Okay, the decision appears somewhat extreme, but he is now determined to move forward. May 1932, Germany. Things do not go well at all for the country, gripped by a long phase of recession. Oskar Spekthis is its name, is a citizen of Ulm and, therefore, is far from exempt from the economic breakdown. His electrical systems factory has just pulled the shutter down. Miserably failed. And here comes the intuition: if it remains in such a falter country, it will have no future. The brilliant idea, then, is to buy a foldable canoe four and a half meters long, drop it in the Danube and greet everyone. Small and not negligible detail: he cannot swim.
The initial idea: row to Cyprus
The great project? Go to Cyprus, where he has come to news that the work is not lacking, even if it is certainly in the copper mines. Oh well, better than to remain pitifully penniless. On board he slipped some boxes of dried meat, chocolate, water rations: the necessary to survive. So he begins to row. It slips along the Danube, arrives at the intersection with the Vardar river, first reaches Bulgaria and then the Yugoslavia. From there broken towards Greece and therefore Cyprus.
Here, however, Speck realizes that perhaps his original plan deserves to be reviewed. That, after all, he doesn’t go to him so much to lock himself in a hole underground throughout the healthy day, just to snatch a patch of bread. So the canoe turns and starts again. You buy a sail, the Issa on its canoe, consult the maps and head to the Persian Gulf. It is just one of the countless stages that will collect on a journey destined to last 7 years.
The journey continues: route to Asia
Reached Pakistan, he begins to attract the attention of the media. Americans and British, who learned of his company – even if he still does not know where he is heading, but proceeds like a pretesignano Forrest Gump in Remi – they sponsor him and finance him. Paradoxically, however, his Germany against him: just as Hitler is trying to reconstruct his nation, they say, he is walking. But Oskar shrugs and continues, undaunted.
“There was no reason not to return to Germany – he wrote on his diary – if not the charm exercised on me by the possibility of discovering the Eastern Indies, New Guinea, Australia”. Except that everything does not fit perfectly smooth. As soon as they arrive in India they arrest him, accusing of being a Nazi light, but they release him after a couple of days for insufficient evidence. In Jakarta, in Indonesia, a German official stationed there brings him closer, offering him money to finance the remaining journey. He takes it to buy a camera and a camera. Then he returns to row, in the open sea. Always with the risk of sinking, always with the fear of being devoured by the waves. Yet it continues, driven by the passion for discovery.
New Guinea and Australia, the last stages
He arrives in New Guinea and comes out alive by a miracle: reversals in rivers populated by crocodiles, mangroves that wne it, hostile tribes along the banks that threaten to cut his head. A discreet mess, but still reaches Australia, the last stage of its infinite crossing, which lasted 7 years and over 30,000 miles long.
There he expects to be welcomed triumphantly, but they handcuff him as soon as he sets foot on the beach, accusing him of being in the pay of Hitler.
Oskar was freed only in 1946, after the end of the war. At that point he decided to stay to live in Australia, where he became an opal trader.