Hi, I'm Roland

For ages I'm traveling off beaten track

As a railway worker, my father enjoyed free travel on the entire network of Swiss railways. Often we drove all over Switzerland. Aside from one holiday in Austria, we always spent our holidays somewhere in Switzerland.

It was not until later, when I myself had worked as a dispatcher for the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), that I regularly travelled throughout Europe. Travelling off the beaten path had always appealed to me.

Like when in the middle of December, I think it was in 1985, I took the train from Switzerland all the way up to Sweden. From Stockholm my deep winter journey led me via Sundsvall, Östersund, Arvidjaur, Gällivare, Lulea back to Stockholm. It seemed like I was the only tourist north of Uppsala!

Or my first trip to France in my own car. I wanted to go to the Mediterranean coast. However, just bumping down the Rohnetal on the autoroute, like everyone else, was too boring for me. Therefore I drove on the roads as close as possible to the eastern border of France all the way to Nice. However, at the Mediterranean Sea the hype was rather too much for me, so I spontaneously drove right through the southwest to the Atlantic coast.

I first travelled outside Europe in 1988 via India over land throughout Southeast Asia to Australia. Nearly a year later, I was running out of money. As a dishwasher in a hospital in Sydney, I financed the return journey.

Several journeys to Indonesia and New Zealand followed. While in Auckland I got to know my present wife, where I was taking English language course at an international language school. We were living with the same host family. From the first moment I saw her, I liked her. Two years later I visited her in Jakarta. Together we spent unforgettable days in Bali, where we fell in love.

In October 1996 I emigrated to Indonesia. We married on the 27th of December 1996 in a Protestant church in Pontianak on Borneo, where she grew up. Between 1996 and 2006 we were living on Bali island. Since then we have been in Switzerland. As a matter of fact, at home in Zweisimmen.