12.02.2011

Balkans Burn, Part II of III: Giannitsa to Samarina, Greece

On August 5th, 2008 Pera Baity and I set out to explore the Balkans. We were riding antique Russian motorcycles; mine is a 50's vintage M72 and Pera's on a 1960's Ural M61. The journey would take us over three thousand kilometers through five countries.

This is the second of three videos documenting the journey, and follows our travels through the Vlach villages of Greece. Picking up from part I in Giannitsa, we travel into the mountains to visit Livadia and Ano Grammatiko. From there we head south again, strolling through the historic quarter of Veria and then down to Argyropouli. After this we head east once more to Metsovo -where we see "historical tourism" at its peak- and finally circle back north to find a political rally in Samarina.



You can visit these links for Part I and Part III.





Click here for the text and photos from the trip.

hey folks, if you like it share it- I've been working on this project for 3 years and we don't have any kind of budget for a real screening. My only chance at an audience comes from you :)

5 comments:

  1. Charlie: not sure if its me or the vimeo site but the sound goes out at around 11:32 and doesn't come back....I was really enjoying this installment too. The video is all there, just the sound goes away.

    If you can comment back whether its me or something else that would be great.

    Mark

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  2. Apologies for that, it appears to be a codec conflict with Vimeo. Thanks for pointing it out: I'm in the process of converting everything to .flv and moving it onto my own server which should have the issue fixed today.

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  3. ...and yes it is fixed - the second installment is really good. I loved the "I guess its not much of a leap from herding sheep to herding tourists"....was it intentional to follow that with a pastoral scene of sheep in the mountains?

    I am especially enjoying the historic aspects of your film - really interesting to get a closer idea of the movement of people in the area.

    Keep it coming!

    Mark

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  4. Mark, the Vlachs are traditional herders and sheep are central to their culture.

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  5. excellent video,i really enjoy the history,the people and the culture.must have been a wonderful ride,beautiful country beautiful people.thank you.keep enjoying the ride. whiplash willie

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