Welcome, I’m glad you’re here.

23. Februar 2014

Hey there!

My name is Paul, I’m a 19-year-old from Vienna, the capital of Austria, a beautiful small country with a lot of mountains. There’s a whole lot of things I’m passionate about, be it music, juggling, getting to know people, and—most of all—riding my bicycle.

That’s a whole lot of me right there (at work).

I am currently serving my country (in a less patriotic fashion than this may sound) as a Civil Servant. Here in Austria this is a mandatory thing—either you go to the army for six or work as a Civil Servant for nine months—but I must say I enjoy it very much. Working in a hospital, I have learned and seen a lot of things in the past months that otherwise I wouldn’t have. I’m grateful for the kind and interesting people I got to know during this period which is now approaching an end. In four weeks, on March 24, I will serve the last day. After that, it’s time for an adventure.

I took this photo on a little tour I did with my friend Paul in fall 2013.

I don’t really know why I decided to go from my doorstep to the Mediterranean Sea by bike. I guess it came about naturally for me. It’s just what I love to do: experience nature and get to know countries on my bicycle. You’re fast enough to overcome long distances efficiently, yet nothing, no windshield, no window, separates you from your environment. Plus, you can stop wherever you like to. Lots of advantages there I think!

The excellent cycling path along the Inn river will be part of my route.

This being my very first post on this blog, I’d like to give you a vague idea of what my route is gonna look like.

From Mödling, my hometown near Vienna, I will ride along the Danube to Linz, then cross the German border at Simbach/Inn (my grandma lives there on the Austrian side of the border, which might come in handy) and, crossing southern Bavaria including its capital Munich, approach the Bodensee from north. I love the Bodensee, it’s where Austria, Germany and Switzerland come together in an epic lake. After that, I will find myself on Swiss territory (Basel), just to step foot on French ground in Mulhouse. From there, my path will lead me to Taizé, where I shall spend one week in an ecumenical monastery—the “communauté of Taizé”. I’m a believing person and it will be great to join around 5000 other young people at the annual youth meeting there. On Easter Monday, I will go on to Lyon, which is the second biggest city of France. One of the most awesome landscapes I will come across on the last big part of my journey: the route Lyon—Nice features some eye candy for sure. The city of Nice(ness) will be my destination of this trip, unless I decide to go from there to Montpellier along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, which sounds like a fabulous extension to my route, but I’m still not sure in what condition I will be at this point, so this remains optional (but desirable).

I’ll be posting a detailed map to visualize all this.

I’m glad you’ll follow my journey! Check back for more. Thank you 🙂

P.