Argophilia Travel News: Beginnings and Team

Bringing Eastern Europe closer to your heart. Sometimes we look at the world too.

“Argo” (Greek: Ἀργώ) was the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, who sailed in search of the Golden Fleece. The term “philia” means fondness or an extraordinary love.

Argophilia is an independent, volunteer-run travel publication.

Nobody on our editorial team is paid a salary for writing here. We are volunteers, brought together by a shared love of travel, storytelling, discovery and, occasionally, the irresistible urge to write about something that has annoyed, fascinated or surprised us.

Argophilia is supported by Google AdSense, which generates advertising revenue but, to put it politely, does not exactly finance a media empire. It pays pennies compared with the time and work that goes into researching, reporting, editing and publishing our stories.

We keep doing it anyway.

Why? Because we believe good travel journalism is worth doing, particularly when it means paying attention to places, people and stories that larger publications may overlook. Our contributors give their time, knowledge and experience because they care about what they write and about the places they cover.

Argophilia is, quite simply, a labor of love.

And perhaps that is fitting. After all, the name itself means an extraordinary love of travel.

From a Carpathian cottage to the world

Argophilia Travel News officially began on October 1, 2010, although the idea had been taking shape a year earlier in Romania. During a cold December in the Carpathians, beside the fire in a romantic cottage, Mihaela “Mig” Lica Butler and Phil Butler began imagining a publication that would bring Eastern Europe closer to readers around the world.

We were frustrated by the absence of an English-language publication devoted to the region, particularly one interested in the places beyond the standard tourist circuit. So we decided to build one.

The original mission was straightforward: find the stories behind the destinations.

From the beginning, Argophilia covered travel news, tourism trends, destinations, culture, history, technology, fascinating people, and the increasingly complicated relationship between travelers and the places they visit. We were particularly interested in the roads less traveled, the lesser-known destinations, the stories that did not fit neatly into a tourism brochure, and the details that made a place memorable.

Over the years, Argophilia grew beyond its original Eastern European focus. Today, we cover Eastern Europe, Greece, and destinations and stories from around the world, following wherever curiosity leads us.

Crete Is Home

While Argophilia continues to cover Eastern Europe and the wider world, Crete is now at the heart of what we do.

It is not difficult to understand why. We live here. Phil Butler retired in Crete, and the island has become our home, our daily landscape and an endless source of stories. As anyone who follows Argophilia on Facebook will have noticed, our coverage increasingly reflects that reality.

From Heraklion and Chania to the villages, mountains, archaeological sites, beaches, and remote corners of the island, we closely follow developments in Crete. We cover tourism, local news, culture, archaeology, history, food, people, environmental issues, travel developments, and the peculiar little stories that make life on an island considerably more interesting than a postcard would suggest.

Crete is not simply a destination we write about. It is where we live.

Led by co-founder Mihaela “Mig” Lica Butler

A civilian who received military training and worked in a military environment, Mig has a background in military survival, field training, reconnaissance, climbing and rappelling, endurance, and practical outdoor skills. Her training included wilderness survival exercises, navigation, emergency skills, and the kind of practical problem-solving that teaches you to keep thinking when circumstances stop cooperating. She has carried that mindset into her work as a writer and editor: observe carefully, question assumptions, understand the terrain, and figure out what is actually happening rather than simply repeating what somebody else says.

Based in Crete, Mig brings that same curiosity and field perspective to Argophilia’s growing coverage of the island, while continuing to follow stories across Eastern Europe and the wider world. Her aim is not simply to report where people travel, but to help readers understand the places they encounter, the people who live there, and the stories unfolding behind the scenery.

Mig’s approach to travel journalism has always been somewhat broader than simply telling readers where to go. She is interested in why a place matters, what is changing there, who is affected, what visitors are not being told, and what makes a destination genuinely worth experiencing.

That means Argophilia covers tourism news and travel developments, as well as local stories, culture, history, archaeology, food, destinations, people, environmental issues, and the occasional wonderfully strange piece of news that would be impossible to invent and would be a shame to ignore.

Argophilia has evolved into an award-winning travel publication while retaining the curiosity and independence that have shaped it since the beginning.

For Mig, travel journalism is not about producing another glossy list of places to visit. It is about making readers curious enough to look twice.

Why Argophilia?

Because the world is considerably more interesting than the list of destinations appearing on the first page of a booking website.

We are interested in the village behind the resort, the road beyond the monument, the local tradition behind the photograph, the person who makes a place memorable, and the small detail that suddenly changes the way you see an entire destination.

We like off-the-beaten-path places, but we are not romantically opposed to famous ones. Knossos is still Knossos. Santorini is still Santorini. The trick is finding something worth saying about them.

We also believe that local reporting matters.

When something happens in Crete, for example, we want readers outside Greece to understand not only what happened, but why it matters to the people who live there and to the visitors who come here.

That is why Argophilia increasingly serves as a bridge between local events and an international English-speaking audience.

A publication, not a travel diary

Argophilia began with a love of travel, but it has never been particularly interested in pretending that travel is always beautiful.

Destinations have problems. Airports have delays. Beaches have accidents. Towns have fires. Tourism changes communities. Archaeological sites have complicated histories. Weather ruins plans. Governments make decisions. Locals disagree. Visitors sometimes behave badly.

Those stories belong in travel journalism too.

We would rather tell readers what is actually happening than cover the world in another layer of glossy tourism language.

And when there is something worth celebrating, we will celebrate that too.

The people behind Argophilia

Argophilia has always been a collaborative project. Over the years, writers, photographers, explorers, technology enthusiasts, friends and family members have contributed their time, knowledge and enthusiasm.

Photographer and artist Jay Thomas has been part of the Argophilia story as well, including his work documenting some of the people and places that have become part of our visual history.

One of our contributors and friends, Johnny Courson, died in 2016. A father, grandfather, US Marine, footballer and fearless lover of adventure, Johnny remains part of the Argophilia story. The journeys we make and the adventures we continue to pursue carry his memory with us.

The publication itself has changed considerably since those first conversations in Romania, but the essential idea has survived.

Travel is not simply about going somewhere. It is about becoming curious enough to understand where you are.

That is Argophilia.

An extraordinary love of travel, with a little more curiosity than is probably good for us.

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Photo Credit: Team Spring Retreat Metochi Villas on Crete – image by photo artist Jay Thomas

In addition to our main team, we have a number of contributing authors whose biographies are available on their author archive pages and in the byline at the end of their respective articles. For questions regarding our content, please visit our Contact page.