August, 2004 - Nr. 8
World’s most-traveled person makes stop in Eugene
TWIG - Heinz Stuecke, the German biker who holds the Guinness world record for "most-traveled person," made a stop in Eugene, Oregon, recently to pick up his new bike.
A 64-year old native of Hoevelhof, Germany, Stuecke has been on the road for 42 years. What began as a challenge to make it to the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo turned into a lifetime on the bike, giving new face to the notion that Germans love two-wheel travel. He made it to Tokyo two years too late, but decided that the journey was the real event and hasn’t stopped since.
Altogether, Stuecke has biked 300,000 miles, roughly twelve times around the globe, and he’s seen every country on earth. He funds his travels by selling pamphlets and booklets about his adventures.
Stuecke doesn’t have a favorite country, though. "Ach! You Americans and your superlatives. I hate it. Everything has pros and cons," he told the Portland Tribune. "I can say, though, that I do like India, because it’s exotic and colorful and the food’s delicious."
Stuecke used to travel more or less constantly, trying to achieve his next title as "most-traveled man." But these days, he keeps Paris as his home base and is gone for around three to four months at a time. To meet the requirements set by Guinness, Stuecke needs to find ways to reach some of the most remote locations on earth, many of which are army bases.
But he doesn’t tempt himself into stagnancy by visiting the
country of his birth. "I sneak around Germany like a cat around a bowl of
cream," he said recently.
Republished with permission from "The Week in Germany"
