It’s been a crazy adventurous tour. We already went through 12 countries, drove almost 6000 km and danced with around 200 people on the way. And all of these in 16 days. But this is the end only for the first part of our tour. We will take a break until August when we plan to go to Bulgarian, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Moldova, Ukraine and few more other on the way.

We had so much fun so far. People all over Europe were so willing to SMiLE and dance with us. Totally amazing! On the way back, after Slovenia, we passed through Hungary again. This time we met with the huge Balaton Lake so we decided to go for a swim. Soooo refreshing. We really needed that. Nice grassy beach, calm sweet water and benches to sit on right in the middle of it (check the pics

Now we are back home resting and readying for the concerts we have in the near future. Missed the Modiwian guys, rehearsals and of course live concerts. We’re preparing a SMiLE concert tour so stick around. Fun things are bound to happen

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

Venice left a watery mark in our memories. And generally, travelling Europe made us discover new and new things. After Venice, in the evening we found an empty field where we could drive and call it a night. Far away from all the city noise we could admire the clear sky full of stars and… tractors. What? Yeah… tractors. What do you mean? I mean in the morning. What happened in the morning? Well.. after a sound sleep we wake up in a sunny morning far away from the highway, but right in the middle of a tractor way, so probably the ‘agriculturals’ had a a good laugh and talk of the day. But yeah… aren’t we used to that

Ljublijana was the last city on the first part of our SMiLE tour. It was a short and sweet visit. Actually it was a record stay of one hour. Took our pictures, did our video and on we went.

And yes, we still have 1000 km to get back. We’ll be passing Hungary again, but this time near Balaton lake which I think we’ll pay a visit. Tomorrow we’ll have our conclusions drawn and our last bath on the way. Don’t miss it. Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

Venice is a spectacle, a multicolored joy for the eyes. It was our first time there so knew only the bits and pieces we heard from others and seen in pics. What we didn’t expect was it to be … an island or more like it… many small islands. Venice proper is very small. You need to go over a looong bridge/road kind of thing. The 4-lane highway takes you over there and all of a sudden just… ends. We were shocked. 200 m after Venice begins, all roads end. We thought we just don’t know our way around, but we finally understood that Venice is a walk only city. Duuuh!

So yes, when you need to get somewhere, you take a Taxi; a boat taxi that is. Everything is alive in Venice. From the Gondolas floating down the ‘streets’ of Venice, to the narrow walkways with tall raggedy buildings, to the laundry hanged on the balconies, to the small cute restaurants with romantic ‘mariachis’ playing on the moonlight. It all takes you back to the times when things were simpler; people walked instead flying, shouted from one balcony to the other instead of using cellphones and rowed their way to work

We danced all over the place. I mean literally, almost. We just went and danced wherever we felt like it. People were checking us out and having fun and few joined or waved at us, SMiLEed and had fun. Although the heat was over the top and could barely take a step without sweating, we managed to get very nice shots of the surroundings. We will let you in on a few right here below

We are getting ready for the grand finally of the first part of our SMiLE tour, so be sure to check us out tomorrow also. Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

We must admit that we are very excited about Switzerland. Such a nice area. Yesterday we passed our day driving through the mountains, heading towards Venice. It was really great change of scenery from all the highways we had so far. Still it was quite difficult, cause as you might remember our GPS broke down, so we are left with google maps only So, we made it the old fashioned way!

The Alps were the ones that really got to us. They are soooo majestic. We tried to catch on photo their mood, but really no description will do them justice. Sustenpass road took us up to 2500 m high with the peak at 3500 and still guys were biking up there. And not any kind of bikers. The daredevil ones Over 60 years old guys and gals riding like in their teens and waving at us (see pictures below). The temperature shock was crazy. We slept at the bottom of the Alps in Interlaken where the beautiful lakes and amazingly, the light bugs made it for a magical night for us. The temperature there was almost + 30 degrees C. When we got to the top of the pass, the snow was SMiLing at us at a freezing 0 degrees that found us in shorts and t-shirts.

Another amazing thing about Swizerland is their capacity of diggggging. Maaan I can tell you now…they know how to dig. There were so many tunnels through the Alps that left us breathless. But the craziest one was an 18 km long tunnel going right through the heart of the mountain and getting you on the other side without having all the serpentine road and stuff.

There are so many nice things to say about this place that it would take us few blogs. Still, we will let you admire de few pictures we took and we’ll leave you hanging until tomorrow when Venice is next on the list.

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

You feel the change as soon as you enter Switzerland. There’s something totally different about it. Maybe it’s the Alps, maybe it’s the cows grazing everywhere, maybe it’s the black cats that oddly sit in the middle of the fields (really we saw 4 of them in different places). In any case, Bern was … different from anything we’ve seen.

We didn’t know much about it so no idea what to expect (did you know that for few years Einstein used to live here. See our pictures below We were surprised by how cute this city it is. 125.000 inhabitants for a capital is quite little but that makes for a very personal experience. The town resembles a very medieval city with a wide and deep river going right through the center of it all reminding one of Venice with it’s water to the windows. People’s fun was to just go in the fresh blue water and let themselves go downstream at a big speed. The funniest guy had an extendable rope (maybe bungee) tied to a 30 m high bridge. Holding onto it, he was taking his surfboard and going down the river until the rope was tight enough to pull him up stream and start surfing. Really cool stuff.

Also our SMiLE dance was special. We found about 8-9 guys on some 2 wheel stand-up scooters, which were happy to drive around us while we played our song. It was so cool. All of a sudden we were again the center of attention of tourists which gathered around us thinking that it’s some organized show or something.

So Bern was really fun. We took a lot of pics. Check them out below. Next stop… yeah baby… Venice. Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

I personally consider that Paris is the most touristic city in the world. I cannot think of another city that has more history, spectacular architectures, famous locations, dynamic life, palaces, writers, painters etc., than Paris. Wherever you go, you accidentally run into something really famous. As we went in the city we met Moulain Rouge, then the Chatelet, Arc de Triomph, Champs Elysees, Louvre, Versailles, Eifel Tower, the Sena, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Bastilla, Picasso Museum, etc etc. And these are just few of the most well known places. It’s craziness. Everything (at least in the center of Paris) is art. Doesn’t need to be a famous building, still has so much to say.  So, if anyone has a better proposition for the most touristic city in the world, please write in the comment section below

Another thing that seemed interesting about France is that it was a return to the ‘known’ kind of civilization: the people on the street, the shops and boutiques, the architecture and even the toilets….hurray… again we don’t need to pay to go in This is a sign that we are on our returning route from the first part of our western European SMiLE tour. We are officially on our way back. Honestly we already got used to living in the van. It’s really quite fun. One discovers uncharted territories of their own characters; the nomad part. But we’ll leave this for a special post.

Returning to Paris, Gianina was our fun guide. She bought us ice-cream, danced with us and even backed our project on kickstarter. And the whole Paris tour was exhausting. There are soooo many cool places to go to that we had to make hard choices which places to leave out. But I’m sure we’ll return someday and finish our visit. All in all it was a great day full of nice people and SMiLing faces.

Next stop: Bern. We don’t know much about this city, but we are sure we’ll have some great fun. Swizerland, here we come! Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

Everybody looks for a reason to SMiLE. Really! It’s so simple. Throughout our travels we noticed that even people who didn’t want to be filmed or for one reason or another didn’t accept our invitation, all of them SMiLEd when we described our project.

Brussels wasn’t an exception to this. We visited the amazing Atomium which is a huge, shiny… atom Lots of tourists around and after we danced with some Turkish guys we wanted to take some extra footage for the video. This caught the attention of 2 other groups of people (one from Brazil and one from Congo) who immediately volunteered to dance and have fun with us. Very unexpected and in the same time full of life and energy. We got lots of SMiLEs from everybody, so Brussels turned out to be one of the friendliest places so far, although it was cloudy and sometimes rainy.

But it’s also the city where our GPS broke down. So now we are all on the ‘old fashion’ medieval, classical maps Lucky we do have internet and can access google maps and stuff otherwise we would be busted We are already in the amazing Paris, but we’ll leave everything about it in the tomorrow post. Loooots of pictures and cool stories. Catch you later. Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

Probably all of you heard something about the Greek or Turkish seaside. And yes, we will get there soon also, but personally I never heard anything about the Dutch seaside That’s why we wanted so much to take a look. And… here we are.

We won’t keep you much on the blog today because we are waiting for wind to stop and gonna jump in for a swim. What we can already say in that the sand is incredibly soft and many seagulls trying to stay afloat on the winds.

The soup is already cooking on the Primus stove we got from our friends Coco&Mihai (thank yoooou!!!) and we are ready for a relaxing day and looong night sleep. Catch you tomorrow in Brussels. Until then…

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we SMiLE and dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

750000 people living in Amsterdam and around 900.000 bicycles. Yes, correct! More bikes than people. Statistics say that in the center of the city 48% of traffic movement is by bike. And really that’s how it is. Cars seem like a very secondary way of transportation. EVERYBODY rides their bikes: from children to over 70 years old people. The scenery is amazing. Huuuge bike parking places all over the city. Check out our pictures below.

There are so many to be said about a city like Amsterdam that it’s difficult to comprise in such a small blog. Looks like a cute northern Venice really. So many canals and boats and buildings coming out directly form the water. We’ve seen the Rembrandt Museum, Van Gogh Museum, funky medieval windmills, abstract outdoor huge statue galleries, electric cars plugged in the streets for recharging,  and last but not least, the Rijksmuseum with a whole tone of amusements, where we also filmed our fun dance for SMiLE.

The big metal AMSTERDAM letters, provided for us the perfect place to start the SMiLE candidature. And indeed there was no scarcity of people. It seems that wherever we go, when we start dancing, everything becomes a show and people stop around to watch us having fun. Often time they invite themselves in and join the craziness. Some Spanish girls started climbing the letters, dancing and waving to the camera and a Belgium father and kids family started doing the cabaret, while  a Philippino girl came in, dancing with a cardboard written on it ‘I love you Paditu’. Indeed… it was a wild day, full of surprises and energy.

We leave you now contemplating on the below pictures while we close in the North Sea where we will be spending the night and part of the day tomorrow swimming and relaxing for a while. We’ll come back with news from the seashore. Until then…guess what???

Just SMiLE !!!

And listen here to the song we dance every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.

Today on the menu, road trip: 700 km from Berlin to Amsterdam. After a nice rest and dance in the capital of Germany, we are ready for a loooong journey to our next group SMiLE. We are so excited to finally meet Amsterdam! But until then, we had to pass through Potsdam, Hanover and many other cities until we finally entered the small and coquette Netherlands. Everything here seems so neat and tidy and … chill. Cute highways, cute cows grazing the green-green fields and really nice towns and cities.

About 90 km from Amsterdam we decide to call it a day, so we pull over in this sweet town entitled Apeldoorn Everything so clean and organized. Nice little brick houses, lots of bike lanes, cute tiny outside window shades that made everything seem like a fairy tale. The sun was setting in the far horizon and our stomachs were growling in the more near vicinity And as the story goes, a fairy tale pizzeria was on our way, so we followed our instincts to have a pizza party night. And of course, the fairy tale Monday discount prices were still in place, so we paid a preposterously 10 euros for 2 medium veggie pizzas that you can see in the pictures below. Yummy or what?

All in all, it was a Funday (not Monday): we drove through nice places, we ate in parking lots, hiked in some random forest near the highway, ate some wild raspberries we found around, had ourselves a nice pizza party and readied ourselves for the BIG day tomorrow. Amsterdam here we are! Full bellies, ready to SMiLE.

Until then… Just SMiLE !!!

… and listen here to the song we dance and SMiLE every day

If you like us don't forget to check out our website at Modiwo - World Music Band.