Two months ago we were concluding the tour of the Black Sea after 80 days, 13.000 kilometres, 11 countries (including the separatist republics) and over 360.000 blog hits at over 80.000 unique visitors. And, to add more flavour to it, we engaged on a trip to Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania, countries we flashed through, looking [...]

Out of all the places we have visited on this trip which officially ends here, for me the biggest surprise was Dobruja. But the secluded Dobruja, the one avoided today even by the alternative roads advised by the police during peak summer season. What seemed a joke in the ‘90’s, when the first serious wave [...]

In the old days, things went something like this: dawn hadn’t broken yet when the boats would quietly glide down the channel, in groups of eight, connected to one another by bowlines and pulled by a sailboat. Only the sharp cries of birds and the regular rustle of the sea would be heard. And, perhaps, [...]

The Romanian villages of Dobruja left me with a taste of dust and a feeling of human despair, with barefoot children raised by whoever can, people staring vacantly through cheap alcohol vapours in a fatalistic indifference to the poverty which came upon them like a curse. Romanian villages in Dobruja look like sick animals awaiting [...]

Despite being as poor as a church mouse, Dobruja seems to be the most dignified region of Romania. Poor, rough, remote, its ground full of deep ridges caused by drought, breathtakingly beautiful wilderness where pheasants, rabbits, Romanians,  Bulgarians, hedgehogs, Lipovans, Italians, Greeks, does, Ruthenians, boars, Aromanians, Turks, Tatars live together in harmony, without any prejudices [...]

The situation was rather embarrassing. Petruţ in blue Speedos, covered in a heavy, shiny black layer of mud out of his sincere wish to become part of the motley group come for treatment; an old couple, buck naked, in a bizarre composition, as black as coal, little white summer hats on their heads, their legs [...]

As the project Around the Black Sea began in Romania, it will also end in Romania, but not before passing through a poverty-ridden Dobruja (though dominated by windmills), more precisely, through several Lipovan villages with flowers on the streets, confirming the saying: ‘a good farmer makes a good farm’. And an outing with the fishermen [...]

Our first days in Turkey were marked by a strange sensation of tense expectancy. The beaches were deserted, the streets were enveloped in slumber and the breeze was blowing beautifully, filling the empty spaces around us with salty air. It seemed we had miraculously discovered the last secluded spots with a sea view and full [...]

We went on every little street in Kıyıköy and looked into the people’s yards where we saw the women stripping the corn cobs of their kernels, hanging the laundry in the sun and working with the pots in the kitchen, the children playing with hand-carved wooden fishing vessels, the men sipping tea after tea while [...]

I’ve always wondered what the poachers on the Turkish fishing vessels displaying random flags and being summoned with hundreds of gunshots by the Romanian border police look like. Judging by the news in Romania, the scenario is always the same. The Turkish poachers swaggeringly wave the Ukrainian or Romanian flag hoping to pass unnoticed, the [...]