Hitchhike

We don't even need to write that we like adventure. We're the kind of people who prefer experiences to possessions. One summer day, we spontaneously decided to take a trip to Romania - we hadn't been there yet! With this hitchhiking, the destination wasn't so much important as the journey itself. Along the way, you meet countless new people, (almost always interesting) situations and also get to know each other more, how they react to certain situations that come your way.

So the first longer hitchhiking trip was Romania. This Carpathian state inhabited by wolves, bears, Balkan people or vampires tempted us in style: Jihlava - thumbs up. Disembarking on the eastern coast of Constantia. Thumbs up - back in Jihlava.
Sounds simple enough, but this route of three thousand kilometers is not the least bit easy. Summer means high heat, which attracts sweating, the smell of feet and armpits. The sweating evokes a stench in many people and the only way to wash off is the river. There may be a spare T-shirt in your pack, but when you plan to go that far, you don't want to be carrying a 20-pound cross-body on your back.
You get up from the early hours and you don't start sleeping in the forest until late at night. Being attacked by wild dogs, chased away with sticks, and hearing howling at night (perhaps only from dogs) - this is also part of the Balkans.

You can't fall asleep in a car with people who stop for us. Because caution is paramount and you also want to return the person's hospitality and have as much fun as possible. It's worth a golden maze to get along with a Romanian teenager who prefers to speak only his own language.
Before we set off, we couldn't tell anyone in our circle that we were going to explore Romania in this way. They would have thought, "Gypsies! Crazy roads! They'll cut you up somewhere and rape Veronika!"
Well, we wonder where the crazy dirt roads are, through this old part of the Ottoman Empire. We're looking for gypsy ghettos where we'll get robbed, and Veronika is most interested in when the rape happens...

On the contrary, the Romanians have been very kind, hospitable and friendly to us. For example, a truck driver stopped us somewhere in the woods in the morning and invited us to a delicious breakfast. Homemade sausages and cheeses filled our stomachs, and with a heavy-handed reprimand we even devoured his story about the country he lives in. The Turkish trucker regales us with tales of his travels through Europe and his almost temporary residence in a parking lot, his travails on the road, and his family deep in the heart of Turkey.
The Iranian family won't give us a ride - not, perhaps, because they are afraid, prejudiced against dreadlocked Europeans, or put off by our smell. The only problem is the capacity of the car, which is filled to the last seat. They feel sorry for us, and to help a little and express their warm hospitality, they buy us watermelon, water, biscuits, bananas,...

In a few days, we will indeed reach our goal. We pass the Constanta marker and when we sit on the headland, we've done it. At that time we are still smoking, enjoying a cigarette here, enjoying the view of the Black Sea and surprisingly not saying a word. All that is running through our minds is the experience, the outrageous tiredness, but also the huge relief. The silence is broken after a while by Luba's sentence: "Well, we are halfway through... "

Cigarette smoked, a fleeting photo snapped and we set off to hitchhike back to the heart of Europe. We are in Jihlava in exactly seven days and enriched by this experience.

After Romania we are enjoying a bit of peace, but our thumb is tingling and we are thinking about a longer track again. Since we have a friend in Barcelona, we decide to visit her. In the Iberian Mountains lies the tiny state of Andorra, which we will include in the "itinerary" for this event.
The trip is a little longer than the previous eastbound trip, but the result is quite similar. Again, seven days on the road and lots of experiences. It even almost happened somewhere in Germany that the supra-racy English persuaded us to end up in Middlesbrough instead of Andorra.
Along the way, we keep a note of how many people we took and put our notes with them so that even years later we can remember who we had the pleasure of meeting. Here we write down just some of our heroes who weren't afraid to give us a ride:

Philosopher, Hippie with a car full of wood, Sanitation worker, Metal worker with a son, Girl with a sunflower, Sonia from the industrial zone, Guy with pink shorts, Guy who makes watches, Muslim, Offroud Patrick, Black handsome, Savior Pascal, Hippies who work in the circus, Sister, Health mother, Russian, Camion Alex, Doctor from Barcelona, Group of Frenchmen, Modern Hippies, Artist + Builder = Fracek, Asshole with Braces, All Tattooed, Theodore with Glasses, Couple with Dogs (Pirates Singer), Curly Girl, Band Boy - É BARCELONA, Black Guy with Kid, Soldier Cook, Fan Dad, Parisian, Old Frenchmen, World Bud, Romanis Girl,. ..

If you found yourself on that list, thanks for the ride and I hope you're not mad at the momentary sticker you were assigned in the rush.