About Me
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Name: Björn
Age: 35 years
Born: March 11th 1975
Hometown: Langenbrettach / Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Prior to this trip used to live in London/UK. In 2001, I left Germany to go to England for a student exchange. Somehow I never went back. Instead, I finished my studies in England, went travelling & moved to London.The first vague idea for doing this trip came in 2002 (yes, that was before 'Long Way Round'). And after a 3-month journey through South East Asia and Australia, I realized that if I was to go travelling again, I wanted to be more independant from busses, trains and taxis.
Early childhood & adolescence memories contributed towards the idea of travelling on two wheels: I remember prepping up an old, rusty fold-up bike to 'BMX standard' by gaffa-taping bits of foam around the frame (6-year-olds can have A LOT of imagination). And I certainly won't forget that moment back in the early 90s, when I first saw Honda's legendary Africa Twin parked in front of our local supermarket.
In 2007, planning got a bit more serious. I started taking Motorcycle Maintenance lessons at Hackney Community College in London, and swapped my trusted Kawasaki ER-5 for my travel bike: a BMW F650 Dakar (named 'Dolly', because of the sheep-skin in the seat bench). Despite the temptation to get an Africa Twin, I believe the F650 was the more suitable bike for me.
Straight after getting the F650, I took an offroad-training course in the North of Germany (with Bernd von Zitzewitz) – followed by short trips through Germany, France, Spain and England's Lake District & Cornwall.
For some people it might be hard to imagine quitting a good job and leaving for an open-ended around the world motorcycle journey.
I certainly had some doubts every now and then, wondering whether this was such a good idea. Travelling to see the world is one thing – but why not settle down and do what people usually do when their in their thirties? I guess the last doubts were taken away when a friend of mine put things into perspective: Sometimes you've got to escape your comfort zone and do what feels right. And if someone had told me 7 years ago that I would stay in England for such a long time, I probably wouldn't have believed it (it was only supposed to be a 6-month European Student Exchange). But after all, I had a great time in the UK– and I realized: Who knows what tomorrow brings anyway?