Teruel → Brno

prior to even going to teruel i checked potential hitchhiking spots in the city and i found a repsol gas station on the main way out and already towards the edge, so i thought it might be a good idea to try our luck there. we did have lots of luck with amazingly friendly manager of the company, who even wanted to give me water for hitchhiking on the spanish summer sun, while Aga was there, trying to talk to people. eventually, also considering his advice, we moved further to another gas station, which was already outside of the city, where allegedly people were going to refill and go further out. it was true, in principle, however they didn’t allow us to ask people directly, so we decided to just walk to the entrance and hope for the best. there was a super wide shoulder, so we thought eventually somebody would pick us u, either for direction sagunto or zaragoza, altho we hoped we’d find a straight ride at least to castelló, since we already anticipated that the turn would be hard to make. we quickly got an offer but it was for somewhere close, so having had bad experience with such risk taking options, we decided to stay and wished them all the best. the next car that stopped was a lift to agunto and they dropped us on the highway entrance where i had hitchhiked 4 years before :D. i never thought i’d be on that place again. it was a couple of iranian guy named Reza and a spanish woman, a valenciana. they both used to travel a lot, he also hitchhiked, so he was happy to pick us up =)

so we made it there and put ourselves inside the traffic circle, with a nice shoulder, right on the entrance to the autovía, which we deemed the best possible thing to do in the given circumstance. people were waving this and that, the sun was burning, we were optimistic and hoping for the best. eventually we were so tired that we decided to go under the highway bridge and eat something, sit down for a while and just escape the blazing summer sun for a while. surprise surprise, we were looking for a clean spot to sit down when one guy asked us in english where we were going and that he could take us to castelló after he’d take his van to the company store and unload some furniture. we were shocked how things turned out and it was true that, as Aga likes to point out, when we take break the magic happens. so we continued with Nacho, a firefighter from castelló, to his company and left for castellón in his van. there, in the hq, he took his car and went back to valencia, where his wife gave birth =). he dropped us on the area de servicio de castellón, which fortunately for us had a bridge, so we crossed and tried our luck =).

it was still pretty early when we started, less than 9 pm, however we had no luck whatsoever, which was for me a big shocker. i expected to make it to france, frankly, the same day, once we were on the mediterranean highway. the gas station worker, who was about to finish her shift, gave us some food before she left. we had conversations on how nice it was of us that we were clean and spoke fluently the language, unlike many hitchhikers, who wear used clothes and don’t bathe. so she said that if they get a lift we would also (eventually, haha). we slept on that very same rest area and only in the morning, after some waiting, vicente picked us up on his way to vilafranca del penedes. if only i had contacted gerard before so maybe we could have stopped there :P. vicente never contacted me when i gave him my phone number; maybe i mistyped it or something, who knows.

we had the honor that Marcelo Cairo himself picked us up and we obviously had no idea who he was till he told us he was in the spanish national sailing team in the laser category. i have to say this chap is a very humble and nice person, doing his best in both sports and studying. glad to meet you, Marcelo =)

and we were again on porta de barcelona, hadn’t been there since january this year. we started hitching and got picked up by a french couple who also met on the internet :P. he was a coldier in the french army and she a receptionist, which is what i do at the present moment =) they were about to pick up somebody on blablacar in la junquera, thus we stopped on area de servicio de emporta, since we absolutely had to remain on the highway

i didn’t even see he wasn’t either spanish or french, so i talked to him in french, for unknown reason. he actually knew good french, so when he started talking where he was going, we quickly found another way of communicating. unfortunately i don’t remember the name of this swedish phenomenon anymore, but i remember well how much of a great guy he was =). with i believe 22 years of age he was traveling round europe by car, on his own, and cycling mountains downhill. i was sitting behind, sleeping a lot, while Aga was talking to him extensively. he wasn’t exactly sure where he was going, however he could only help us this much, since we were heading north and he was for sure heading east.

on that rest area we took quite a long break, also because we met a german hitchhiker named Leo on the same spot, so it took us some time till we told each other our stories and exchanged our worldviews a bit =). we took that time also for eating and at some point he went to sleep in forests behind the gas station, while we went to the entrance and started looking for a ride. we also met those nice french together with their blablacar client, which after all was a big anime plot twist :D

we stopped on tavel sur, where we hoped we’d be able to continue, which wasn’t the case, and we were dissappointed because it was still pretty early when we made it there. we took some nap and a shower, which we needed badly. i thought the woman gave it for free because it was dirty and only later on, talking to the portuguese trucker a few travels later i learned that actually it was for free bc there was no warm water. haha. we were picked up by a father and his daughter, going to look for some rooms in lyon, where she was about to start studying.

while we thought we were fucked as we got dropped just before lyon, we actually were on the one and only highway towards north, which goes thru the center of the city, so no big deal. there was another hitchhiking girl, in a shadow with no vest, so i wonder how was hitchhiking for her, since at some point i lost her out of sight, that’s we didn’t see her when we were picked up. one guy helped us out, when he was on his way to his brother and my lousy french turned out to be useful as he only knew that language =). he dropped us on aire de service macon-st albain, which also has a bridge, so it’s useful to know it =)

we took some break, i was very tired, and we moved from the gas station to the exit but people were still able to stop safely. we were about to go to metz and then to germany, however Carina offered us a ride to besançon and basically it was exactly where we were heading to, that’s the shortest way to czech republic. i sat behind, agin, and the ladies were left on their own to talk as they pleased. this time we were also lucky to find somebody who spoke fluent english =).

we met some polish who were about to take us to the border with germany, however we were reluctant, since we knew what it looks like and actually being by besançon we were already close and thus it couldn’t have been a long ride anyways, so we hoped we’d find somebody who’d bring us deeper inside germany. right when she was talking to those polish, i was approached by an algerian man who said he was going to mannheim, so it was the best possible ride we could have possibly gotten at that moment. with my lousy french we got the deal and we boarded his europcar rented van, and then he went to pray on the nearby lawn. while we were sitting there and considering our decision and i told her it was going to be fine, the polish guys rushed there and offered their ride again :D. we were obviously thankful for their care for us and their willingness to do us a favor, however the algerian man was about to help us much more and so we stayed. talking to him was quite a mental excercise for me because in reality i never speak french and so every word and those bunch of words one would call sentences were quite hard to put together xD i tried tho and it somewhat worked. on the way tho came the biggest anime plot twist. he stopped and said he’d eat, so we went with him and were about to eat our modest food. he insisted on buying us something, so we looked for the cheapest possible thing. it wasn’t good enough, so he insisted on buying more and he simply ordered the clerk to keep adding things. ok, so i asked him if he’d like a café and rushed to the coffee machine to buy him one. when he realized what i did he ordered the cash register clerk to add the coffee to his bill and he gave me money back. so we had an abundant lunch and frankly we were embarrassed by his good will because he spent a fortune for us and gave us a ride, which would have been perfectly enough. it was due to islam, he said =)

i walked round a bit and i saw that a bus driver of an empty bus was just about to leave after he refilled, so i quickly asked “direction nürnberg, two people, please”?, he waved us to jump onboard and off we went :D. we didn’t talk and he just dropped us before the city, but it was that we advanced from the place we thought we’d spend the night on, so we were more than happy with the lift and we also managed to sleep for a bit =)

as soon as we started we got a ride when one young guy approached us and said we could go with him. Aga fortunately sat, again, on the front seat, bc they soon found out that they both were polish, so they spent the time talking and i was resting calmly behind =). as we waited for nothing more than 5 minutes, we thought that soon we’d be in brno, haha, what a good joke that was, we later found out.

my first time hitchhiking in czech republic. it was nice to get a big coffee for fraction of the cost of that one in germany and the gas station workers were nice, so i thought it would be smooth. after all we had relatively short distance to do since the country is fairly small. so we got picked up by a smiling and very nice attitude man called Martin, who barely spoke english, so we tried speaking in turns, using slavic esperanto for what we could make up :D it worked and we laughed a lot at each other haha, it was indeed funny and we spent nice time together =)

we were so tired that we took a nap on the tables that were behind the gas station and only after two hours really started seeking rides. we were optimistic but when time was passing we were slowly losing hope, when one polish trucker offered us help. he was going to poland but knew of a gas station with bridge on the prague ring, so since we were desperate we said we could give it a go, as from that gas station everybody was going to prague. i have to say that we never ask truckers when in two since we don’t want to risk anybody’s job

we managed to cross, it was pretty easy, just some walking, so we ended up on a seemingly good spot (highway d1, km 5), and we hoped we’d now get a ride quickly. at the end of the day, our reasoning was, brno lied straight down and it was the second biggest city in the country. we were on the link between the two capitals, so to say, and there were no turns in between, so we hoped for a straight ride. boy were we wrong. we got picked up fairly quickly by some moldovans and i was even stupid enough to ask if we had to pay, to which the woman said it was 10 e all together, which was still pretty reasonable.

we were further picked up by Peter, who spoke great english and was a hitchhiker and did travel the world, so it was a great person to talk to. i have to admit tho that i was so tired that a few times i fell asleep and i only hope he failed to notice it, since it happened due to exhaustion only. i always feel sorry this is the case. we also learned by then that we should forget about long rides and instead advance to the next rest area if need be. which it was, so to say. we also met a curious punky named Jirrie, who lived in france and was also hitchhiking in our direction. language knowledge, as he was czech, living in france tho, saved him, so he got a ride before us.

no idea where we were hitchhiking. we were picked up by an ex hitchhiker in his old škoda felicia who was of mixed slovak-czech origin. he was ready to drop us inside the city of brno, however we didn’t want him to make too much of a detour and so we just hopped off on some rest area before the city.

we thought that he was a gas station worker, so we asked basically for an advice on how to get inside. he offered us to take us there, then we only realized he was just a random person in a working suit, haha, so we finally were about to reach the so much wanted destination of ours. Nežka dealt that we’d be dropped in some mall. it was good because we had to buy czk anyways and from there we also had a free mall shuttle to pretty muc hthe city center =)