a little about us...

We are Ewa and Bart, born about 30 years ago in Eastern Poland where we were raised, and spent our childhood. In the late 80s I crossed the Austrian-Italian border with my brother and was accepted in one of the refugee camps in sothern Italy. In 1990 we both found ourselves in Toronto, Canada. And even though, we both lived in the same region in Poland and arrived in Canada in the same year, our paths hadn't crossed until we met a few years after arriving in the new country. In 1997 we eloped and got married and 2 years later we moved again, this time across Pacific. Sometime during Ewa’s anthropology studies we both got hooked on learning about different people inhabiting our beautiful planet and in 1999, a few months after Ewa’s graduation, an opportunity arrived to move to Japan. We spent the next five and a half years living in the Far East exploring the region. In 2005 we returned to Toronto, Canada where we got married at a church to make our moms happy. Later that year we crossed the European continent by 2 bicycles and finally returned to Canada where we have been living ever since.

We moved to Japan to learn about the country and its people and from the first moment we decided that the best thing would be to move from a region to a region. From Shikoku island, famous for its mild climate and beautiful beaches where we spent the first two years we moved to the outskirts of Osaka city to experience a bit of a Japanese big city life. And after a year in Osaka we were back in the country site. This time we chose a small town in the mountains, 90 km north of Tokyo far away from the ocean.

To support our lifestyles we worked as English teachers, first in small language schools and later in public Junior High School.

Sometime during our second year we were joined by 2 cats that we rescued – Japp & Aizumi. They shared our little apartment in Japan and later came with us to Canada where currently they live with my brother Peter and Dorothy.

The longer we stayed in Japan, the bigger our thirst became to explore more of Asia. Our new country became a base from which we could travel to places like Korea or China. Later we became even more interested in China after spending five days in Beijing in December 1990 and January 2000. After that we crossed the country by train and bus from Kunming to Hong Kong and from Shanghai to Urumqi each time building a bigger thirst for exploring the inside of the country. We both agreed that the places we really wanted to see were those remote area in-between tourist traps that we were always going to and from, those remote places that we could see outside of the train windows, but had no time to visit, the places that were the real China. In 2001 the dream to cycle around the world was born.

When we moved to Osaka and our only transportation were 2 second-hand mountain bikes, we suddenly realized that bicycle travel was the solution. We spent the next couple of years saving for a bike trip around the world. Unfortunately, we couldn't go around the world and only crossed the European continent from Portugal to Turkey. The distance was approximately 5000 km which took us 5 months (at a slow pace). Here are the pictures and the words from the ride.

Currently, we are in Canada working on our dream. We’d like to settle down somewhere in Canadian north where we could engage in growing our own food, raising cattle, a bit of pottery making and supporting ourselves by doing what we like to do – photography, pottery, painting and quilting. And later, who knows? Maybe we’ll even be able to create a kind of place where travellers could spend a night, get food and share with others their life stories.