From barbed wire to bicycles

It has seen tragedy, division and icy stand-offs: The Iron Curtain split the continent in half for decades. But what used to be a European nightmare may just be about to be turned into a biking aficionado's dream.

It is a high-flying project: a cycling path stretching over a distance of 6800 kilometres, winding its way through 20 countries from the Norwegian-Russian border in the North to the Black Sea in the South. Macedonia and Bulgaria have officially acknowledged their interest in t...