Having navigated nearly 2,000km (1,250 miles) of motorways and through city traffic, Beat Studer and his trusty tractor rumbled into Kaliningrad on Thursday having completed an epic World Cup journey to watch the Swiss football team take on Serbia. Shining brightly under a midday sun, the 1964 vintage crimson tractor pulled into a Kaliningrad Stadium car park having reached the finish line of a 12-day odyssey that began just outside Lucerne and will culminate, Studer hopes, on Friday with a Swiss victory in the Group E showdown. Studer, who owns a tractor museum, and two friends Werner Zimmermann and Josef Wyer came up with the idea after Switzerland qualified for Russia but decided they would only undertake the adventure if they could do something positive. They decided they would do the trip for Swiss children’s charities and have so far raised close to CHF20,000 ($20,175). “With the tractor we have no problems,” explained Wyer, who drove the support van and handled ...
