He knew he would never return to full-time writing, editing or anything else that required sitting on his backside the entire day. So he asked himself, “What can a retired journalist, adopted Praguer, with varying degrees of fluency in eight languages and the urge for a more physically active life do?” The answer he arrived at was guided tourism. He took a qualification course, went on tours with more experienced colleagues to catch a taste of the trade, and later registered as an official tour guide.
Then he had another idea: bicycles. “The bikes came in because I love cycling and there was enough room [on the local market] for a rental and touring business like the one I had in mind,” he explains. “But because I’m rather cautious when entering a completely new territory, I first registered a domain, built a website and did what I could to put it in a reasonable position on Google before buying any bike.”
But he didn’t have to wait that long. “Actually, I bought the first bikes the day the first customer called and asked for bikes for the upcoming weekend,” he recalled with a laugh. “That’s how it started. I bought exactly two bikes, lovely single-speed folding bikes from the 1980s, and kept them in my room up on the third floor with no lift. I wanted to exercise anyway. My flat soon filled up with bikes. That’s when I started looking for a proper place. I found it a few months later and still have it, ten years later.”
Pacurar’s Transphere Bike Rentals and Tours, located in the Prague 5 district, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and it is thriving. His astonishing language skills – he speaks eight languages, most of them fluently – are an important asset because many, if not most, of his customers come from abroad. He says that about a third come from the US and Canada; of the Europeans, the majority are Dutch, Spanish, and Scandinavian.
His linguistic skills come from his childhood. Pacurar was born in Transylvania, into a multiethnic family where Romanian and German were spoken daily, as well as Hungarian with relatives and neighbours. His family emigrated to Germany when he was eight years old, and he grew up in a village in Bavaria before studying Romance languages and sociology in Germany and Spain. He has been living in Prague since 1994.
Over the years, Pacurar stuck with the use of second-hand bikes, mostly vintage Czech and German, “because they were cheaper, easy to fix and maintain, and because of my personal taste,” he explains. “I still ride old bikes exclusively, but don’t use them for the rental business anymore. Instead, I buy trekking bikes from Czech manufacturers, especially Maxbike of Ostrava, which I then customise for bike-packing and multiple-day touring. Starting from March of next year, I will upgrade to e-bikes to offer guided tours in Prague off the beaten paths. The bikes are already paid for and will be delivered in February, when I start preparing for the upcoming season.”
His most popular day tour, he says, is a self-guided round trip to the Gothic Karlštejn Castle, which mostly follows the Vltava and Berounka rivers on dedicated cycling paths. “Among the multiple-day tours, Prague-Dresden via Eurovelo 7 is by far the most popular,” he says. “But there is a growing demand for long-distance tours, to Vienna and Budapest, for example.”
He also gives guided tours in Prague. “The most popular tour I give in Prague would be from my service point in Smichov up to the Vyšehrad fortress, stopping by the unique ensemble of Cubist buildings at the foot of the hill,” he says. “At Vyšehrad, I like to give them a tour of the cemetery, where Prague honours some of the most important people this country has given birth to, such as the composers Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana, and Josef Suk.” Pacurar says that the tour is fascinating because it eventually passes through more than 1,000 years of Czech history, starting with the Vyšehrad fort, which some date back to the 10th century.
Asked about where he likes to ride when he is not working, he says that he has no favourite trip and that he tries different routes when he has the time. “I usually first take a train to get out of Prague and then cycle for 50-60 km, find a nice place to stay over and cycle back the next day,” he says. “Prague is really well located because there are dozens of options for this type of tour.” But he does have a favourite spot to visit, the Kokořín Valley northeast of the city of Mělník, some 60 km north of Prague.
“It’s a fairy-tale landscape with breathtaking views, small sleepy villages with beautiful traditional architecture, very little car traffic and some nice places for food and drinks,” he says. “When I’m in the area, I always stop in Lobeč, where they rebuilt a steam-powered brewery from the late 19th century. There is also a craft cidery, where I always go for inspiration.” In addition to running his bike business, Pacurar is also a gourmet cook, a musician, and an amateur cider-maker. He is currently preparing his new batch of cider, just in time for the end of the bike tour season.
