About me:
I was born in Munich in 1967 and for more than 15 years I have been travelling
with a motorcycle on my own. It all began rather simple, exploring
my home country Bavaria with a Kawasaki Z 650 B for one week. Encouraged
by this trip I went a bit further away on my next excursion, spending
five month with a Honda Shadow 700 in the United States of America.
There I caught the travelling buck. So I bought a BMW R 100 GS/PD.
Our first test ride together was going up North, six Weeks through
Scandinavia. A following off-road-training convinced me: we will
stick together! A big petrol tank (42 litres), self made aluminium
boxes and a rear suspension from Öhlins completed the BMW for
spending six months with me in Australia. There the speedometer
was damaged due to an accident. Therefore a Touratech IMO accompanied
me on my next trip across Africa, along the East Coast of the "laughing
continent", finishing in Cape Town, in the Southwest of Africa
and the Republic of South Africa. After this trip I changed my direction.
"Go East" was the idea of the my next journey: Vladivostok,
the largest Harbour in the East of Russia, Korea and Japan were
the destinations I visited.
"I can get you bike into China, but you will have to leave it there." This option tempted me in spring 2005 to go across Poland, Ukraina, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Of course I did not want to leave my beloved BMW R 100 GS in China. Alternatively I bought a used TT 39, a Touratech travel version of the BMW F 650 GS/PD. And we did spend a total of six months together in China. Since you cannot plan adventures, it all went different at the border, and "Redround Cheeky" (the bike) came back with me to Germany again.
Meanwhile I added another experience to my live curriculum: It was almost going back to the roots when I went to New York on January 1st, 2009. But it was quite different, because I travelled for the first time with a companion and we went from the Southernmost point of continental USA to the Northern shore of Alaska - over snow and ice in the middle of winter.
My main purpose of travelling is meeting people. My curiosity about
their culture and their way of living, their language, their interests
and their humour repeatedly drag me away from my working desk. "Relationships between human beings are the greatest adventures
of the human race" - in this sense of meaning, and only in
this sense, I am an adventurer.
Travelling by myself does have some disadvantages: There is no familiar
friend to talk to. There is nobody to share the luggage and organisational
work, the joyful and the sad moments on the road. But to me the
advantages count more: I mingle profoundly with foreign people and their
unknown culture. I find ways to communicate with persons without
sharing a common language. Most of my hosts find it easier to invite
one person instead of two or more - out of social reasons as much
as out of financial and room capacity. Being on my own I do integrate
into their households and accommodate myself to their family life.
This way I experience - absolutely subjective and without satisfying
any statistical requirements - live in different countries of this
world. My point of view so far:
All over the world people are shaken with anger and disappointment,
fear and sorrow. But there is also love and sympathy, joy and hospitality.
Live on the rest of earth is as manifold and interesting as it is
in the little Bavarian village, where I live - only a little
different. And: It's the little joyful moments one encounters in
every day life, which make life worth living - in Germany as much
as in the whole world.
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