A short video about our cycling

Hello again my friends!

After returning home, me and Azra were quite busy. We are slowly getting used to the normal life and trying to make the best of it. The experience we had while cycling into France was amazing and for sure changed our lives to better. It totally changed our perspective of viewing life.

I will show you a short video, which I call a tribute to all the special people we've met while travelling. Well, you see, while our cycling, we did many nice photos, which you already have seen (some of them), but for the first time we tried to record some video shots in order to make our "travel report" more interesting.

It is an experiment. For the really first time in my life I made a short movie with the small quantity of video material I had recorded on my Ixus 65. The video itself may not be so special for you who see it for the first time, but it is definitely something I am proud of. You see, it shows in it many special moments we've spent with all the people and even the music (Eddie Vedder - Rise - a song from the "Into the wild" movie soundtrack) brings up nice memories. Moving, sincere memories, we will forever cherish in our hearts.

I know now I will continue doing those films, because I still have photos to show you.

At the end of the video you will see a "To be continued..." this is because next time I will make a slide show with music, using all the nice pictures I have. Unfortunately, as previously said, we had an accident with the photos and I am now waiting a friend from Hospitality club in Sete, France to send the the photos I left on his computer when I was burning them on the DVD.

Also if some of you, my friends are not on this first film, don't be angry, because I will put you on on the next one. That's for sure! This goes to Nadir, Clementine, Marion and Rafael.

Before showing you the movie, I would like to thank Yannis from Athens who gave me this idea of making the movie and to Sebastien from Toulouse who gave me so many nice advice.

So, here you go! Enjoy the movie. Click under, or visit this site to watch the video: click

Here is also the second version of the same movie.. some material has been added in this version.

Sudden end of the road

Sometimes unexpected things make us to change or stop our course. Just early this morning, after the publishing of the last post we've received some not very good news from home, so after spending 129 hours and 46 minutes on the bikes and doing 1885km we are now finishing our travel.

After tomorrow we will catch a train and will soon (hopefully) be back in Slovenia. After all we did a respectful distance for two beginners and we have touched the Atlantic for the first time. We have met so many nice people willing to help us and we now have many stories to tell.

Thus, we have to notify all the people in France that we contacted trough HC and WS and have not reached yet that we will not be able to visit you. Thanks to all of you anyway. You have been a great support. Maybe one day we could return to France and visit you then.

We also want to say thank you to all those people who stood by our side and gave us moral support throughout this voyage. We also feel homesick so we will be very happy to see our family and friends again. Anyway we have been travelling since September 2006 when we started our EVS volunteering in Slovakia and to be honest we could settle down a bit now.

We are sure we will do more travels again but until then we will just be happy to help other travellers who intend to come to Slovenia. We would really like to give them back the same positive energy that we received on this travel. Also we want to invite all the special people we have met so far to come and be our guests, especially those who have been giving us the best of their hospitality. COME TO SLOVENIA!!!

At the end of this travel we can add this: THANK YOU FRANCE, THANK YOU FRENCH PEOPLE! YOU ARE GREAT AND WE HOPE TO SEE YOU AGAIN! THANK YOU HOSPITALITY CLUB AND THANK YOU WARMSHOWERS!

The map, finally refreshed!

Here is what we have done so far!



Enlarge the map

From Toulouse to the Atlantic

Oh, gosh! It is so hard to keep up to all the exciting things that happened in the last week! We also have to apologize to our Slovenian friends who do not speak English, because it is hard in such a short time to do both, English and Slovenian texts.

Despite the bad weather, which even helps us making extraordinary pictures, we are really enjoying our time. All the credit goes to the amazing people we have met (Joel, we dedicated some text for you but we still have to translate it, so it will be published a bit later...).

I (Aleksander) also got sick before yesterday, but today I recovered and tomorrow we will go on towards La Rochelle, but stoping first in St. Savinien.

We are also a bit sad we cannot share all our feelings in order to keep the texts short enough. Hopefully we will be able to translate bit by bit the rest.

Right now we are being hosted by Jean-Pierre and Eleanor, a lovely couple from Saintes, a town not so far from the Atlantic, so today, guess what... WE SAW THE ATLANTIC FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! But let's go trough the pictures in the proper order.


Here we are still in Toulouse. We wanted to show our friend Sebastien, a marvelous person who has been hosting us for 5 days!!! He is the one who went from Toulouse to Gibraltar on his Recumbent bike. Sebastistien... very nice memories back in toulouse! Eating, playing the guitar, singing, listening to Eddie Vedder... Sebastien you are the man!!! See you in Slovenia or in Spain? :)

Azra is showing to Sebastien our cat Cofka on the phone... you would never guess, wouldn't you? :)


The cheese really does smell bad...


...but hey, it is worth trying it...


...and it tastes really good!!!

Then Sebastien made us a "typical French food" - tortilla!!! :) So after this joke we realized we discovered a new term - SPENCH FOOD! :)


Here is the real French food - cassoulet.


Me, Azra, Sebastien and his recumbent.


Me trying it. IT WAS HARD!!!


Leaving Toulouse.


We had a nice storm in Montauban.


Meeting with Leo, a passionate cyclist who came to meet us in Montauban and escorted us the next day to St. Maurin, where he is living with his wife. Leo recently just returned from Cuba which he saw from his bike and now he will go to North America West to the East coast!!! Thank you Leo and "bonne route" to you in America!!!


Here is another lovely family that was hosting us in Montauban!


Sebastien who accepted us trough the WarmShowers website also did some very nice travels with his bike.


Here are some pictures.





A loud tradition. :) We just cought those masked students 100 days before the main exams while warming up with a nice hot chocolate.







I asked the lady why she does not want to reply to my questions about local architecture and she just sat there, doing her stuff as if I did not exist!!! How rude of her!



Reaching Leo's home. A wonderful and peaceful region.


Some more slopes...






Next day.






Camping wild next to the vineyards. The owner Gerard and his douther cought us while pitching the tent, but as you will see, we soon became friends and he would leave us alone... with the dears... :) He asked us if we are not afraid that the animals will eat us during the night. :) We tried to show him our gratitude and we tried to scare the dears off the vineyards, so they would not be able to destroy the vines.


Before leaving the next morning.



We were heading towards Cognac where Sophie, our next Hospitality club host was waiting for us. But Ludovic, her boyfriend cought us accidentally on the road, just 13km before the town. We've loaded his car with our bags and equiped with Ludovic's GPS found our way directly to their house. :)




Ludovic is a cook who told us many interesting stories about his life in Paris and his close connection to the "Buddha Bar" trade name, but most of all we enjoyed eating the food he made. He also invited us to his parent's restaurant where he works as a chef. We were full of delicious food.

BTW, if you need to know anything about Cognac (the drink and the city), you just contact Sophie. :) Sophie was also sooo kind to us. She went with Azra to see the doctor, she helped me at the post office when I was sending the stuff at home and at their house we felt more than comfortable! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts again!




Here we are: Sophie, Ludovic, me, Azra. THANK YOU GUYS!!!


And here we are today in St. Palais, where we had our first real contact with the Atlantic sea. Eleanor and Jean-Pierre took us with the car to a wonderfull trip we really enjoyed, despite the not perfect weather. Anyway, the experience was still great, because the landscape and the light were perfect for great photos and the company of Eleanor and Jean-Pierre was great! they accepted us in their house trough hospitality club and really helped us. I was a bit sick the last two days and they let us stay in their house untill I got better. So, here I am, feeling good and publishing this.

Enjoy the last few photos and we will get back to you soon.













Dear Eleanor and Jean Pierre, thank you so much for everything! We hope it is not the last time we see eachother and that we will be able to be as good host to you as you were to us!

Link exchange with TouristClick travel guides

Ok my friends! I received an interesting offer for a link exchange from the authors of the website TourictClick, so here is one useful link you could use while (or before) travelling:



I thought this might be a very good link exchange.