Yes they are nuts here. The government statistician is being pursued by the politicians through the Courts for reporting the truth about the government’s accounts to the EU, leading to the bail out and fiscal austerity measures that have sent so many of the 11 million Greeks to the poor house, currently 23% of them […]

We entered Macedonia from the shores of Lake Ohrid on the border with Albania and then road over the hill pass of Prespa National Park to Lake Prespa and on to Bitola. The country still has a big legacy to the communist era to overcome – horribly large, unkempt Soviet style apartment blocks in provincial […]

Back into the mountains – yeah ! There’s something about vast flats as those that comprise Kosovo, that is of little appeal to motorcyclists. But then from the border post into Albania through the hills of Valbona, to the ferry trip down Lake Koman, the topography instantly warms the motorcycling heart. Rock massifs and blue […]

That’s what we said when we inadvertently checked out of Montenegro & found ourselves at the gate to Serbia. Knowing that it doesn’t recognise Kosovo we returned to the Monetenegro exit and begged and pleaded to be let back in so we could drive 40kms to the gate to Kosovo. The Montenegrian Policia obliged, damned […]

Montenegro is another that is nowadays a member of NATO, the WTO and queuing up to get into the EU, yet in a referendum in 1992 it voted overwhelmingly to be part of the envisaged Greater Serbia. And the population is 29% Serb, 45% Montenegrins. Apparently the numbers fluctuate wildly between censuses depending on how […]

As we entered from East Croatia the difference was dramatic. Suddenly we were in Russia or so it seemed – all the signs are in some form of Cyrillic, the people appear to be speaking a form of Russian, the flag hanging from many of the lampposts is the Russian one hung on its end. […]

It’s been over 23 years now since the horrible headlines of genocide and neighbour killing neighbour emanated from the Balkans. I remember riding through Bosnia 13 years ago and it was still all pretty raw, certainly still too early to discuss any of it with the locals, and not too long after to witness the […]

We’re zigzagging between Austria and Bavaria as we enjoy the roads of the Alps and tonight our rest is in Garmisch, a picture-perfect Bavarian village nested in a valley between mountain ranges. It really is the Bavarian stereotype with flower boxes hanging from the windows of all the wooden chalets, and the locals riding their […]

Coming from NZ it’s hard to envisage that you could do this with ease, but Europe is altogether different and when you set yourself the goal of riding as many mountain roads as the snow conditions will allow, you inevitably are criss-crossing over Passes that form the borders between countries. So for us to go […]