Mittank was on holiday at the Golden Sands resort, where he was supposedly involved in a fight, and was unable to fly home with his friends for health reasons.

On the day when he was supposed to fly home, Mittank went to the Varna Airport to consult with a doctor.

The case has generated intense interest, and the frequency with which people viewed the footage of him fleeing the airport has led to him being named "the most famous missing person on YouTube".

The group were on holiday at the Golden Sands, a popular seaside resort just outside of the city of Varna.

His friends reported no additional abnormal behaviour by Mittank until the final part of the trip.

Mittank turned up at the resort the following morning and told his friends he was beaten up by four men hired by the group in the bar whom he disagreed with the night before.

[5] He went and saw a doctor who advised him not to fly due to his injury,[4] and prescribed the antibiotic Cefprozil (500 mg).

Mittank's friends wanted to stay with him, but he insisted he was fine on his own, and told them to follow the original travel plan and fly home on 7 July, which they did.

The closed-circuit television cameras in the hotel recorded him pacing up and down the halls, looking out windows, and hiding in a lift.

[3] Mittank was last seen at Varna Airport on 8 July 2014, the day that he was hoping to fly home to Germany.

Once outside, he can be seen on the footage jogging away from the airport, climbing a fence, running into a meadow, and sprinting off camera in the direction of an adjacent forest.

[2][3][5] There is no definitive agreement among experts and family members as to the causes of Mittank's behaviour and to what extent his paranoia was rooted in reality.

Mittank had experience in hunting, fishing, and trapping, but there is skepticism about whether he would have been able to survive for long outdoors due to intense heat in the summers and lack of food.

[3][10] In 2019, a German truck driver gave a hitchhiker a ride from Dresden to Schildow in Oberhavel, Brandenburg.

The mysterious nature of the case has led to frequent discussions and the growth of numerous theories.

[2] Mittank is listed as 180 centimetres (5 ft 11 in) tall with dark blond hair.