless for someone else. What helped me doesn’t have to help another person. And just because I’ve walked a path doesn’t mean I know which path someone else should walk.
“Experience doesn’t give you the authority to interpret for others.”
That insight shapes my work today.
I don’t want to tell people what their experiences mean. I want to create a space where they can look more closely themselves — at what they’ve been through, at what’s on their mind, at questions that may still be open, and at what they want to carry from their path into their life.
My role is to ask questions, provide structure, and reflect things back. Sometimes that also means looking again at something where a quick answer already seemed to have been found.
The answers still don’t belong to me.
“Each person remains the expert on their own life.”
Maybe that’s why the time after a Camino occupies me today just as much as the Camino itself.
This question didn’t come up for me only later. Just months after my first Camino, I deliberately went back again — not because I had by then understood what that first path had done to me, but because a lot had changed in my life, and I wanted to see what of it had stayed and what had changed.
Even after that, I didn’t have a finished answer. I kept going, came back, set out again, and understood some things only much later.
That showed me something essential to my work today:
“Experience, insight, and change are not the same thing.”
A path can set something in motion. But what comes of it isn’t decided on the path alone. It also shows itself afterward, when everyday life returns and those experiences meet the life we actually lead.
And sometimes that’s exactly where a new question begins:
“What do I do with what the path stirred in me?”
This attitude is where my personal support work via Plan-0 comes from today. Not to tell people where to go.
But to support them in seeing their own path more clearly.
Professional Background
“Helping people help themselves is a core principle of my work.”
I don’t want to hand people answers for their lives. I see my role as asking questions, providing structure, reflecting things back, and helping people recognize their own resources and options for action.
Professional Background
- Systemic Counseling
- Psychological Counseling
- Burnout Prevention
- Relaxation Education
Preparation for the German Heilpraktiker Exam limited to the field of psychotherapy
Nature & Walking
- Shinrin Yoku Seminar Leader
- European Walk Leader
Focus Areas
- Resilience
- Prevention
- Self-Help Support
Way of Working
- Systemic Perspective
My support work is not psychotherapy and does not replace medical or psychotherapeutic treatment. I do not make diagnoses and do not treat mental illness.
Some paths want to be told.
This book isn’t a classic Camino travelogue. It tells the story of what happened to me along the way. Of a departure that ended differently than it began. Of encounters, breaking points, and decisions. And of the transformation of someone who set out to save something, and along the way began to meet himself anew.
Today
New routes have grown out of the ones I’ve already walked. And much of what was, at first, just experience along the way has turned, over time, into a direction.
In 2026, with the Via Stellaris Octo-Rosa, I walked a route for the first time that begins where, for many pilgrims, the Camino ends. At the same time, Plan-0 is becoming a place for the questions that can begin before a Camino or remain after one.
On January 6, 2027, the Dreikönigstour begins as the next big journey: 365 days, around 7,500 kilometers through ten countries.
But even today, I don’t know every step that comes after.
The road so far was never a closed chapter. It keeps going.
I still don’t know where every path will lead.
But I’ve learned that we don’t always need to know the whole way to take the next step.
Trust.