Ecotopia?? One of the topics that came up during the meeting in December 2023 was about the name of the biketour. More specifically, if we want to change it. The name has a lot of history – it was first used as a name of a bus tour and later gathering from many years ago, starting in 1986, then a biketour was attached to the gathering in 1990, and then the gathering stopped happening in 2008, and since then there is just the biketour! This isn’t the first time we have discussed the idea of changing the name. It has…

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I joined as a newbie in Beograd, finding a cheap bicycle and then trading up before the turnoff to our stay at the public camping area on War island, crossed by a pedestrian metal bridge manned by the military. (The understanding was that traffic ceased at eight o-clock but was later found to be for visitors and not campers like us. Meanwhile, it prevented us from joining a collective that was serving vegetarian pizza. Boo.) Beautiful site with beach, picnic tables, forest, and open grass at the merging of the Danube and Sava rivers. Internal rumblings of the group were…

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Soooo finally come some insights from the route Ljubljana-Zagreb. Yes, some things take time.   After leaving the vampire-house and having an amazing bath in a beautiful spot by the Sava river, it took a few days to really feel like a group again. As it was my first time on the tour, I thought this was usual, but some fellow riders said it was a strange feeling of “in-between places”. Indeed, a big chunk of the group which was there from the beginning needed some time on their own after socializing so much and was planning to join again…

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I saw that the blog wasn’t updated for a while so wanted to share my experiences of three weeks on the biketour in Romania.   After a loooong train journey to reach Arad, I saw that the local trains from Arad all leave at either 5 in the morning, or 5 in the evening. Given that a journey of 150km was going to take 4.5 hours, which would then deposit me in the middle of nowhere in darkness, practicallity won and a got on a train at 5am heading for Brad. The train looked like it was 60 years old,had…

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Zagreb-Novi Sad 18.07-28.07 hellouu everybody! sorry you didn’t hear from us in a while, we were busy staying alive and dry and in good spirits. also, our phones kept telling us we’re in bosnia and charging away all our data. so, from zagreb to novi sad our route was under… mixed weather. heavy fucking thunder (TM) made us search shelter almost every day. which also made us come into contact with more locals, so that was nice!(especially since so many people were so super welcoming and friendly to us, offering us places to stay, ice cold water, fruit or coffee…

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This topic has been on the tip of my tongue since I took part in the Winter Meeting in December for Ecotopia 2023. I remember we were all sitting three days in a row on chairs around a big table, trying to go through as many topics as possible before the weekend was over. Somehow it felt so strange to see that during these days Ecotopia had become practically immobile: the people I had been cycling along with in the summer are now all stuck in a big room on a cold gray German winter day. Maybe it’s something personal,…

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