Background and sentimental thoughts
Wow, where should we start? We’ll try to keep our background story short and get to the wonderful news as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, we would like to share a few personal thoughts with you—perhaps this will help others in similar situations feel better understood.
If we had known on November 27, 2022, when we wrote the blog post titled “When you have a lot of time, you’ll eventually get back on your bike,” that it would take a whole three years before we would be back on our bikes, we probably would have lost the motivation to even get up in the morning.
How often have we watched other people’s cycling travel videos over these three years – and had tears running down our cheeks? The idea that we would ever be healthy enough again to not have to spend days or weeks in bed after several days of activity was so far away at times that I would have simply given up. Only Nicole, despite her condition being much worse at the time, never gave up hope that we would be completely healthy again. The incredible positive energy she was able to muster throughout, even though she was unable to leave the house for more than a few hours at a time during those three years, always amazed me – or rather, it lifted me up and gave me the strength to keep fighting.
We are infinitely proud of ourselves for continuing to fight hand in hand. Most of the time, the struggle felt like we were a 90-year-old married couple going into battle wearing rusty knight’s armor and armed with two crutches.
Even today, five years after the first cases of long COVID, the disease is still not properly recognized by society or the government. However, as there are more and more cases, we are now hearing more often that people know others who are affected.
Sadly, we have found that people usually only show real interest or compassion when they know a child who is affected. Is this because children cannot lie or defend themselves? Adults also want nothing more than to be healthy and get their old lives back. No one chooses to be sick, no one consciously decides to live a life marked by exhaustion, pain, and uncertainty.
We would also like to point out that we have not received or claimed a single cent from health insurance, unemployment insurance, daily allowance insurance, disability insurance, or other public funds.
Since we both work part-time, we used our Fridays off to get through life, so to speak. Nicole spread her 40% workload over seven days, as she could never work for more than an hour at a time. And I (Beni) spent most Fridays in bed to recharge my batteries – so that I could at least get up in the air with my paraglider from time to time.
We gave up a lot, spent most weekends lying in bed together, listening to the neighbors laughing happily outside and smelling the grilled sausages.
From the outside, it may not always have looked that way, because I often managed to function somehow and was able to go hiking or paragliding from time to time—but that almost always involved a lot of recovery afterwards, or, as they say with Long Covid, a “crash.”
I was also tired of hearing the same question over and over again: “Where’s Nicole? / Is Nicole coming too?”
Even though the question was usually meant kindly, comments like “Can’t she just pull herself together a little?” still came up—and every time, I realized how much I missed having her by my side.
Positive aspects and what really helped us
Despite all the negatives, we have learned a lot from our experiences over the past three years. We have been “privileged” to experience something that most people only experience in old age: how precious a healthy body really is.
It is only when your own body no longer functions as it used to that you realize how much you took your health for granted. Every movement, every walk, every day without symptoms suddenly takes on an indescribable value.
We are infinitely grateful that we are healthy again today and can shape our everyday lives together and freely. This gratitude has accompanied us in everything we do ever since. It has taught us to live more mindfully and be more patient with ourselves.
That’s right, you heard correctly—we’re healthy again! 😃🤩
We’ll try to summarize briefly how we managed to do this. For others who are affected and interested in learning more, feel free to write to us.
Over the years, we have tried many things 😅 – from oxygen therapy to various lifestyle adjustments with pacing, heart rate monitors, nutrition, various dietary supplements, and extremely expensive infusions with vitamin complexes, antioxidants, and much more.
Unfortunately, none of this really helped us.
Then we started an online course called the Gupta Protocol, which deals with regulating the nervous system. For the first time, we felt that an approach really made sense – and could also explain our symptoms. But we still weren’t really making any progress. It was as if we had a good tool in our hands but didn’t yet know how to use it properly.
Months passed until we stumbled across a post on our Facebook group page, Long Covid Switzerland:
„Long Covid und meine Reise zurück ins Leben“ by Johannes.
His story had so many parallels to ours that we became curious and took a closer look at the Lightning Process (LP) – the method he used to regain his health.
However, as we were still busy with other approaches at the time, we put the topic aside for the time being. We said to ourselves: We can try that later.
A few months later, by a happy coincidence, we were looking into the effects of the fly agaric mushroom 🍄 on the nervous system. The effect was astonishingly strong, though unfortunately not permanent. But it was precisely this experience that made us realize how closely our condition was linked to the nervous system—and that it was high time to try the Lightning Process.
I had to encourage Nicole a little at first, because the LP involves three days of on-site coaching.
At that point, Nicole couldn’t imagine sitting through more than an hour of classroom teaching – and in Geneva, in English, no less 😅.
Luckily, I had spoken to Johannes on the phone beforehand, and he assured me that he had managed it in the same condition as Nicole. That gave us courage.
Put simply, the Lightning Process is a training program that combines mental techniques, posture, and speech patterns to rewire the brain and thereby influence physical and emotional symptoms.
So we packed our bags and set off for Hermance, near Geneva, to meet our trainer Lucia.
What happened during those three intense days with Lucia remains a miracle to us to this day.
On the second day, Nicole was on her feet all day for the first time in three years. We went out for dinner, took a walk—and in the evening we even crammed a little theory.
When Nicole opened the diary on the third day and read aloud everything we had accomplished the day before, all hell broke loose—we cried with happiness, incredulous and overwhelmed at the same time.
As I said, the Lightning Process is a training program—not a pill you swallow and then you’re healthy.
You have to actively stick with it, especially at the beginning. But the longer you practice, the easier it becomes—and the less frequently the symptoms reappear.
Nowadays, there are many days when it is no longer necessary to consciously apply the training. And that’s exactly what freedom feels like.
The new plan
Even during the Lightning Process training, we knew we wanted to get back on our bikes!
Planning, dreaming, and distracting ourselves in tough times with positive thoughts about an upcoming trip is a perfect fit for the LP.
In addition to the many positive voices from our circle of friends and family, there were understandably also those who said:
“Don’t you want to return to a normal apartment and a normal life first?”
😂 Well… we’re pretty stubborn. When we set our minds to something, we make it happen – and we don’t usually put things off for long.
So, all in!
Once we were sure we could make it work, we quit our jobs once again and deregistered from Switzerland. Since we were living on a dilapidated farm anyway, moving out of our temporary apartment was the least of our challenges – and so we put our belongings into storage for the third time.
But where should we go now?
It had to be warm, not too high altitude (Nicole hadn’t been able to do any sport for three years), and offer good infrastructure so that we could take breaks when we needed them.
Unfortunately, this meant we had to give up on our beloved destination of Australia—we’ll have to postpone the endless expanses and hostile outback until later 😉.
Since we had already been to the enchanting island of La Palma twice, we came up with the idea of simply going there again—only this time not in four hours by plane, but in two and a half months by bike and ferry.
On La Palma, we will take a break for about a month and a half in Puerto Naos in our familiar apartment and spend Christmas and New Year there.
After that, we will explore the remaining six Canary Islands, partly on foot and partly by bike, and then probably return home via Portugal in spring or summer 2026.
That’s the plan – let’s see how it turns out 😉.
Here is an overview – you can also find the map on the homepage again starting today.
We have also updated our current equipment list: Link
We’re really on our way! 🚴♀️🚴♂️
On October 10, 2025, we embarked on a new chapter in our lives. On the one hand, everything felt familiar, but on the other hand, we didn’t dare to let ourselves feel too happy. For us, it’s now a matter of finding our way back step by step and slowly overcoming the trauma of the illness from our last trip.
That is also one of the reasons why this first blog post is only appearing now—we simply didn’t want to put unnecessary pressure on ourselves, but rather take everything at our own pace.
The weather was kind to us at the start and we set off with the sun shining on our faces. But soon an icy breeze blew all day long and the sun hid behind thick clouds.
At least the wind was kind enough to blow steadily from behind, and since not a single drop of rain fell, our spirits remained high.
We continued along the Mittelland Route towards Geneva for about a week.
To escape the approaching cold, we finally decided to flee Geneva and take a Flixbus to Marseille, where it was at least ten degrees warmer. We would have preferred to take the train, but with our bikes, this proved to be really complicated once again. Even the SBB staff couldn’t give us any clear information.
So we booked the Flixbus, which unfortunately traveled overnight.
After about ten hours of travel—with one change in Lyon, no sleep, but full of anticipation—we arrived in Marseille at 4:30 in the morning.
The anticipation was short-lived, as we began to feel the first symptoms of the flu after a wonderful day of sightseeing—we must have caught it on the Flixbus from the person who was coughing heavily throughout the entire journey. The flu was so severe that it took us almost two weeks before we were finally able to check out of our small 3×4 m hotel room and continue our journey.
We are very happy to be able to report to you again at irregular intervals about our onward journey!
The fact that we can cycle again today is the greatest gift for us—and we hope that our story will encourage others to always believe in miracles ❤️☀️.