Travelling from Estonia to Spain and back, covering about 8000km altogether, passing through Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany and France - it's not the easiest trip to take. Try doing it by hitch-hiking all the way and by never staying the night in some hotel, but always using alternative ways.
"Alternative ways" like sleeping in the woods, near the highway side, in the ditches, couple of meters away from Polish gas stations, on top of the mountains, or under apple trees, and there's still lots of room left for imagination.
To Germany, please
Thumbs up and to the highway side in hopes that some car will pick us up and give us a ride, maybe just 10 kilometers, but it would still be a movement. Our trip started from Pärnu, the summer capital of Estonia. Pärnu is only about 70km from Latvian border. However, our trip still had a rather unfortunate beginning as it took us over 7 hours to get out of Estonia, not to mention the last 12 km that were passed on foot. Just to give you some food for thought it was about 30C outside, the sun was shining brightly, and we were carrying about 20kg bags. Not a very encouraging beginning or what?
It's not easy to hitch-hike for the first time and make the first time a 8000km trip. It was just so for me and also for a friend of mine, so we weren't really wondering why we sometimes have such bad luck on the road.
The Survival Trip
France, 10am in the morning, temperature is 40C, we were given a ride by some French guys who were on their way to a rave party in Switzerland. At some point, they discovered that they needed to turn away from the main road and put us off so we could go our way. We were put off basically in the middle of nowhere on the highway, no gas stations around and nowhere to hitch-hike. Our water supplies were almost finished and we had no idea where to go. We started going along the road, the sun shining right on our heads, and we had to walk over 20km on the highway side just to find a gas station where we could buy some water to survive. Once we managed to get to some town it was already evening. It was Saturday and to our *nice* surprise all the shops and gas stations that we managed to find were closed, not to mention the pubs, bars, etc. Finally we managed to find a hotel where we could buy some really expensive Coca-Colas. We were quite dead at the time, but fortunately the next day we found the little town very beautiful, even though most of the shops, etc were closed.
Good old Spain
We crossed the Spanish border on our 12th day with a nice English lady who was travelling together with her son in order to move to South of Spain. We left them about 70km from the French border, in L'Escala. Finally in Spain, it was a great feeling, we felt like in heaven as our goal had just been achieved. We took some beers, enjoyed ourselves for real and stayed there for 4 days altogether; we didnt have any need to go any further, to Barcelona or any other place. The feeling was just fabulous. We were in Spain, we were alive, our passports were still with us and even the German police hadn't stopped us for any other reason than just to ask for our identification or tell us not to walk on highways, and that's good, really.
This article was first published in Oriental Morning Post in Shangai.
"Alternative ways" like sleeping in the woods, near the highway side, in the ditches, couple of meters away from Polish gas stations, on top of the mountains, or under apple trees, and there's still lots of room left for imagination.
To Germany, please
Thumbs up and to the highway side in hopes that some car will pick us up and give us a ride, maybe just 10 kilometers, but it would still be a movement. Our trip started from Pärnu, the summer capital of Estonia. Pärnu is only about 70km from Latvian border. However, our trip still had a rather unfortunate beginning as it took us over 7 hours to get out of Estonia, not to mention the last 12 km that were passed on foot. Just to give you some food for thought it was about 30C outside, the sun was shining brightly, and we were carrying about 20kg bags. Not a very encouraging beginning or what?
It's not easy to hitch-hike for the first time and make the first time a 8000km trip. It was just so for me and also for a friend of mine, so we weren't really wondering why we sometimes have such bad luck on the road.
The Survival Trip
France, 10am in the morning, temperature is 40C, we were given a ride by some French guys who were on their way to a rave party in Switzerland. At some point, they discovered that they needed to turn away from the main road and put us off so we could go our way. We were put off basically in the middle of nowhere on the highway, no gas stations around and nowhere to hitch-hike. Our water supplies were almost finished and we had no idea where to go. We started going along the road, the sun shining right on our heads, and we had to walk over 20km on the highway side just to find a gas station where we could buy some water to survive. Once we managed to get to some town it was already evening. It was Saturday and to our *nice* surprise all the shops and gas stations that we managed to find were closed, not to mention the pubs, bars, etc. Finally we managed to find a hotel where we could buy some really expensive Coca-Colas. We were quite dead at the time, but fortunately the next day we found the little town very beautiful, even though most of the shops, etc were closed.
Good old Spain
We crossed the Spanish border on our 12th day with a nice English lady who was travelling together with her son in order to move to South of Spain. We left them about 70km from the French border, in L'Escala. Finally in Spain, it was a great feeling, we felt like in heaven as our goal had just been achieved. We took some beers, enjoyed ourselves for real and stayed there for 4 days altogether; we didnt have any need to go any further, to Barcelona or any other place. The feeling was just fabulous. We were in Spain, we were alive, our passports were still with us and even the German police hadn't stopped us for any other reason than just to ask for our identification or tell us not to walk on highways, and that's good, really.
This article was first published in Oriental Morning Post in Shangai.
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