Who has not seen one of those crazy guys, yet? Just pay a visit to your train station of your nearest city and you will certainly see some cyclists lifting their heavy bikes full of luggage up some stairs to begin their holidays on the bike. They are even to met at the airport or along some major rivers. The long distance bikers.

For four years now, I am one of those guys who are meanwhile not so rarely seen as one may expect. In the past everything began when I took my trashy bike to explore our neighbourhood. For the first time I had some real distance to my parent’s home, what was the only thing every youth wants to have. Thus surprised how little I knew about all the streets of Hamburg and its surroundings, I got the idea to discover a little bit more than the adjacent houses and streets. When it finally came to the summer holidays, I wanted to avoid holidays with my parents again. So chose the way of less difficulties and I started a journey on the bicycle together with a friend. After only five days I knew that this was exactly the way I wanted to travel. And until today nothing has changed…

But what is it that keeps me on my bike, anyway? I am still impressed by the fact that it is possible to mange great distances only with the power of your muscles. Some manage to see the whole world by this; I was already impressed to have made it from Hamburg to Munich.

By the way, traveling by the power of your muscles, that may definitely be more strenuous than travelling to Italy’s beaches, lying in the sun and strolling in the evening around some shops.

But you will get more out of it. Definitely. People who are travelling by bike, have a closer contact to the locals and experience every bend of the road and especially every uphill more intensively as any car driver could ever do. And the steeper the road, the slower you are travelling. Seconds turn to minutes and minutes sometimes become hours. And since you have a slow travelling speed, you have more time to digest all those impressions. If you finally arrive the pass and some locals clap you, you know that it was worth it.

But you do not have to be an extreme sportsman to do a journey like this. Everything that counts is the believe in yourself and your will to let your dreams come true. Funnily a friend of mine wrote about me the following sentence: From the dead loss in sports to the hero of bicycles.


Meanwhile, my life is going to change completely. I just passed my final exams and am now studying law in Hamburg. And who knows which journeys I am going to do within the next years? Some of my great dreams still are Morocco, Tibet and more of Central Asia.

So far, so good. I hope that you will believe in yourself and try to let your dreams come true. At least I will tell you about mine furthermore.

Take care
Tristan Wegner
Tristan Wegner

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