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6000 km hitchhiking 2300 km on foot
in ROMANIA
After several years of volunteering and national and international experiences we embraced this passion for travel and tourism. We were both members of AIESEC, the world’s largest youth organization that aims to develop leadership potential through local projects and international experiences.
Claudia is from Jurilovca and has had international experiences in education in Prague (Czech Republic) and entrepreneurship in Adana (Turkey), and Marius is from Constanta and worked for 1 year in business development in Malaysia, and later volunteered in education on a project in Vietnam.
After that, we worked for a few years in Bucharest, but in 2015 we quit our jobs and left on a journey with no return date. We realized that it was the right time to travel, in a more intense and deeper way, and then to build our own path.
We left home with the precise mission to discover a small part of the diversity and richness of the world, to learn about tourism and hospitality and then to come back and contribute to the development of Romanian tourism.
On June 3, 2015, the first hitchhiking car picked us up, and in the evening we were hosted by a very welcoming family in Năeni commune, Buzău county. This is how the journey started.
At the end of September, after 6000 km of hitchhiking and more than 2300 km of walking, we returned to Dobrogea with many stories, experiences and a better understanding of Romania and Romanians.
We very much wanted it to be a journey about places and people, to discover as much as possible of the richness of the country, but also to better understand the people who live there, the culture, traditions, history and spirituality. Better said, we wanted to have a deeper, more intense journey, which can take place perhaps once in a lifetime. We were lucky to be picked up by hundreds of open-minded drivers and hosted by dozens of hospitable people.
We went to almost every county in the country, climbed mountains, climbed through caves, stayed in monasteries, made cheese on farms, mowed hay and had many unique experiences.
in ROMANIA
in ROMANIA
Once we felt we had discovered everything we wanted in our country, we crossed Bulgaria and started our adventure in Turkey. The experience in Romania brought us so much satisfaction and we wanted to repeat the recipe, as much hitch-hiking as possible and to be hosted by as many locals as possible.
We continued traveling through Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Dubai, Dubai, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, and from Hong Kong we returned home.
Initially we had planned, while still in Romania, to launch a blog and post articles and videos constantly, but we gave up a few days after leaving for the trip.
For us, it was more important to direct that work time towards interacting with our hosts, the people we met or enjoying places we will probably never see again. This is how we ended up with the Traveling Couple facebook page where we constantly posted some pictures and stories from each place.
They were unique adventures and experiences.
In these countries I interacted with people from different generations, with different financial situations, from cities or rural areas. I learned from these interactions and made the most of them, bearing in mind that on a typical vacation you don’t have as much access to the locals.
We crossed Iran from north to south, hosted for a month by locals only. Here we appreciated the freedom and civic involvement even more.
In India, on the banks of the Ganges River in the foothills of the Himalayas, we did yoga for 2 weeks in an ashram, surrounded by nature and spirituality. And the 2 months in India were like a rollercoaster, constantly having opposite feelings and emotions.
We stayed with ourselves for 10 days at a Vipassana meditation camp at a temple in Myanmar. Here we have just a few unforgettable experiences.
We made friends and lived the moments.
From ROMANIA to HONG KONG
After almost 1 year after leaving with our backpacks on our backs, we came back home to Dobrogea and started the Traveling Couple project, this time with the objective to become hosts.
A friend of ours, a consultant on projects with European funds, told us about the opportunity to build a guesthouse in the Danube Delta. Then we felt it was the right time to come back, start the project and settle in Jurilovca for a good part of our lives.
From our point of view, Jurilovca is the best place to discover Dobrogea and probably the most beautiful community in this region.
We took over Pensiunea Milică, and in 6 years we hosted more than 4500 guests, learned about tourism business, construction and hospitality.
And in December 2021 we completed construction and opened the Traveling Couple Guesthouse. It was a dream, turned into a 7-year goal and strategy, and now this dream is our place to be hosts. (Photo is taken in the foundation pit).
We consider traveling to be the most powerful form of learning. Of course, we’re talking about new experiences, new information and new discoveries, not just relaxing on the beach.
Our vision is to become a headquarter where our guests will discover a good part of Dobrogea, in terms of nature, history, culture, traditions and gastronomy.
The guesthouse has the shape of an open book, in which each guest can write his or her story. Behind the guesthouse to the north is the parking lot and in front of the guesthouse to the south is the garden. From the balconies of the rooms you can see Lake Golovița.
Each room has its own theme, balcony and binoculars. A comfortable stay, we say. We prepare traditional recipes with products from our own garden or local producers. We have home-made ticicicicici, more than 10 homemade liqueurs and many wines from Dobrogea.
We offer guided tours to fortresses, boat trips to Gura Portiței, Razim-Sinoe Lagoon and the Danube Delta. We organize bike and kayak tours. We enjoy traditional evenings with a folklore ensemble from Jurilovca and try to offer as many experiences as possible to our guests.
Claudia and Marius (Poto)
