Become committed. It is never too late to start your life.
Werner was there to meet me at the airport when the team flew back into Vienna. It was one of the worst moments of my life. I knew without a doubt that we had to break up but I didn’t want to hurt this man who had rescued me from the abuse I’d suffered in my previous relationship. Werner had been my saviour and I really wished that things could have been different.
I just couldn’t tell him about Gerhard straight away but he must have suspected that something was wrong. I’d been home for two days before I gathered up enough courage to have a quiet moment with Werner and tell him that I’d met somebody while I was in Morocco and that I was leaving.
Werner’s reaction was better than I could have expected. We had a bit of a cry together and agreed that we both hadn’t been happy for a while. I packed the few possessions I had and left the house. It was surprisingly amicable between us.
I left Werner and Austria to come back to New Zealand for six weeks. I left the relationship with what I’d brought into it. There was no way I wanted to take anything from Werner after all he’d done for me. Despite the way our relationship ended, Werner and I stayed friends. Flying home, I couldn’t help but worry what my family were going to say when I told them that my relationship with Werner was over. When I arrived, Mum and Dad’s reactions came as a complete surprise.
Mum had been in Austria for a couple of months between my first Marathon des Sables and the Desert Cup. It turned out that she didn’t think things were good between Werner and I at that stage and she wasn’t happy that I was in a relationship that wasn’t working. She knew that we didn’t talk anymore and she saw that our lives were almost completely separate. Mum wasn’t surprised when I told her we’d broken up. Dad’s reaction was perhaps more surprising. He was stoked for me. I think he was pleased that I had had the courage to leave a relationship that clearly wasn’t good for me.
Once I’d told them about Gerhard and about what a good man he was, they were really happy for me. Dad was delighted that I’d met someone who had the same interest as me and who would be able to both challenge and support me at the same time.
When I got back to Austria from New Zealand, I moved straight in with Gerhard. He lived in a village called Wantendorf, in Lower Austria. We were about an hour and a half out of Vienna — right out in the country. Gerhard had built the house and it was a lovely home. He had a huge section with a river running through it and I couldn’t have wanted for anything more. Life was great but no matter how good life was I always had a hankering for New Plymouth.
Gerhard worked long hours for the police force and I tried to keep my jewellery apprenticeship going, commuting into Vienna each day. Spending three hours a day commuting was absolutely exhausting. It also meant that I didn’t have as much time to train as I would have liked and Gerhard and I didn’t have a lot of time together either. In the end I had to make a choice. I decided that my relationship with him was more important than completing my apprenticeship so I gave it up. But that wasn’t to be the end of my jewellery career. Before long, I’d set up a studio at home and continued to design and make pieces. It was great fun to spend plenty of time honing my skills but I ended up with a load of jewellery and no way to sell it.
Pretty soon though, I had something else to fill my days. Not long after I moved in with Gerhard we had planned our lives together. It was pretty clear that we both wanted to get married and we decided to do it back in New Zealand. We waited for nearly a year. We wanted to spend the time getting to know each other. Life wasn’t going to be like in the desert where we lived in an artificial reality. After living together for a while, we’d rubbed the corners off each other and we found that we were still very much in love.
Gerhard’s mother couldn’t stand me. The first time I met her she completely ignored me. I was gutted. His parents lived quite close to us and his father was incapacitated as a result of a stroke some years earlier. This meant that they relied on Gerhard and he spent a lot of time helping them out.
Coming from such a close family, I’d have hated it if he didn’t spend time with his family. But Gerhard’s mother was never going to accept me. It seemed as if she thought I was there to take his money — I couldn’t have been less interested in his material assets. She hated having to share her baby with anybody. Gerhard was her youngest son and he was her baby, the apple of her eye. I found her incredibly dominating but Gerhard didn’t seem to see it.
After a while, the relationship between Mrs Lusskandl and I seemed to thaw a bit but only until I’d dropped my barriers enough for her to get into our house and start telling me how to run my life. She used to come over and tell me what a terrible housewife I was and how I didn’t do things in the proper Austrian way. I wasn’t having a bar of her trying to tell me how to do things in my own home and I made that quite clear to her. It looks like Paul’s auntie hadn’t taught me the art of being an Austrian housewife quite as well as I thought! After that, it quickly turned to custard and she did her best to freeze me out of her life and her son’s life.
In February 2003, 11 months after we first met, we flew back to New Zealand to get married. Gerhard told his parents he was coming to New Zealand on holiday to meet my family. He knew his mother would be furious if she found out we were planning to get married so he never mentioned it to her. It was sad that it had to be that way but we really felt we had no choice.
On the flipside, my parents couldn’t wait to meet the man who’d turned my life upside–down. I was nervous about coming home with Gerhard but I needn’t have been. Mum and Dad loved him and they could see how much I adored him.
Gerhard and Dad got on really well and before long, the pair of them were off hunting together. Dad decided that he’d give Gerhard a few tips on how to shoot a rifle, instructing him like he was a beginner. He was impressed when Gerhard hit every target. Dad told him that every shot had to be a head shot. He was pretty impressed when Gerhard managed to follow his instructions with ease. He got three big goats in no time. Dad was really impressed — what he had forgotten was that Gerhard was a policeman and a crack shot.
Dad joked that Gerhard had to prove himself before he’d give his approval for the pair of us to get married. He insisted that Gerhard prove his prowess by going out hunting with him and killing a pig. Despite all Dad’s experience, the pair of them couldn’t find a pig to kill so they had to settle for another big goat. Gerhard knocked it off no problems but to really prove himself, Dad made Gerhard cut its head off and bring it home for me. Who says diamonds are a girl’s best friend? My man killed a goat for me — talk about romance!
Having spent all our time together on the other side of the world, I was a bit worried that Gerhard wouldn’t like being in New Zealand. I needn’t have worried. He loved the lifestyle and was really relaxed and happy while he was here.
In the weeks before our wedding, Gerhard and I made each other’s wedding rings, which was a beautiful thing to be able to do for each other. They were difficult rings to make but once again Gerhard proved his ability to pick up new skills and he managed to work out how to make my ring really quickly.
The wedding was simple but perfect. We got married on the Ahuahu Road Beach with our friends and family. I was wearing a twenty dollar dress and carried a bouquet of wildflowers picked from the Taranaki roadside. Gerhard was wearing a Taranaki Hardcore T-shirt and shorts and he had bare feet. My cousin James was Gerhard’s page boy and my little cousins, Jasmine and Emma, were our mermaids, instead of bridesmaids. It was a delightful and simple ceremony.
A friend of Dad’s, a sea captain named Chaddy, was the celebrant. It was great to have someone who knew our family perform the service. At the end of our vows, Chaddy added in a promise that neither Gerhard or I knew about. He turned to Gerhard and said, ‘Do you, Gerhard, promise to share your mountain bike with Lisa?’ While Gerhard hadn’t hesitated making any of the earlier vows, this was clearly a bit too much. He answered in a flash, ‘No.’
It was a lovely romantic day that was all about the marriage rather than being all about the wedding. After the ceremony, everyone headed back to Mum and Dad’s place at Oakura where we had a big feed of crayfish for dinner, heaps of singing and a cheeky drink or two. I couldn’t have been happier. The only cloud over the day was that none of Gerhard’s friends could be with us on our special day.
When I got back to Austria, Gerhard broke the news to his parents that we were married. His mother was very tight-lipped about our union. After that I felt like she did everything in her power to undermine me — she was determined to split us up. I don’t think Gerhard could see that.
Despite that, Gerhard and I were really happy together. Our household revolved around training. Doing the Marathon des Sables in Morocco had hooked Gerhard on ultra-running, too, so our house was now home to two ultra-athletes.
Before we got married Gerhard and I had talked about moving to New Zealand one day, but the longer we spent in Austria, the more it seemed that this was not going to happen. If we settled in New Zealand, it would have taken Gerhard away from his parents who depended on him, his children from his previous marriage, from the house that he built and from the career that he’d made for himself. Even though I missed home desperately and longed to live in Taranaki near my own family, I did my best to build a new life in Austria with Gerhard.
For a start we’d train together but it soon became clear that Gerhard was a superior athlete to me and he didn’t need to train as much as I did. He was so much faster than me that training together was out of the question. Despite both of our busy schedules, Gerhard and I took part in as many races as we could. We spent most weekends travelling around Austria, Germany and other neighbouring countries competing in 12- and 24-hour races.
Our training programs meant that we didn’t see that much of each other, but Gerhard found a way for us to spend heaps of time together — he decided that it would be great for us to do the 2003 Trans Europe Foot Race together. The plan was to run from Lisbon in Portugal to Moscow in Russia — a whopping 5100 kilometres — in 64 days.
It was a daunting prospect but having completed so many difficult races before, I had every confidence that we could do it. The training started in earnest and we began fundraising to cover our costs. Sadly, it was not to be. A few months before we were due to go on the race, Gerhard was out playing social football one weekend and was the recipient of a particularly rough tackle. A guy just slid into him and took his feet out from underneath him. He fell awkwardly and ended up with a badly broken leg.
The Trans Europe Race went ahead without us and, amazingly, 21 of the 49 starters managed to finish the event. It was such a tough race that it wasn’t run again until 2009. One guy I talked to who completed the race claimed it had nearly turned him into an alcoholic. He said they didn’t always have food at the end of a stage but there was always red wine — sometimes two bottles a day. The drink helped numb the pain and so he took it. It sounded absolutely atrocious.
When Gerhard came out of hospital, I was tasked with looking after him. Luckily I had some experience of nursing a man with a broken leg! Thankfully, Gerhard wasn’t anywhere near as driven as Paul and he coped heaps better with being incapacitated. He’s such a natural athlete that he didn’t worry too much about not being able to train. However, it took Gerhard a couple of years before he could really run competitively again. Over that time I continued training as I don’t like to miss a single day’s training if I can possibly help it. Gerhard was really supportive of me over this period and he was happy to crew for me while I did shorter races around Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic.
When I found out that the 24-hour world championships were being held in the Czech Republic, I decided it’d be great if I could go and represent New Zealand. I made some enquiries and found out that New Zealand weren’t sending a team. Seeing as it was just near where I lived, I offered to pay my own expenses to go. For a while it looked like I’d finally represent my country at an international meet. I don’t know what happened but not long before I left to go to the meet, I got a message from New Zealand to say I wouldn’t be able to compete under the Kiwi flag. I was really disappointed but decided to race in the open section anyway and had a great time.
Mum made another trip to Austria and I was so excited to see her. She was much happier visiting now she wasn’t expected to bike everywhere. One classic moment of Mum’s visit — that I’ll never let her live down — was when I was showing her around the house. We were up in the attic and Mum turned around and said to me, ‘Oooh, here’s where you could hide from the Germans . . .’ I just cracked up and turned around and said, ‘Mum . . . we ARE the Germans!’ It was absolutely hilarious. I loved it when Mum came over but her visits also served to remind me of how much I missed life in New Zealand and my family. Despite the distance between us, we had grown closer and the time we had together was always quality time.
With Gerhard all but out of action, I scaled back my training a bit and spent more time making jewellery. By the end of 2003, I had a lot of stock so I had a stall at a Christmas market in Saint Polten, a city about 15 minutes away from where we lived. The market was a huge success and I sold heaps of jewellery. Gerhard could tell that I wanted to further my career and so together we took a risk and opened our Lisa Lusskandl Schmuckdesign — my very own jewellery shop in Saint Polten. It was great working in Saint Polten as it was about the size of New Plymouth and you soon got to know your regular customers. It wasn’t long before the shop started to pay for itself. I was amazed at how successful it was.
Over time, though, I struggled to keep up with designing and making the jewellery and doing all the administration that the business required. It put a lot of pressure on Gerhard as he had to support me by doing a lot of the paperwork. He already worked really long hours and my business put a lot of demands on what time he had away from his job. It was really difficult for both of us and for the first time, there was some tension in our relationship. The day to day grind was tearing us apart.