Early in the morning, it was nice and cool. From the roof of the tent and the wall of the tent it flows like streams to the hiking boots. A quick look: it looks like it did a long time ago. Heaven has opened its gates. But this does not help, the path to the next warm room should be a two-hour walk. So we grabbed the water boot from the pool and we went. It sounds like a scene from the YouTube series “7 vs. Wild” with Fritz Maineke, seven boys with seven species surviving in the Swedish desert trying to survive seven nights.

But not so. This is the scene of a four-week hike in the southwestern part of Ireland on a budget and in a typical Irish climate. It all happened eight years before YouTube was born and long before “non-linear” television created a new generation of content: 1997, 25 years ago, when a Reed Hastings and a Mark Randolph crossed the Atlantic far from the Emerald, the Isle had a business idea years later, at home. Consumption of moving images on television will change completely. They created a video store that emailed movies on DVD: Netflix.

Postal DVDs, travel information from books or magazines, book travel over the phone or over the counter: The time just before the advent of the Internet (especially the World Wide Web) can be seen in the private sector today, and any information is just a click away, unimaginable. When planning a hiking tour, you do not need a smartphone with Google Maps or hiking apps (not one yet), but a classic map. You could not put tools together online, you could not compare prices or check quality / reviews. You took what you got. Also, “hiking” or trekking, as it is called today, did not have a particularly good reputation and was considered an “old man’s pastime”. Functional clothing, as we know it today, exists only in specialized stores that do not exist or are unknown (without the Internet). So: the boys in their high-tech outdoor gear could choose from seven tools exclusively for outdoor use in “7 vs. Wild”, but in 1997 you had no choice.

The backpack was a kind of metal frame, the tent in the igloo variant is guaranteed to have no water column as of today, and no tarp, an old plastic tarpaulin, and woolen sweaters and jeans that soaked it well in the rain. Instead of a GoPro action camera with me, at least a pocket camera with two films and a pair of nice hiking boots. So it took the Euroline bus from Cologne to Dublin and from there to Cork. The next time we saw a bus from inside was on a trolley after 500 hiking kilometers. In the meantime 4 weeks of pure nature, numerous experiences, hard asphalt, self-explored trails (through rough maps) on the Beira, Iverag (Kerry ring) and dingle peninsulas. Here is an experience from one of our articles: “Bull warning in Ireland: Dangerous camping in the Emerald Islands“.

For me it was the first real “outdoor” experience, so unlike the boys in “7 vs. Wild” we did not have to hunt for our food, but got our daily ration of cold baked beans or rava porridge. Rice pudding (the cheapest) from the tin that came with them, but they also had to be opened first. The German survival legend Rudiger Nehberg once had in our legendary 1,000-kilometer “Germany March” from Hamburg to Oberstdorf in 1981 no dead animals or unknown mushrooms or fruits in our minds. This borderline experience was not required because the travel budget was very small (500 German marks for the entire trip), but still sufficient for basic needs. It was a good formation experience for later tours (West Highland Way, Way of St. James, More than 1,000 km on foot through the German-German border1,000km by bike through the balcony).

Turco co-founder Marco created another frontier experience with his friend John M. in July 1993 at North American Banff National Park: with just a few meals set, it was easy to get from Banff to Lake Louis (100 km). A thousand meters in height. In the end, it got too hard, because of the total exhaustion, which was really life threatening. Unlike “7 vs. Wild”, there was no option to get help on the phone back then. There has never been an invention like the mobile phone, at least not for personal use. Three days later, the legs ached and both became dehydrated and starved. In the end, everything was fine, but it was close. You can read a detailed report on how this happened in this magazine shortly.

It is difficult to compare then with today’s possibilities. However, it is still not easy to go into nature alone without food and a lot of equipment. What good is a machete if you have nothing to eat? For this reason alone, web video maker, adventurer and city explorer Fritz Mainek’s series “7 vs. Wild” is useful, often not just for “out-of-home” people, but for everyone – across generations. You can watch the series with the whole family, and even if the kids want to lie on the beach rather than sleep in the woods, they will be excited.

Lots of praise for “7 vs. Wild” and a little criticism: The series is a bit long, especially at the end. It could have been shortened overall with a few episodes here. Personally, I found a lot of “life hacks” (tips and tricks) from bush crafting, especially from Fritz. Yes, there may not be more material from the others, of course it’s about making money from ads from Google and through ads for the heroes’ own social media channels. But a little more brevity would be good for the whole series, because 16 episodes with a few snags is too much.

However: Thanks to this format, it evokes many memories of the past and eventually causes you to switch off Netflix and step back from the couch. Exact series during this confusing time.

> Link to Wild Versus 7 Season 1 on YouTube