We are Slava and Oksanka, a Ukrainian couple who found our own local adventure style — on the longtail e-bike nicknamed “Shark.” We are traveling through all 12 provinces of the Netherlands, seeking out off-the-beaten-path places. I capture them in photos and write travel reportages, while Oksanka talks to locals who approach us, drawn by our unusual bike, and reads every info stand I walk past.

We have lived in the European Union since 2020: first moving to Germany in pursuit of career opportunities, and then, after three years in Berlin, heading further west to the Netherlands to settle by the North Sea coast in The Hague.

Living in a foreign country means accepting that you are largely on your own, so we wanted to explore the surroundings on our own terms, intentionally focusing on solitary places rather than events with hundreds of people. This isn’t a starry-eyed celebration of the Netherlands, nor is it a travel guide. It is more of a documentary exploration of the country through the eyes of two Ukrainians seeking peace of mind and trying to belong somewhere without forgetting where they’re from.

If you’ve heard of street photographers like William Eggleston, Harry Gruyaert, or Saul Leiter, their photo books occupy the central place on our living room shelf. We draw immense inspiration from their raw, unstaged capture of 1950s–1980s street life, yet our focus is pairing photographs with historical context, exploring what happened in each corner of the country and what it means today.

There’s also Sofia Yablonska, a Ukrainian-French traveller who wrote three books about her journeys in the 1930s — long before “travel blogger” was a word anyone used. Maybe one day, our reportages will become a book or magazine, too.

This project was never a grand plan; it appeared naturally as we searched for a shared outdoor activity. I am a real cycling and photography maniac who will skip sleep to ride somewhere and wait an hour for a “perfect” photo. Oksanka is fascinated by local lore — the way people live, what they think, how they speak, and the history of the places we encounter along the way.

We cover 50 to 150 kilometers a day on semi-improvised routes, finding niche spots even locals sometimes overlook. From factory ruins and medieval castles to villages with unique dialects, prehistoric stones, dunes, and forests — it all makes up our journey. I mark these spots on a map; when enough of them gather in one area, we head out. Sometimes it’s just for a day; other times, we settle in for a few nights, either moving from place to place or staying in one B&B and venturing out in a different direction each morning.

People often ask us how far or how fast we go on our bike, not how much fun it is to discover new places along the way.

We both studied journalism at university, but neither of us ended up working in a newsroom. I still feel those years shaped how we see the world, even if the degree never turned into a career.

Steering isn’t something Oksanka can do on a bicycle, so instead of two separate bikes, we found “Shark” — one longtail e-bike built for two, with me at the controls and her hands free to navigate us, hunting for the best path on the map.

Somewhere around the second or third article, we asked ourselves whether this project should be more practical, with instructions and itineraries. It didn’t take long to land on the answer: we wanted to inspire, not inform, hence no checklists or rankings here. If you notice us skirting around big cities, that’s also intentional: we might ride within a stone’s throw of Amsterdam or Utrecht, only to veer off to a bunker ruin or a quirky art installation by the highway.

Our native Ukraine is vast, 14 times the size of the Netherlands. Growing up with that sense of scale changed how we view distance — spending a few hours on the road to get somewhere is completely normal. When we settled in a country of a compact size, sticking just to our city didn’t feel right. The entire Netherlands felt like our new habitat, right within reach. That’s why we want to explore it in high definition, moving past the souvenir-shop version of the Netherlands and getting to know it just as intimately as the cafe down the street.