He returned from Canada three days ago, and his flight to Uzbekistan is scheduled for tomorrow. In the summer, Thomas Bauer usually sits on his packed suitcases for six to eight weeks, provided that no pandemic puts a limit to his wanderlust. “Two years of mandatory break, but I’ll catch up on a lot this summer,” says the 45-year-old on the terrace of the rental apartment in Tutzing where he lives with his family. Anyone who now raises a warning finger and refers to the CO2 emissions caused by intercontinental flights should at least acknowledge that Bauer’s travels leave almost no ecological footprint on the spot. He prefers to be out and about under his own steam – hiking, cycling or paddling – sometimes hitchhiking and avoiding tourist accommodations equipped with every comfort. He calls his tours “rustic” and he uses a cheap compact camera or cell phone to take pictures.
“Curiosity about the world”, Bauer’s latest book, lures you into the distance with 80 puzzles.
(Photo: Georgine Treybal)
He describes Bauer’s experiences between Vancouver and Osaka, Greenland and the South Island of New Zealand in lectures, which he illustrates with his photos and accompanies with his own music and band. In addition, the Tutzinger has written around a dozen travel books, which have reached up to five editions. His latest work has become a kind of quintessence of previous works: “Curiosity about the world – in 80 riddles around the world” consists of short chapters, each of which has two quiz questions attached. They are fictional short stories set in places that Bauer visited. A CD with somewhat simple, but self-made pop music and slightly overemphasized readings of individual chapters is in the cover. But the concept of the book is convincing, it’s fun to puzzle along – and to close many a gap in geographical knowledge. The father owes the inspiration for the generously illustrated volume to the evening reading hours with his son and daughter, both of whom are of primary school age.
The two have just declared Bauer’s one-man tent to be aired, “as a “two-child tent”, as the father says. But that only applies to the day before his departure. Bauer has already traveled through Greenland with the dog sled and through South America for three months circumnavigated the Japanese pilgrimage island of Shikoku on foot and paddled down the Danube to the Black Sea like Lothar-Günther Buchheim once did. If you listen to him, you almost have to be surprised that he doesn’t shuffle his feet under the table inner restlessness, but the man with the beaming smile seems to be constantly pulsed through by invisible sources of electricity. Bauer himself calls it “excess energy”. At home, however, my wife and family acted as a haven of peace. “I used to be overwhelmed when I returned, but now I’m happy me to come home too.”
Onion in the ice: Thomas Bauer in Greenland protects himself against the cold with seven layers of clothing.
(Photo: private)
He was just three weeks away in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, eight days of which he was kayaking on the Rideau Canal and the Ottawa River: “I have the proof here,” says Bauer, showing the calluses paddling 400 kilometers from Kingston left on their fingers to Ottawa and on to Montreal. These waterways connect many lakes and still have great natural wealth to offer: he encountered raccoons, snapping turtles and water snakes there. “I’ve never seen so many bald eagles,” says Bauer, once a skunk came within reach of his tent. He carried four different mosquito repellents with him in his luggage, but didn’t use a single one. As a cultural antithesis to the trip, he visited the megacities of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Growing up in Stuttgart, Bauer gained his first experience of free travel at the age of 15 thanks to Interrail. After studying administration in Constance, he hiked 2,500 kilometers on the Way of St. James – in 2004, even before Hape Kerkeling triggered a real boom there. “Everything was quite spontaneous, and I made every beginner’s mistake, like packing a backpack that was way too heavy,” says Bauer. During the 69 days from Lake Constance to the last cross above the Atlantic in Fisterra, many stages behind Santiago de Compostela, he found material for his first book. But also, above all, recognized what distinguishes travelers from tourists. Instead of ticking off items on the program in a pre-planned way, he wants to get involved with the foreign country and the life of the locals. “It’s about giving up control a bit,” being open to surprises, and always ready to digress. If you don’t book hotels in advance, you can always extend your stay if you feel comfortable in a place or in a company. Or continue traveling spontaneously when new destinations beckon.
Thomas Bauer crossed Turkey on a recumbent.
(Photo: private)
Package tours or a two-week beach holiday are out of the question for him. Bauer is almost always on his own, working on his notes in the evenings or on longer bus and train journeys. The fact that moral slacks or the feeling of loneliness sometimes arises is part of it: “There was never a trip that didn’t also have a low point.” He has covered many thousands of kilometers with a wide variety of pedal-driven vehicles: Bauer has toured France with a postal bike and trailer, toured Turkey with a recumbent bike – and pedaled with a rickshaw from northern Laos to Singapore. He followed the course of the Mississippi with a velomobile, a streamlined recumbent bike equipped with a cockpit: “It can easily do 30 or 40 things on the flat, but it really sucks uphill,” Bauer recalls with a laugh.
There are still many white spots on his personal globe, large parts of Africa, Indonesia and the South Seas are among them. Is it possible for the notorious globetrotter to collect as many countries as possible and then brag about them? Bauer doesn’t think much of such trophy hunts: “The ticking off of sights is actually over.” No, it is simply the desire for unexpected encounters and the small sensations along the way that drives this extremely curious, lively and sociable person forward. And above all the longing for freedom, life without a timetable or daily schedule, the lack of structured time.
The vacationer proceeds to arrive, the traveler never arrives. “But you can’t make a living from traveling,” says Bauer. He lived in Paris for a year and worked there for Greenpeace, and for a few months he wrote for a German-language daily newspaper in Sydney. For 17 years, however, he has been employed in the PR department of the Munich Goethe-Institut – full-time, but because there is a lot of overtime in autumn and winter, there is enough time in the summer months to travel.
On the oldest pilgrimage route in the world, Bauer circumnavigated the Japanese island of Shikoku and visited 88 temples.
(Photo: private)
Of course, he also found a very attractive base at Lake Starnberg. “Tutzing is the grounding element”, he has been at home there for twelve years, the love for his wife Dagmar von Keller brought him here. Her long-established family even has a boathouse on the lake, but there is no yacht bobbing inside, only SUP boards are lined up there. “I really like being here, it’s a privilege,” says Thomas Bauer. The ice cream parlors in town immediately come to mind as his favorite places, and he likes to take his family to Bernried and Seeshaupt. Before Covid, he organized a circular hike around Lake Starnberg once a year, handed out certificates and magnesium for sore muscles. Of 20 or 30 participants between the ages of 11 and 75, only a third reached the finish line after 50 kilometers. “Especially the young, athletically ambitious men fail early because they start too quickly,” says Bauer.
The globetrotter also uses his free time to be with his band Angels’ share practice and record CDs. The group was formed 15 years ago to loosen up the readings and lectures with music in between, Bauer’s wife plays the saxophone in it. And of course he likes to spend as much time as possible with his family. He is particularly pleased that his son is following in his father’s footsteps: “I did my first mountain tours when I was eight.”
The rest of the summer travel program also leaves room for two weeks of relaxing holidays with the family. But first we go to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This is followed by ten days of trekking on the Peaks of the Balkans long-distance hiking trail through Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo. He then meets his wife and children in Tirana.