Our Story

We both had the desire to work on the Balkans. 

Elisabetta, as social historian and cook, wanted to discover roots and similarities in a region (wide region, btw) that is geografically so close to Italy, but mentally far for many Italians (even though favorite touristical places as Greece or Croatian coast are Balkans). 

For many people in our country, Balkans are "something else", far, complicated, sinonimous of war, poorness, criminality... something too difficult to understand.

Nicola, as photojournalist and reporter, had the same attraction for the area, the same desire to know and show more.

And was aware about the social importance of food (and everything related with).

At the beginning of 2011 we decided to combine our abilities, start this project together, and concretize it in a book.

This work will be a great way to introduce the Balkan(s) culture(s), people, history (and stunning food)... to show the cultural richness and the great humanity that anybody can find there.

We discussed it with our publisher and he gave his availability for editing and publishing the book; but, as he rules a small publishing house, he could not support financially our travels in the Balkan region.

Even if it was really hard, we self financied three trips, during spring and summer 2011.

Now, we have other two travels planned - one in Kosovo and Albania, another one in Macedonia and northern Greece - but we cannot afford them without a support.

The book should to be out by the end of 2012.

That means we must have the material completed before summer. And we cannot have all the material without the planned trips.

The text of the book will be in Italian and English.

We have a blog: www.lastradadelcibo.com, where you can have a look (it is only in Italian for the moment, soon it will be translated in English).

If you believe in the valency of what we're doing, support us.

As we said above, the aim of our campaign is collecting money for the last two trips in the Balkans.

If we don't reach the goal, we'll try to travel anyway using the money we'll get, but... finding other sources is really difficult: unfortunately, in Italy none seems to be interested in investing in culture.

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