Tour de Flow review: a journey in three acts

Christian Krampulz grew up in a large family with 15 siblings in Romania. That alone was extremely formative. In addition, there were all kinds of supposed expectations of him that resulted from the demands of his parents, the religious background of the family and generally the people around him. The resettlement to Germany due to an illness of his father came on top of that. In short, the older Christian got, the clearer it became to him that he had a lot to work through in order to ultimately achieve happiness or flow. His book is, so to speak, the culmination and provisional conclusion of this processing. Although the cover picture might suggest that this is a cycle travel story. But this is only partly the case. Nevertheless, it is about a journey – namely the journey of Christian’s life. Find out how I liked this travel story in my Tour de Flow review.

Christian deals with “travel planning” quite analytically – which is perhaps due to his profession (Christian is a teacher). The analysis of his “problem” thus constitutes the first act of his book. Here the author goes into detail about what he understands by flow and the measures he uses to achieve this state. Again and again he cites findings from happiness research and comes to talk about another important factor: a “transcendent level”, in his case faith in God. The bottom line remains: happiness/flow arises when the balance between transcendent power, fellow human beings and oneself is right. For me, a surprising, though thoroughly interesting, introduction to the book, which is dealt with quite briefly and crisply after page 38.

Part two now gradually deals with the ups and downs of Christian Krampulz’s life – still without a bicycle. I don’t even want to go into details – if you’re interested, you’d better read the book yourself. In this part, Christian describes various stages of his life and addresses the problems and hurdles they brought with them. Above all, however, he also describes the positive effects or solutions that have emerged in retrospect.

His descriptions are entertaining. In part, of course, his life situations (especially the part in Romania) were quite special. Nevertheless, he repeatedly describes situations in which I can find myself. For example, when it comes to how he wanted to meet other people’s expectations, how he overcame problems and how his family’s particular philosophy of life shaped him. Initially, I was a bit disappointed that it was so little about my favourite subject, cycling. In retrospect, I have to say: this does not harm the book at all. Especially as the bicycle tour is acknowledged in conclusion as the highlight of the book.

Which brings us to part three: The big stage ride from southern Germany to Christian’s home country Romania. Here, Christian deliberately packs the numerous lessons of his life into the form of a sporting challenge with the aim of achieving flow. In doing so, he proves to himself: Happiness is no coincidence. Every person can consciously work towards this by dealing with himself, his environment and God and drawing appropriate conclusions.