Split and Hvar

Dear readers, Erik and I are writing to you from a sunny split. We're afraid to say that we've been somewhat dumbfounded by the beauty of Crotia. Having deleted our previous post we would like to take some time to share our experiences of Split and Hvar.

We arrived to Split early last Monday and stayed one night. We felt it was a bit too touristy and we wanted to get away from the sundburned and stomach pouch-wearing tourists. Also after having been ripped off at a yacht club where we paid two days of food budget on one meal. We therefor decided to head over to the island of Hvar.

Firstly, just taking the catamaran boat was an enjoyable experience. Being accustomed to the Swedish archipelago we almost felt at home amongst these rocky and tree clad islands. We had no success in finding the hostels we had put down for our Hvar stay. Lukka's lodge was nowhere to be found and we had to settle for living in a "apartman" with a grouchy old local lady who spoke a mix between Croatian, German and a few words of English. Erik's German skills did come in handy!

On the first day we went out to see some sights. The mountain on which the fortress of Hvar was located was highly hikable and we are starting to wondering about their security measures. As for the longboarding, Hvar has little to offer in the likes of good asphalt. The only boardable spots was the boardwalk around the island which stretched from Hvar town to our rocky private beach. We did get some footage though so we are satisfied.

As some of you might have figured out, Hvar did have a lot to offer concerning the nightlife and bars. Although this, we were disappointed with the club. There was only one open during our stay and it was packed with meat-hunting and boat-owning oldies (Erik almost got picked up by a 35+-year old from Nevada).

Since we couldn't longboard we took interest in hiking. On the Second day we climbed what we perceived as the highest mountain Hvar had to offer. The hike took us about 2 hours and at the top we were treated with a remarkable view of most of the island.

After this exhausting hike we had to replenish our energy storage. With this in mind we went to Groda and ordered the Hvar town-renowned meat steak plate. A week of meat in just one night, that was a lot of protein! We literally broke a sweat by eating.

Enough about that, we are now waiting for the ferry to Ancora, Italy. We are going to go eat the wonderful Ceasersallad at pier here in Split. To sum up our stay in Croatia: good beaches, bad boarding, good hiking, bad clubbing and not a real good backpacking destination. However we loved it and we are leaving good memories and tanned skin.

Yours truely,
BoardEurope!

What? Statue Park? This is small country of Erde!

Ok so we just got back to our hostel after a 50-60 km board-outing. Exhausted and soon it's time to hit the bars.
This is what happened; We were planning to go visit the statue park of communist leaders. It's located in southwestern Buda and after calculating by the hostel maps we came to the conclusion that it was about 4km away.

We packed up our bags with water and compeed and started pushing. half an hour later we get to the train-station and know we can almost smell the moldy statues from the communist era. We keep pushing but there is no park in sight... After 20 mins we stop and ask for directions since we're completely lost.

A kind hearted man tells us our location on our map and tells us to backtrack and then take a left, we do as he says and after an awesome hill, that kept us rolling for 10 minutes and god knows how far, we come to a ducati store and decide to get our bearings since we have to be close by now.
The storekeeper goes "What? Statue Park? This is small country of Erde!" You'd think there would be borders or at least a sign.

After being lost for about an hour we decided to give up on our plans on the statue park I mean how exiting can a couple of statues be eh? And pushed in the direction we thought was back towards Budapest. That was 3 hours ago. Phew now I'm almost sweaty for writing this much so quickly Sebastian is pressuring me to go out. Well we're off, next time you hear from us we're hopefully writing from Hvar, Croatia! TOODLES

P.S If landyacthz is reading, I'm pretty sure we got you at least 1 new customer here in Budapest, people stare their eyes out on us as we roll down the streets and about 3 hobos have tried to ride em. But seriously we talked to a father who was thinking of buying his son one for his birthday!

BUDAPESCH

We've got some terrible news readers... we cant use sebastians phone to upload piccies, at least not while in Hungary schmungary. We tried blogging the first day review but since it ain't up yet we can conclude that our methods do not work :(.
Anyhow I'll just have to write it again. So after arriving to budapest airport and reading in the lonely planet guide that Hungarian people all try to scam tourists we quickly judged a kindhearted man and almost blew our shot at some fine metro tickets which he was trying to give to us for free. All we can say is that lonely planet is wrong, hungarian people are all very kind and helpful, the only ones who're out to scam yah are the expensive tourist traps around the main street.

Ok so after arriving to Budapesch and rollin down some fine streets the rain started pouring, there wasn't much else to do except start downing beer (15 kr / pint).

When we came to after drowsing off in a pub we ventured over to the Green
Bridge hostel and were pleasantly surprised as to how clean it was and what good standards the rooms had.

After an awesome nights sleep we woke up to a sunny sky and were quick to eat our noodles and whip out the evos for an unforgettable ride along the banks of pesch. After 10km we had our first pit-stop at a private club, since we were foreigners they let us in even though we were sweaty and smelly. After a cold one and a crazy bus driver, who blocked us on purpose, we headed home. Now we know, Budapesch is city sculpted for longboarding.. Wonderful. Tonight we head out to party on a boat, its supposed to be reeeal hawt..

Landyachtz: Official Sponsor of Board Europe

We want to welcome aboard Landyachtz who has kindly chosen to support us with boards for the trip.

A big thanks to Mike at Landyachtz!

Le Tricolore - Footage from France

Today I head back to a snowy and cold Sweden...

Feels annoying to do so but at least yesterday I got some cool footage. I found this really amazing hill, ca. 2km from the top to the bottom and a slope of about 10%..

Very nice, I like..

Ps. I look a bit shaky and that's because a few minutes before this was filmed I gave the good ol' asphalt a visit. We exchanged some road rashes but otherwise we are still on good terms...

Finally in France

After 13 hours of traveling last Thursday I finally made it to the Cote D’azur.

Yes the trip got messed up and delayed and no it should take that long time from Sweden to France.
The plane company messed up as usual, but at least I got here.

Anyhow, the first thing I did was to strap on my randals on my good old motion board and I just now came back from some rad carving in the neighborhood. Feels good to finally ride and the weather is nice. From -15 in Stockholm to +15 in Nice, a welcome change!

Today we launched the updated and improved version of the site with an external photo gallery and some other new goodies such as a new team page were you get to “meet” us (hopefully some more info will added soon). We’ve also decided to engage ourselves in charity. Please check it out (http://www.justgiving.com/boardeurope) and if you can, please donate!

The Garage : Revamped

If you guys enjoyed the jazzy happy-time edit of the garage footage by Sebbe, here's a version I made to some more "epic" music. Hey, I'm Patty by the way, I do some media here and there for these dudes (check my logo!). Anyways, enjoy!

P.S. I've made a few blog changes, to make the videos bigger. Enjoy!