Dear friends
It’s finally time again – my new adventure is just around the corner! After last summers trip to the Nordkapp, I once again head out for some more unforgettable moments. From April until the beginning of July, I’ll be out and about again on three different adventures. The first one will start on April the 1st and consist of me cycling down along the Rhine river until I’ll break away for Amsterdam in the Netherlands. What made me choose this route? It’s pretty simple – I studied in Amsterdam and made some of the best friends there and it’s just been way too long since I’ve seen any of them, not to mention the love I feel for this city. Since I have to be in Switzerland again around May, I knew I couldn’t go on a super big and long trip again so I felt like this would be the perfect thing to do! I have 23 days before my train journey back home to Basel, which should enable me to have around a week in Amsterdam. I can’t wait to be back on the road, taste the air and freedom again and meet some friends in Germany on the way to Amsterdam as well. Naturally, I’ll post regular updates about my travels again on here and hopefully, it’ll become an unforgettable journey yet again.
Now to the most exciting part – what is this “Cycling for Life” thing all about? It’s an idea that I had come up with during my travels to the Nordkapp, that grew really dear to me. What if I could make my adventures, my dreams more than “just” about me, my personal growth and happiness – what if I could not only move mountains within myself by chasing the horizon, but also give a bit of that light and thirst for life to the people that need it most? As a few of you might now, I’ve battled with severe depression and complex post traumatic stress disorder for the majority of my life and it’s been only within the last few years, that I found myself on stable ground and loving life. What helped me get to that point, the one common thread through all of it, was that idea – that dream of cycling to the Nordkapp, chasing freedom and letting go. Unfortunately my sucess story is not the default and I’ve had to watch many of my friends lose their lives to suicide. So when I sat there on my bike last summer, I’d sometimes ponder about how I wish people that were down in that darkness, like I used to be, could get the chance to live their dreams, like me. I remembered how far away all of that seemed, when death seemed like the only possible way forward. It breaks my heart to think that people like you and me – with dreams just like yours and mine – decide to leave this planet before they ever got to live their life. That the darkness sometimes envelops all of our being, tears our soul apart into chaos and ruin. So what better way for me to try and make a change, than by doing the very thing that played a substantial role in getting through it all myself.
How does it work?
It’s pretty simple – it’s basically like a charity run where you’d determine an amount of money you want to donate per kilometre run beforehand. But instead of running, I will be cycling and you can decide how much you’d like to donate for every ten kilometres cycled. I’m currently estimating that it’ll take me around 1’250 kilometres to get to Amsterdam, but the actual number could deviate depending on how fast I progress, potentially giving me the chances for small detours. All the funds raised will go directly to “Ipsilon” an initiative for suicide prevention in Switzerland. If this sounds like something you’d like to support, you can either fill out the form on the bottom of this post or email me your infos (E-Mail, Name, Amount per 10km and any additional text you’d like to add) to “cyclingforlife@gmx.ch”. Once I’ve arrived in Amsterdam, you will receive an Email from me with a report of my performance and the resulting amount you can then directly donate to Ipsilon yourself or wire to me for collection in a pool that will be transferred to Ipsilon after receival of all donations or after thirty days of being open.
I’d like to sincerely thank you for your contribution, it means the world to me.
Let’s make a change and shine some light into the darkest places of our world.
Raphael's Travel Blog 