On a chilly spring day in early 1990, with the dust from the Berlin Wall barely settled, two East German youths met by chance and found they shared a desire to cycle around the world. They left the next day.
Fourteen years, 130 countries and 140,000km later, the two adventurers, Axel Brummer and Peter Glockner, are in Hong Kong at the start of yet another adventure - sailing an authentic Chinese junk all the way to Venice.
'We are recreating Marco Polo's voyage home,' said Brummer. 'We have already retraced his land journey from Venice to China by bicycle, but this is the next bit. He went home by junk, so now we are going home by junk.'
Their voyage was almost scuttled before it began. The junk they originally purchased for the project - the 18-metre Precious Dragon - sank during a storm in the Indian Ocean in May last year while returning to Hong Kong to begin the journey. That vessel was known for having previously sailed from Hong Kong to Britain in 1997 to mark the handover.
'We lost a dream - and a lot of money - when that went down,' Brummer said.
Not to be deterred, the duo began scouring the world for another suitable vessel.