Austrian Firm Plans Motorcycle Tour of Soviet Union
An Austrian travel agent said on Friday he had been authorized to organize the Soviet Union’s first regular tours for Western motorcyclists.
Werner Wachter, owner of Edelweiss Bike Travel, told reporters that Soviet authorities had given him permission to organize fixed-route trips for tourists on motorcycles beginning in May.
“I think this fits in with the climate of glasnost ,” he said from his Tyrol village headquarters near Innsbruck, referring to the Kremlin’s drive for more openness in Soviet society.
Wachter said the only group of Westerners ever to enter the Soviet Union by motorcycle so far was headed by American publisher Malcolm Forbes.
Wachter’s two-week tour will take tourists into the Soviet Union from Hungary, through Byelorussia and the Ukraine to Moscow and out again via Leningrad.
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