I am looking at my parked motorcycle in the yard, and I feel that she winks at me saying: “Hey, you are still here this year? When you will drive me away? ‘. Yiep, we are late this year, but we have kept the best for the end of the summer. Our compass shows to the east, in countries where our wheels haven’t rolled yet. Georgia, Armenia and Turkey. This year group is also upgraded. After many years of friendship and after dozens shots of Cretan raki with our friends from Moto Riders Club, we took the wise (and drunken) decision to make a trip together.
So today our journey starts -along with Natasa- from Chania and tomorrow we will meet with Manolis, George and Stratos in Piraeus, in order to continue our journey to the island of Chios.
On the following map you can watch our trip live, thanks to the live trip traveler application.
For bigger resolution map click here.
Bon voyage (to all of us)!
Text : Stelios Ikonomakis, Natasa Spiliopoulou
Photos: Stelios Ikonomakis, Natasa Spiliopoulou, Athina Vernardou,
Stavros Alexakis, Dimitris Anastasakis
Video: Dimitris Anastasakis
Video Editing: Stelios Ikonomakis
Translated by: John Agriafiotis, Stelios Ikonomakis
European luxuries or Balkan fields? Why do we have to choose? Let’s first enjoy the European luxuries and then wander around “our” territory, the Balkans. This year the plan was to drive through 13 countries (including Greece) and cover about 5700 km in 16 days. Almost every day, we would wake up at a different country! Our journey included a little bit of everything: modern capitals, picturesque towns, forgotten villages, national parks, bombed landscapes, mountain passes and unknown paths, famous landmarks and well hidden secrets… So many controversial images that it’s hard to put them in an order and tell the story. But let’s give it a try!…
more »
Text & Photos: George Partsinevelos
Translated by: John Agrafiotis
I remember myself when I was at the elementary school staring at the beauty of the landscape from the back window of a car. I was fascinated by the endless roads and all the things that were revealed in front of my childish eyes! I felt the astonishing feeling, for a child, of discovering the world and I was silently enjoying every route, long or short, trying to observe the world that was being uncovered to me.
Sometime then, the first motorcycles made their appearance overtaking us, sometimes fast and in a hurry, chasing or being chased by, the time and sometimes slowly, lazily, enjoyably…
It was then that I started observing them and feeling an unknown attraction to this mass of plastic and metal that made their riders have a strange glimpse on their eyes every time they took their helmet off.
A bit later, when I was finishing junior high school, the first magazines about motorcycles came out and I got “infected”. I was impatiently waiting every new issue and I started dreaming about the roads that were waiting for me to cross them on my motorcycle. As the years were passing, I realized that I didn’t want to live with the dreams and the clichés created by magazines, so I stopped buying them.
However, the seed had been planted.
Text and photos: Dimosthenis Papadopoulos
Translated by: John Agrafiotis
Even in our days, travelling by a motorcycle and having only a tent as your main residence for a long time, is considered by most of the Greeks as a repressed from past decades or even more it makes you look quaint. Many of my friends wonder what I find attractive in spending so much time exposed to the natural elements like the heat, the continuous for many days rain, the storms with strong side winds and the frozen hands even with 2 pairs of gloves on. I’m sure that no matter how much I try to explain, they will never understand how it feels to become part , not only of each local community at the place you are, but also to become part of the nature and its elements, the colors and the smells, “embracing” as much as possible the journey. In my opinion, traveling is not only about sightseeing with millions along million tourists, but about being able to find the magic in any small place on your route, 24 hours a day, discovering even the smallest detail of every place. This is something that no box with four doors, which stops four of your five senses, leaving just the vision, can offer to you. This magic appears in the remote areas of our country and even in the crowded Europe, something I didn’t believe until I saw it myself. And if this opinion appears to be extravagant, you can always try yourselves. Especially if you leave behind the big highways and you don’t wait when the stars will come out, so as to begin. Be careful though, as if you get infected, there is no coming back …
