Gregor Sieböck

One morning, Gregor Sieböck follows his longing and walks out of his front door in Bad Ischl with the aim of one day reaching Japan, thousands of kilometers away, on foot: A rucksack on his back, a walking stick in his hand and lots of dreams in his heart!

He walks the Way of St. James through Europe to Portugal. From the Iberian Peninsula, the journey continues to the southern tip of Latin America, where he crosses the endless expanses of Patagonia. In the highlands of the Andes, Gregor follows the royal Inca road from Peru to Ecuador. This leads him up to mystical snowy mountains and into the realm of the condors. Along the Californian highways, he experiences the noise and the speed of modernity until he finally reaches his destination after years on the road and is able to experience the silence of times long past in the Japanese temple complexes.

But his journey continues: he crosses the Pacific by ship and then travels along the ancient Maori paths through the pristine wilderness of New Zealand.

On his hikes, periods of great loneliness alternate with pure joie de vivre, intense encounters and amazement at the beauty of nature. More and more, Gregor Sieböck feels that he is a "wanderer between worlds": "Our earth is a combination of many worlds: the consumer world in the big cities, the natural world in the mountains and wilderness areas, the different cultural worlds, the poor and rich worlds and the many different ways of life. I try to show the contrasts and connections between them, as these worlds form an earth on which we should all live together and find sustainable lifestyles."

Gregor Sieböck, born in 1976, studied economics and environmental sciences. Between 2003 and 2006, the "globetrotter" covered no less than 20,000 kilometers.

He has been walking again since July 2008, this time for an indefinite period and without a fixed geographical destination.