Kharkiv, second largest city in Ukraine.

Images of destroyed houses go through your head, of desperate people, of anger, sadness, pain.

When Jonas Deichmann came to Kharkiv, he seemed to be going to a different city, through a different country.

Lonely village streets, quiet everyday life, street musicians and always curious people who wanted to know where he came from, where he was going, if he needed help.

Deichmann spent two weeks in Kharkiv in March 2021, where he had to wait for his visa for Russia.

"The cycling community accepted me, I lived with someone, was invited to dinner, taken on bike tours," he says.

“Now one of them is fighting, another has fled.

A lot of buildings are just not there anymore.”

Bernd Steinle

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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Ukraine was just a tiny part of the project that Deichmann was pursuing from September 2020 to November 2021: a triathlon around the world.

450km swim, 21,000km bike ride, 5000km run.

A project that today, in days of war, seems like something from distant times, because it is based entirely on internationality, on openness, on a bond that transcends all borders.

The symbol for this is the route on the map, a band that goes around the world that seems to connect all countries and people.

In the 14 months, Deichmann has experienced enormous physical exertion, but also a lot of hospitality, helpfulness and cordiality.

Also, that's important to him in Russia.

In Chelyabinsk, a mechanic worked on his bike for seven hours, and he didn't want any money for it.

People invited him into their homes, into their families,

into her sauna.

A hotel employee gave the starving guest his own dinner because all the restaurants in town were already closed.

"I've been to more than 100 countries," says Deichmann, "in Iran, Sudan and other countries with a dubious reputation.

And everywhere I met incredibly nice people.” Deichmann has mastered extreme endurance adventures, he holds records for the three fastest continental crossings by bicycle, from Portugal to Siberia (14,000 kilometers in 64 days), from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (23,000 kilometers in 97 days), from the North Cape to South Africa (18,000 kilometers in 75 days).

And if all the kilometers have taught him one thing, it is: to be optimistic.

He competed in the triathlon around the world, 120 times the Ironman distance, without a permanent support vehicle and without external supplies.

While swimming, he pulled food, a sleeping bag and clothes behind him in a waterproof raft.

When cycling, he had everything he needed on his bike,

as he ran, he dragged a pendant attached to his waist.

We ate what came along the way, the main thing was calories.

Anyone who travels around the world on their own, as the documentary film "Das Limit bin nur ich" about the triathlon, which will be released on Thursday, makes clear - they must be optimists.

Especially on the swim course in the Adriatic Sea, 450 kilometers from Karlobag to Dubrovnik (Croatia), he often moved outside of his comfort zone, says Deichmann.

"Swimming was much harder than the other disciplines." Currents that were difficult to predict, the experience of being miles off the coast in the open sea in the dark, the difficult supply because places and shops were often far away from the places to stay on the coast was.

And there was the monotony because unlike the cycling and running along the way there was little to see other than water.