Tilmann Waldthaler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tilmann Waldthaler in 2003
near Santiago de Chile during
his Alaska Patagonia tour

Tilmann Waldthaler (born March 24, 1942 in Munich ) is an Italian-Australian globetrotter of German origin, author and amateur photographer as well as reading and speaking traveler, who is also known as an advertising medium for the bicycle industry and for outdoor equipment manufacturers.

From the age of 35 he made more than a dozen long trips by bike , covered almost 500,000 kilometers on these and other tours and visited over 140 countries around the world . On his second trip around the world in the 1980s, he began writing travelogues for magazines . Since 1989 he has published a good half dozen of his experience reports as well as several cycling guides about his homeland as a book .

The former chef, who grew up in South Tyrol , has lived in Australia for a long time and also accepted its citizenship.

origin

Waldthaler comes from a very poor background and was born in Munich during the Second World War as the son of a South Tyrolean and a German. He has two older sisters and an older brother. The family was bombed out and moved to Italy to live with relatives of the father, who soon passed away. Waldthaler was fourteen. Just two years later, at the age of sixteen, he also lost his mother. He then moved to Vienna to live with his first sister, whose husband had been appointed guardian . After finishing school, due to the modest economic situation in the vicinity of Vienna, he learned to be a confectioner , even though he had actually wanted to study. He then went to Switzerland, where the second sister ran a restaurant with her husband, and learned to cook there .

Regarding his career choice and the early urge to travel, he stated in a radio interview in 2008 with reference to the early lost parental home:

“ Because at home I was always told that as a cook or pastry chef you could work anytime and anywhere and get to know the world in the process. And that's how I learned to be a confectioner. (...) Then (...) I also learned to cook. (...) Then I said to myself: 'Well, everyone has to eat and I can cook! (...) So let's go out into the world! ' From Switzerland I went straight to South Africa. It was basically my first stay abroad. "

Five years later, in 2013, he said on the same subject in another radio interview:

“ I fell out of the nest as a bird that couldn't fly. My parents died very early, I had no obligation (...), and of course that was very sad and hard for me as a child, but: the older I got, I thought to myself, it wasn't so bad after all, that it happened to me "

In this way Tilmann Waldthaler worked and traveled after his training in Austria and Switzerland even before his bike trips around the world away from his home in South Tyrol in the countries of France , South Africa , Zimbabwe , Canada and Australia and concluded by saying:

“ And when I had enough money, I went to Southeast Asia , backpacked around, was in the Pacific - I've always been on the road a lot. "

World travel

At Christmas 1974, Waldthaler worked in Darwin and witnessed Cyclone Tracy , which largely destroyed the city in northern Australia . In 1975, while driving to a new job in the middle of the Australian desert, he met a heavily packed Belgian cyclist, which impressed him so much that he decided to do the same and give his life a new turn. With no family or other serious ties, he sold his car in favor of a very expensive, custom-made touring bike that his Belgian friend recommended and bought for him.

From 1977 onwards he traveled through the Australian deserts to New Zealand to find a job in Antarctica . He worked for four months in the canteen at the American McMurdo Station on Ross Island . Only shortly before the crossing did he abandon the plan to take his expensive vehicle with him into the eternal ice in order to be able to cycle on the few kilometers long road to Scott Base in New Zealand . After that, his first big tour from 1977 to 1981 took him from the southern tip of New Zealand to Spitzbergen in Norway over around 55,000 kilometers.

Enthusiastic about his experiences, he immediately set off on a new tour from the North Cape to the south. This ended in 1985 after 28,000 kilometers, not as planned at the Cape of Good Hope , but in Togo . There he lived and worked for a year and a half in a small, voodoo -influenced village and finally returned to Europe.

Important things happened in Reutlingen soon after he set out for Africa : While buying a magazine, he became aware of the local editorial team of the young bike magazine Tour . Due to his own statement, there was a long conversation with the new editor-in-chief Carlson Reinhard and the result was the first publication of his adventures in early 1982 in the form of a three-part, 15-page series of articles, although it was only from his first four-year trip around the world there were a total of 45 images. In the course of this new career as an author, Waldthaler has published seventeen books since 1984, including several bicycle travel guides for South Tyrol.

Two more trips took him with 30,000 (from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego ) and 35,000 kilometers ( equator ) over such great distances, while seven "smaller" tours with distances between 4,000 and 8,000 kilometers in Europe, Africa, Asia (twice) and Australia ( three times) completed the total length of his tours, according to his own statements, to 460,000 kilometers up to now “calculated over the thumb”. Tilmann Waldthaler has traveled to a total of 143 countries so far.

In May 2010, Waldthaler started from the North Cape on his last big tour - which was announced at the time - which took him in the opposite direction to his first big tour almost 30 years earlier, first from Norway around the Baltic Sea to Weil am Rhein and then on to New Zealand that he wanted to achieve in 2012 at the age of 70. He wrote on his website :

“ After my arrival in New Zealand I can look back on 35 wonderfully cycling years. At this point the circle of the wheel that opened for me in 1977 on the southernmost tip of New Zealand will come full circle. "

After a winter break at home in Australia and a short warm-up tour in Germany, Waldthaler set out from Basel in April 2011 across the Balkans towards Istanbul . From there he reached Singapore over the course of several months via India and Southeast Asia , in order to spend the New Year at home again. He finished the trip as planned in Invercargill , New Zealand in March 2012 .

Somewhat different than three years earlier, Waldthaler undertook another big tour over the Savannah Way and the Gibb River Road in the north of Australia in the Australian winter in 2013 . It took him about 4,000 kilometers from his hometown of Cairns to Broome . Another book was written about this trip “once over there”. Even after that, he by no means ended his cycling existence, but set out in 2014 to circumnavigate his new home continent Australia. However, he does this in stages, i.e. with interruptions, for example for his lecture tours in the European winter.

Tilmann Waldthaler 2010
at an event in Osnabrück
shortly before the start of his last world tour

On September 16, 2016, at the age of 74, he finally quit - as he put it on his website - "all activities on the subject of solo travel by bike (...)" in order to get in shape "with the summary of my life" Bon book and video deal.

Extreme sports

Waldthaler is often portrayed from the outside as a person who has achieved extreme things, for example as an " extreme cyclist " by the German National Library . In reference to his world-famous South Tyrolean compatriot, he is also known as " Reinhold Messner the mountain bike globetrotter". However, he himself distinguished himself from this reception in the interview and made it important that he never put himself under time pressure:

“ On the way I gave myself the time, that means I didn't have to fight for a certain amount of work. (...) I've never done anything like that, I've never raped myself in that sense. I've always ridden with nature. "

Personal

After a childhood without money for a higher education, Tilmann Waldthaler learned through his world trips not only German, but also English, French, Italian and Spanish and, as he himself emphasizes, "the language we all know, namely the wonderful body language". He also became a vegetarian before he started his career as a globetrotter .

The unexpected encounters with prominent personalities on his first world tour were significant for his life: he came particularly close to Bob Marley , because he happened to take the same flight from New Zealand to Australia on his world tour with the Wailers and a seat next to him was free, whereupon it came to a long personal conversation; He met Indira Gandhi during his long stay in India; he also met Bob Dylan and at the end of the trip he worked in 1981 as a cook in the Max von Sydows film team who shot the Oscar- nominated film The Eagle's Flight in Svalbard .

At the beginning of the 1980s, Waldthaler met his current wife Renate during his second trip around the world, a Diepholzerin who, to his surprise - as a woman in the North African desert - was also cycling alone. He accompanied her for a while and then spent over a year in a village in West Africa while she worked as a nurse in Rwanda for three years . Later, after her return to Europe, he invited her to his house in the Sarntal and, after getting to know each other intensively during their trip to the Nile, she finally stayed there. After two decades together in South Tyrol, the couple emigrated to Australia in 2003, where Renate again worked as a nurse for a long time with Aborigines .

Waldthaler himself often spends the Australian summer in Europe for his lecture tours and work with sponsors and publishers, but basically describes himself as “a person who loves warmth”. He has Italian and Australian citizenship and has lived with his wife in Cairns in the tropical north of Australia since 2005 .

Tour overview

Over the course of four decades, Tilmann Waldthaler embarked on over a dozen major bicycle tours:

Period distance designation technology financing
1977-1981 55,000 km From the Antarctic to the Arctic ("Solo between the Poles") Randonneur (made to measure) Lucien Crahay ; Campagnolo Work as a cook and pastry chef
1981-1985 28,000 km From the North Cape to the medicine men in Africa Randonneur Lucien Crahay; Campagnolo Work as a cook and pastry chef
1986-1986 04,000 km The Central Mountains Tour Mountain bike Bianchi Work as a cook and pastry chef
1987-1988 06,000 km The Nile Journey Mountain bike kettler ; Shimano Work as a pastry chef, first sponsor
1989-1992 35,000 km The Equa Tour Mountain bike kettler; Shimano Work as a publicist, sponsor
1994-1994 06,000 km Across Australia Mountain bike kettler; Shimano Work as a publicist, sponsor
1995-1995 04,500 km Around the 14 eight-thousanders on earth Mountain bike kettler; Shimano Work as a publicist, sponsor
1997-1998 07,400 km Bike Camel Bike Mountain bike kettler; Shimano Work as a publicist, sponsor
2001-2003 30,000 km The Alaska Patagonia Tour 29  inch mountain bike Koga Work as a publicist, sponsor
2004-2005 05,300 km Germany - Turkey 29 "mountain bike Koga Work as a publicist, sponsor
2006-2007 08,000 km Cape to Cape Tour 29 "mountain bike Koga Work as a publicist, sponsor
2010–2012 30,000 km From Norway to New Zealand ("Back to the Future") 29 "mountain bike Koga Work as a publicist, sponsor
2013-2013 04,000 km The Savannah Way Tour in Australia ("Once over there") ? Work as a publicist, sponsor
2014-2015 16,500 km Circumnavigation of Australia Herkelmann trekking bike ;
Rohloff Speedhub 		Work as a publicist, sponsor
1977-2016 239,700 km Sum of the fourteen particularly large tours

Publications

Magazines

Since his second major tour in the early 1980s, Tilmann Waldthaler has been reporting on his travel experiences in magazine articles.

Books

In addition to these titles, published as the main author, Tilmann Waldthaler wrote articles for various anthologies.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tilmann Waldthaler bicycle globetrotter. Personal data and picture of Tilmann Waldthaler 2008 under Alpha-Forum . In: Web presence of Bayerischer Rundfunk . Archived from the original on March 21, 2009 ; accessed on April 27, 2010 : “I had to sell my car in order to be able to afford this bike at all, because this bike cost the equivalent of 3,200 marks back then, over 30 years ago. (...) an insanely high amount. "
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Waldthaler, Tilmann. Text of the broadcast with Tilmann Waldthaler in the Alpha Forum , as of November 24, 2011. In: Web presence of Bayerischer Rundfunk . February 14, 2008, accessed October 12, 2009 . Interview text (PDF; 50 KB)
  3. ↑ a b c d e A cycling journey life. Interview in the WDR 2 radio series Sonntagsfragen (note on the broadcast in the archive on page 2, the podcast is no longer available there). May 5, 2013, archived from the original on August 1, 2013 ; Retrieved June 8, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Life- threatening situations are usually very brief. Interview (page 20). (No longer available online.) In: Sächsische Zeitung . September 7, 2012, formerly in the original ; accessed on September 9, 2012 : “On his first trip around the world, Tilmann Waldthaler experienced more than most in a lifetime. (...) "
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Own information during one of his events in Dortmund on March 11, 2015.
  6. ↑ In the interview with Bayerischer Rundfunk before his 2010/12 tour , Waldthaler stated 430,000 kilometers. After this tour of around 30,000 kilometers, he spoke on his website of "450,000 kilometers and a 35-year life story on the bike". The last tour in Australia was still missing. The particularly long tours add up to over 220,000 kilometers (see table above).
  7. ↑ The new tour 2010 to 2012 ( memento from June 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on Waldthaler's new website on October 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ Current entries on Waldthaler's website ( memento from September 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 15, 2011 and January 2, 2012.
  9. ↑ From Norway to New Zealand 2010 to 2012. Article on Waldthaler's website. Archived from the original on June 30, 2009 ; Retrieved August 12, 2012 .
  10. ↑ Quoted from the content of the start page and the “Present” page of his website on April 10, 2017.
  11. ↑ According to the content of the page “Bicycles and their equipment as exhibits” on their website on April 10, 2017.
  12. ↑ Personnel entry at the DNB .
  13. ↑ Tillmann Waldthaler presents his new book ... In: Webpräsenz von Magura . Archived from the original on December 31, 2010 ; Retrieved October 13, 2009 .
  14. ↑ According to the content of the page “Once over from Cairns to Broome” on his website on April 10, 2017.
  15. ↑ Details such as bicycle technology and financing are based on Tilmann Waldthaler's own information on his website; there, in the description of the tour “Bike Camel Bike” ( Memento from August 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 1997–1998, he still mentions a Kettler bike, although since 1996 on his sponsor's bikes ( Memento from December 13, 2014 in the Internet Archives ) Koga is on the way.
  16. ↑ a b Back to the Future ( Memento of December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on Waldthaler's new website on November 24, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Waldthaler, Tilmann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian-Australian-German bicycle globetrotter, author and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich , Germany