I Am Not Special. The Things I Do Are.

Let me get something out of the way immediately: I do not consider myself special. I am a normal guy from Kempten who does unusual things. There is a difference, and it matters.

Travel on two wheels? Not special. Thousands of people do it every weekend. Travel by Vespa? Also not special — there is an entire community of riders covering impressive distances, many of them with generous time frames and budgets that would make a Swiss watchmaker comfortable. World travel? Equally not special. People circumnavigate the globe every year on every conceivable vehicle, with every conceivable level of preparation and funding.

Not even travelling the world on a Vespa is particularly special when you have unlimited time and unlimited money. At that point you are essentially a tourist with a more interesting vehicle. Good for you, genuinely, but not the same thing.

So what makes any of this worth writing about?

The Combination

It is not one factor. It is the combination of factors — and specifically, the combination of limitations.

Limited time. Limited budget. A vehicle with 7 to 9 horsepower, 10-inch wheels, and an average age somewhere between "vintage" and "should probably be in a museum." Basic equipment. No expensive gear. No support crew. No sponsor handing over a cheque before departure.

And then the sacrifices, which nobody really talks about. I broke up twice. Quit jobs several times. Gave up a perfectly good flat more than once. After the world tour in 2018 I came home nearly broke, essentially homeless, living in a van, and single. The van was not a lifestyle choice. It was the available option.

So: surrounding a continent or the planet with a limited budget, a limited time frame, a classic Vespa that was not specially prepared, and basic equipment — after dismantling the life you had at home to make it happen — is probably, yes, a little bit special.

I suspect that is why some of you follow this page. That, and the occasional photograph of my backside, which I understand has its own following.

Why I Don't Hand Out Instructions

People ask me regularly for packing lists, route details, gear recommendations. I give some of it, reluctantly, and here is why I hesitate.

If you give a monkey a baking recipe and a ready-made mixture, the monkey can bake a cake. A functional cake, even. But not a good cake. Not a personalised cake. Not a cake that means anything.

The tools I use work for me because I built the system around my specific limitations, my specific machine, my specific tolerance for discomfort and improvisation. The very basic setup that gets me through Siberia might leave you stranded in Belgium. And Belgium, while pleasant, is not where you want to discover that your sleeping system is inadequate.

To make the trip special, it has to be your trip. Your route. Your plan. Your improvised solution to the problem you didn't anticipate — which is, incidentally, where most of the good stories come from.

What Actually Drives This

I want to be clear about one more thing: I do not aim to be special. I do not wake up in the morning trying to impress anyone. What I aim for is to challenge myself — to compete against myself, to find out where the limits actually are rather than where I imagine them to be.

A slow trip with an unlimited time frame and a large budget is, for me personally, not very interesting. The constraint is the point. The limitation is what makes the problem worth solving. Remove the limitation and you remove the thing that makes it matter.

You may disagree. We are all different, and a long relaxed tour with a comfortable budget is a perfectly valid way to spend your time on earth. I am not here to rank anyone's adventures.

But if you are sitting somewhere right now, telling yourself that you will do the thing when you have more money, more time, better equipment, more preparation — I would gently suggest that you are waiting for conditions that will never be quite right.

Do not call it a dream. Call it a plan. Make it a priority. Focus on what is actually important, not on what feels urgent. Do not let budget, age, or the nagging suspicion that you are not ready yet become the reason you stayed home.

Go. Do things. Make them yours.

The cake will be imperfect and that is exactly why anyone will want to eat it.