“Without an Erasmus exchange I wouldn’t be here as a winner”

Joan Ale­many i Royo, 23 from Girona, is one of two win­ners of the in­ter­na­tional Tour The World com­pe­ti­tion or­gan­ised by the multi­na­tional tour op­er­a­tor Tour Radar. He will now travel to per­form on five con­ti­nents for 50 days.

What is The World Tour, the in­ter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion you have just won?

A few months ago, Tour Radar, a large multi­na­tional tour com­pany based in Aus­tria, held a com­pe­ti­tion search­ing for two trav­ellers who wanted to travel the world, with the only con­di­tion that it should be with an un­known per­son. The prize is five trips on five con­ti­nents in 50 days.

How did you find out about it?

Through one of the dif­fer­ent Google alerts I have that tell me about is­sues that might in­ter­est me.

What were the entry re­quire­ments?

Par­tic­i­pants had to make a two-minute video ex­plain­ing who they were and giv­ing rea­sons to choose them to take around the world. After look­ing at the videos that other peo­ple had al­ready up­loaded, I de­cided to go a bit in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Not so much to make a win­ning video, but to make a dif­fer­ent video. So at least they would no­tice me, I thought.

What video did you make?

Radar Tour asked you to an­swer dif­fer­ent ques­tions like why you want to travel the world, what your life is like, and what your fam­ily will think if you go trav­el­ling for 50 days. They also gave extra points for any­one who did things with a large group of peo­ple, like a flash­mob, as they wanted to see if you had the voice to be able to make your­self heard. Based on that, my idea was to try to get those extra points. With a friend we went to Barcelona with the idea of look­ing for groups of peo­ple who par­tic­i­pated in group hug­ging. And we did. Fi­nally, what were meant to be extra points be­came the main idea of the video, with me ex­plain­ing how that par­tic­u­lar day went, the feel­ings of hap­pi­ness we had and how we’d en­joyed doing it.

Why do you think they chose you?

I sup­pose the thing that brought me to this point is my open mind, which al­lows me to speak and en­gage with every­one, to con­nect with new peo­ple, new lives and my en­thu­si­asm for lit­tle things. And also how I con­vey it to peo­ple, also to the pro­mot­ers of the con­test. I have also re­alised that if I hadn’t gone on an Eras­mus ex­change I wouldn’t be here as a win­ner, be­cause in the end, this open mind­ed­ness of want­ing to meet a lot of peo­ple, al­ways doing things, mov­ing, is thanks, in large part, to hav­ing been a for­eign stu­dent.

What do you ex­pect to gain from this ex­pe­ri­ence?

The thrill of en­joy­ing each day. The hope and dream that you can enjoy every mo­ment. And it’s not that I don’t ex­pect to get any­thing out of it, it’s that I can’t not get some­thing out of it. What I do ex­pect is to have a new fam­ily, all the peo­ple who will travel with us and record the whole ex­pe­ri­ence from day one until the end. The trip will be on the Radar Tour chan­nel on You Tube.

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