Who are we?
Meet BLEPS and its founder, Liz Effenberger
“We” is still a big word. Behind BLEPS, there is Liz Effenberger. Originally from the South of France and in love with travel from a very young age, Liz has roamed France and Europe, and more recently Southeast Asia and South America.
Curious by nature, she finds in her travels another definition of normal, through learning about new cultures and new ways of doing things.
Discovering new cultures, other ways of living, other ways of thinking: all experiences that have led her to question what she had always taken for granted.
Over the years, these experiences have done much to shape the person she has become. If she had to sum up what travel has taught her, she would talk about freedom: the freedom to choose who you want to be, far from labels. But also about spontaneity, openness to others, and the chance to meet people who would otherwise probably never have crossed her path.
Her first solo trips were immersive stays with host families in Ireland and then in Germany, driven by the desire to learn English and to perfect her German.
Later, she found herself moving to London for a year. Her job regularly took her around England, and she discovered new places off the beaten track. Brighton, Manchester, Derby, Northwich, Swadlincote: she got to know a great many English towns and villages that year, going as far as the Highlands of Scotland and Loch Ness, near Inverness.
Back in the French capital in 2025, Liz kept on travelling, and kept on longing for new ways to do it. Her trips turned to lesser-known towns, in an effort to get away from popular destinations. She broadened her knowledge of France by discovering Berck-sur-Mer and the Baie de Somme, the Morvan, Champagne-Ardenne, Strasbourg, and the list goes on.
Liz was often asked, “Where are you this time?” Anyway, you get the idea: she has travelled a lot.
She also often organised weekends with her friends, and enjoyed spending hours hunting for unusual destinations, suggesting itineraries and bringing her different groups of friends together around her passion.
Long passionate about travel, but also about organising, she decided to make it her life, and to try to change the norms and the way we do things when we travel, so that we come away with an even more personally meaningful experience.
And so it was in September 2026, after a summer spent walking the Karst mountains of Slovenia and trekking in Peru and Bolivia, that she decided to take the plunge.
BLEPS was born of one wish: to question our travel habits, to encourage curiosity and to give everyone the means to discover destinations and experiences they might never have thought of.