I was all fresh after spending a perfect night in my tent on a sand dune overlooking the sea – it was a national park, so probably illegal AF… Walked through the forest back to the main road and after a fairly short wait a van pulled over and was going all the way to Kaliningrad, which was perfect, as I need to get all the way to Gdansk that way. It turned out to be a Marshrutka going from Lithuania. Almost everyone was asleep.
Nice older guy who talked a lot about the history of Kaliningrad and pointed out nice old German buildings along the way. Also pointed out a military base, which we passed by and which was insanely secured (signaling strips, armed soldiers, razor wire fences, electric wire…). In the end he went out of his way to get me to the border crossing. He showed me his military ID as I was about to exit the car and the guy was lieutentant! Also wanted to give me some money, but as I had a regular salary at that time, I declined. Great guy!
Guy in a small Polish truck, who was going to Russia pretty much just to get cheaper gas. The crossing took a while because it was a Polish border obviously… We talked about everything and the guy kept mentioning that he used to work with the customs agents, which I didnt quite understand. Once we finally got to the Polish checkpoint, he was directed into the xray (for cars). So the guy drove the truck inside this garage like building and went outside to tell the guards to run it. The guards didnt seem to care, so he knocked on their little window. Once the guard opened it (without a word), the driver said “One kebab please”. I started the laughing so hard, I almost choked. The Poles eventually managed to get the machine running and scanned the car along with some similarly unfortunate Russian family, who were also quite confused by the whole mess. After the xray, we were directed further to more detailed inspection and it again seemed like the driver really knew the guards. They went through the car without much interest and didnt find all the booze and cigarettes that hed previously stashed in all possible places :D Once we were finally out, we wished the poor Russian family luck and drove off. The guy said once again that hed worked with the officers, so this time I asked him “really, were you also an officer?”. The guy replied: “No, I was a smuggler. I even went to jail for it.”
Hitchlog
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