It doesn’t work, it doesn’t exist. Two Mühlviertlers did not let bad luck, dog bites, bad roads and heat stop them; they dared to take on a really big adventure and cycled from Vienna to Istanbul. Afterwards they had a lot to talk about.
It only takes about two and a half hours to get from Vienna to Istanbul by plane. By car you should plan about 16 hours. Two neighbors and childhood friends from Altenfelden completed the route in eleven days – on racing bikes. The decision was made quickly: “I was looking for a challenge last winter and Johannes Bichler was convinced after a few beers!”, laughs entrepreneur Georg Wolfmayr.
Difficult start
The duo trained diligently as they only had eleven days for their journey. But problems arose on the first day: “I left half sick and had a stomach flu beforehand. Of course it got worse again. Moreover, the heat rose to 40 degrees, so I really doubted whether I would make it,” says the 45-year-old. But soon things got better: the illness disappeared and the two fathers decided to start at five in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat.
170 kilometers per day
No small feat when you consider that the two of them traveled about 170 kilometers a day, had to spontaneously find shelter and do the laundry in the evening, then wanted to mingle with the locals and didn’t go to bed until around midnight. went. “After a few days we got into the rhythm, we didn’t miss sleep at all!” emphasizes Johannes Wolfmayr.
Dangerous street dogs
However, even more obstacles arose: several falls, breakdowns and stray dogs plagued the childhood friends; three times the animals even got hold of their saddlebags. In addition, the declining quality of the roads forced the duo to drive on the highway more and more often. “At first it was just on a closed lane, but then we increasingly drove on the hard shoulder. The surface there is suitable for racing bikes and that didn’t bother anyone!”, says Wolfmayr. “But the worse the roads, the warmer, more hospitable and more open the local population became! We kept wanting to hand out rounds and were eventually invited ourselves.”
Bridge as the last obstacle
One very last hurdle almost thwarted Mühlviertel residents’ goal of cycling to Asia: none of the three bridges over the Bosphorus are open to cyclists. “We tried anyway and were promptly stopped. But because we were wearing our ‘Vienna-Istanbul’ shirts, the nice police officers took pity and stopped a bus that eventually took us over. It was an incredible experience and we would both do it again!” Until then, they are now collecting donations for “HiKoeDe”, an organization from Lembach in the Mühlviertel that brings relief supplies to Romania.
Source: Krone
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