There was an emotional reunion on Friday afternoon when David Brandstötter and Julia Wimmer arrived on Freistadt’s main square. Many friends and family members who had come to welcome the two extreme cyclists from Mühlviertel had tears of joy in their eyes at the reunion.
No wonder, given the length of their absence and the hardships they had overcome during their journey in the past few months: In May 2023, Julia and David set off on the tour that took them through 20 countries and two continents. They covered around 11,000 kilometers in the saddle. Last year, their route took the adventurers through the Balkans and Greece, through Turkey, and through Georgia and Armenia to the United Arab Emirates and Oman. This year, India and Nepal were in many ways the outstanding experiences of their trip, which they regularly reported on in their blog “rideaut.” Never-ending rain caused them problems, as did heat waves, dust-covered mountain passes in the Himalayas and technical defects on their bikes.
Learned to improvise
What impressed her most was the hospitality of the people, even in regions that had been hit hard by fate, such as the earthquake areas in Turkey: “On the way, we also learned not to take everything too seriously, to leave the daily structures we were used to in Austria behind us and to trust people we didn’t actually know at all.”
There was also time for a few longer stays along the way: Julia and David spent a week helping out at an animal shelter in Greece. They looked after injured animals and abandoned puppies and helped out with some of the repair work.
On Friday afternoon, numerous neighbors of the two adventurers from Julia Wimmer’s hometown of Lasberg and from the village of Rauchenödt, the hometown of David Brandstötter, also made their way to Freistadt. Brandstötter was allowed to tap a keg of beer to round off the reunion celebration. It turned out that the young man is a much better bicycle globetrotter than a beer tapper.