Cycling As If There Was No Tomorrow

In the year one BC, before COVID, or 2019, I decided to travel around the world with my foldable bicycle and the few things I could carry with me. I didn't know yet that this project would coincide with the pandemic of the century. When I took sabbatical leave from work, Wuhan was still an anonymous city that few outside China knew existed. The fateful bat was perhaps not yet born. Although all my initial plans were upset by the virus, starting from Tunisia I managed to travel slowly, lockdown after lockdown, test after test, moving only when and where it was allowed and with one of the safest means of transport – a bicycle – all the way up to the Arctic. I did not cycle every step of the way, at times I folded up my bike and hopped on a train, a ship, a bus, or a car (everything except for a plane!). This story is not one of an individual journey. In every place I visited, I connected and learnt from the experience of people who try, in their own way and often collectively, to make the world a better place. I will tell you stories of people revolutionising the way we think about urban mobility in the streets of Tunisia; of food delivery riders fighting for decent working conditions in Milan and other Italian cities; of asylum-seekers in search of peace and dignity at the borders of the European Union in Bosnia; of those in Berlin who fight for affordable housing; or young people in front of the Stockholm parliament demanding a future for our planet.