Only when you travel slowly, the soul can travel with you. The Native Americans already knew that. If they were thinking of a Viennese on inline skates is up for debate. Nevertheless, it is an adventure for body and soul. 

There are already some good stories to tell. Just to give a few examples: Arrested in Miami, crashed in Barcelona, ​​drone crashed in Singapore, almost died of thirst in Malaysia. 

Well, some trips haven’t always worked out the way they were planned, but that just made things more exciting so far. At least the horrible predictions of my family and friends never came true. The people around you usually  already know in advance how you will end up in a wheelchair, by doing something outside of your comfort zone. So far I’ve always been lucky and I have overcome countries like Kenya or Indonesia and survived them without serious illnesses or injuries. #isurvived. I probably need my own geotag to always state that I’m safe. Anyway: Lightheartedness would not be a good idea, and with a project like „Skate the World“ you should be aware of the dangers. Usually fear and concerns are way bigger than reality turns out. At the moment it seems to be the time, that society is riddled by fear. I guess that’s just the perfect moment to explore this „dangerous world“ in a sporty way and to build up new relations all around the globe with my skates on.

The origin of this perhaps a bit crazy idea lies back many years. I can’t say how long exactly, but probably the first step to the big world on eight wheels was the first step on the ice of „the Wiener Eisring Süd“ a local ice-rink, together with my school friend Declan. Back then, 17 years ago, we fell in love with short-track speed skating. The Nascar of ice rinks. The sport that got famous with the Australian Skater Steven Bradbury, who won Olympic Gold after all four skaters in front of him – including the US Superstar Apolo Anton Ohno – crashed. 

From today’s perspective, it feels like a miracle that we were neither seriously injured nor arrested. Most adventures better stay secret. Our hairstyles are probably a story on their own. We were pretty reckless back then, skating down steep slopes at full speed – without the slightest chance of braking. „Brakes were for losers.“ It was the time we got confidence in skating in any terrain and on broken roads.
A great time in the sense of „Skate the World“, without knowing where this sport could lead to. Already back then, we skated around all sorts of cities, especially those in Eastern Europe. Just for fun.

What the sport has given me is the basis for the DailySports print magazine and especially for the privilege of traveling around the world on skates. So absurd that I can only believe it myself when I see the photos. On closer inspection, almost nothing has changed over the years with skating anywhere in the world.

These days however, no longer with ice-skates to compete against others somewhere overseas. The purpose remains the same, though the awareness for it is quite different. It’s about finding the most beautiful or sometimes not so nice places, getting in touch with other cultures, making friends, and staying in shape; and if that’s not enough, I do it because it makes me happier than anything else. To skate where hardly no one would have thought it’s possible at 35 degrees while sweating out all worries!
Competitive sport opens doors and paves paths that were unimaginable. Sport is a school of life. In it, for example, you loose prejudice against other nations. When I think back to the cold days, „the krauts“ (germans) counted to my best friends in the sport. (There always has been a rivalry between Austrians and Germans)

But not only our closest neighbors came closer to me. Even today I am in regular contact with my best sports friend from Latvia. In competitions we have always hung out together with the Japanese, Russians, Croatians, Belgians, Australians or Americans. Politics, skin color, gender and prejudice did not matter. Still a mantra today on 8 wheels – in a time in which you have to take care for every word you say, so no-one feels insulted. From the meritocracy to the victim society? By any means, to a society that „fortunately“ wasn’t visible to me at the time of my pro sport career, because we were all the same and still different from the ground up. And this diversity was / is good and should be celebrated.

Sport seems to have such a strong effect, that some problems completely disappear.

Clear: abuse exists everywhere. No matter where you look, you will find something, yet this world would be inconceivable without sports. Sport definitely brings people closer together way more often than it splits. A lesson you experience at first hand, if you are on eight wheels in a country far away from home. 

Often a ten-hour stopover is enough time to explore a city. The only requirement: you have to have your skates at hand. It’s exciting who you get to know, what stories you hear and how the world looks from a different and mostly sweaty perspective. Sometimes you get inspired to think about your own existence. About what you like and what you want to change. When you’re old, you can’t do that anymore … or maybe you can? The 75-year-old, whom I met on a skate tour at the foot of a mountain in Malaysia is the proof of the opposite. For 40 years, he walks up the five kilometers and 800 vertical meters every day to get awake. He looks even better than most thirty-year-old Europeans. Who stops moving gets old – a real eye-opener.

How special these micro adventures on the skates are, I realized for the first time a few years ago in Barcelona. I came to places I would never have seen if I stayed on the overcrowded tourist paths or sticked with public transport. For example I found tapas bars where only locals eat, which has had a positive effect on the quality and the price. Exactly in those places, I usually get into a conversation with people I would never have spoken to without skates on. In most cases the strangers start the conversation… the big advantage with skates in a foreign city or region is, that people mostly out of curiosity want to approach you, to find out what you are doing and where you are from. This way I often got insider tips, such as a special sky bridge in Singapore, where you can downhill-skate, a hidden market in Sri Lanka which offers the best masala spice, or just the local bakery next door. A real barrier destroyer, these skates!

Story by:
Matthias Stelzmüller | Publisher DailySports
Photocredits: Matthias Stelzmüller, Chaluk, Konstantin Reyer, Ingo Derschmidt