On the way...: Hitchhiking to Spain.. Stopem do Španělska

EN

I don't remember when but the idea of hitchhiking had been there for some time. It started to have some real picture about a month ago with desire to be in Karma Guen at the end of September with all our friends and as well considering my account situation. Than we talked with Aniko and found ourselves in similar situation with actually ever wanted to had tried it. Was not sure though because of different conditions so we left it open. Tree weeks later we met again and at once it became clear we were going to do it. And we got soooo excited!
Several days after Im in Salzburg at her place and we are planning our adventure for next days. On Saturday we set us on the road, starting with her colleague, Rafael, taking us to Munich. Lovely weather and company, interesting talk. First real hitchhiking is at a gas station in Munich periferie. Slowly we are writing our sign LINDAU, CH and standing on the road before the station. After 10 min a driver is taking us out of Munich at another gas station. She is amazing, pretty, open, nice and excited about our plan. On top of it she gives us her home made honey, literally . We are just more amazed. This station turns out to be not the best to hike in our direction. Several guys, basically beautiful women, want to take us but are driving other directions. We're eating, moving on the road before the station. Later Im going back trying to ask around the station and Mcdonald nearby. Aniko is on the road. A van from SK is appearering and I'm rushing to give it a try. Turns out it goes exactly our way, to Zurich. But it's long distance taxi and it's up to passengers if we are allowed to join. They are so nice (or we look so desperate ;-)) and taking us. And the whole way, can you imagine? Young lady visiting her sister, older one her daughter and young driver Matuš is the crew of this car.

Matuš is leaving us at a gas station close to Bern around 11pm. It's smaller one, we see some muslim families and two pretty "social workers" but acctualy it doesn't feel scary. Interesting. After Aniko calls me down to relax (Im imediately starting to plan how to get next driver) we have a lift with young lovely couple from Bern, returning from luna park. Christian and Lea. They drive us to bigger resting place closer to Bern. Here after 15min and several tries Aniko is noticing an approaching car with hungarian plate and is joyfully running for it. The driver is bit confused but going our direction and agreeing to take us. Soon we are hearing that Hans is Swiss living in Hungary, having hungarian wife. After while he begins to open and we are having nice chat. Stopping at gas station for coffee and we are invited for a typical french sweet - something like doughnut dough with chocolate cream filling.. delicious! Hans drives us to the french border and we already feel like good friends.

Its two o´clock in the night and we just started to write down our direction when Lisa is stoping her car to pick us up and drive us next 30 km on her way from work. She is charming young french lady and open minded as well. She has already done quite few things in her life including hitchhiking we are sharing and exchanging our excitements and experiments. She leaves us at the beginning of one of french motorways - one has to pay so the barrier let ones go trought. We are bit discussing and ending up cca 50 meters behind at the side. It doesn t take long and older french bussiness man stops and takes us to next petrol station. He looks more upset how can we be so stupid to hitchhike in night at such a place but we dont speak much with our poor french. The petrol station turned out to be absolutelly abandoned. We are having coffee and little snack considering what is the best to do now when the only person around - french sympathetic saleswoman - is walking out and starts to chat with us. Somehow this time we manage even with our poor french and after a while she is offering us her car for sleeping till she is working with means next two hours. Since its 4am and we are quite tired and nobody is around we are happy to accept it. So first official "sleep"..

Saleswoman wakes us up and very early nice young girl as a single driver appears. We are asking her for a lift and she is very kind, polite and even going to Marseille which means quite some kilometers for us. With Duňa we have another really intersting talk about poverty and richness, dreams, freedom, our families and jobs.. simply typical girls talk ;) This way the road is quickly running behind us and soon she lands us at a huge petrol station close to Orange. Its morning beautiful weather in southern France - just imagine that - yes, its great! We are deciding to have a breakfast and slowly look around. Here I notice already for second time during our moving from station to station a guy who looks like a truck driver and it somehow feels like I have to ask him for the drive. He is spanish and heading to Spain and despite my poor spanish we are somehow able to comunicate. He doesn t have two free places though. Im thanking him not thinking about it any more.
While we are finishing our breakfast a hippie like car with a young couple catch our eyes. Aniko goes to ask them and is coming back with somehow not clear information - they are going our direction, but not so long distance maybe - is it worth it since we are at such a advantageous place? And they have just some place in the back of the car (something like renault Berlingo is it I guess).. but after some more minutes the guy is coming to us that they gonna give us a drive and we can see they are remodeling their bags and even the seats appears. Cool. Aniko has been sure there is a hippie car taking us on our journey and here we are! It really feels like nowadays hippie car - even with the all coloured sticker "peace" in the car. Marie, beautiful young french girl and Stew, Finnish sympathtic young guy. They are heading to a family farm to help there for a couple of weeks and learn how to cultivate plants and take care about cattle. Hippies take us quite a distance in the end and we are parting with them at another huge petrol station before Béziers.
After several steps at this station Im noticing the same truck driver like already two times before. Waving him we have to laught. As we are crossing our way we communicate a bit and to our big surprise he is acctually asking if we still want to have a lift and in the same time trying to explain us that he is not allowed to have more than one person next to the driver in the truck. Still he seems to want to help us and Im sure this is not coincidence. I haven´t been looking at drivers around so far. Daniel, Dany, is our angel. In fact he is really risking his job taking one more person on the board. And he has two lovely daughters, Carmen and Daniela, with the younger one only two months old. Dany goes all the way trough Spain down to Alméria with the truck and than by his car to Motril, where he lives. And he agrees to take us all the way long if it doesn´t get complicated. With a truck it means max. 90 kph and regular breaks. Still it might be quicker than trying to find other drivers down to Malaga.
Dany is simply great man. Amazing person with a big heart. He treats us very politely, we can rest in "his" bed while he is driving, offering us snacks.. later on we have "dinner" together (sharing our baggetes, bread, cheese and salami) and sleep with him in the cabin, with me and Aniko lying down in the second upper bed there. It´s acctually really saving us because outside is raining the whole night. Dany let Aniko has her morning cigarette in the cabin - because of the rain - although he doesn´t smoke etc.. really unbelievable! The last part of our common journey he drives us with his car to Motril. It´s fast exciting drive trough Andalusia since he is a good driver who can finally speed up :D and is explaining me some interesting facts about places we are passing by. Our communication has been not perfect in fact quite an efford from both sides but it has not discouraged us. Eventually he drives us to bus station in Motril - since it is getting late we decided to take a bus for the last part of our way to Velez - Malaga. We are saying goodbye and cannot express the feelings of gratitude, friendship, admiration and little sadness that it´s over.
Here finding out the bus is going only to Torre del Mar and in one hour we are shopping tabacco and beer, siting in the nearby park chatting and having rest. Later on taking the bus. In Torre del Mar we it is turning out that there is no more bus going to Velez - Malaga that day. Aniko is calling to Karma Guen (its already not so far away) and Im still trying to catch a lift hitchhiking on the road. After while a old Spanish man although he seems to be quite unsure about his decisioun to stop and take us :D its not far though and soon we are in Velez - Malaga. Normally from here Karma Guen shuttle picks people up. We call there, finally talking to somebody who manages the shuttle and in next 15 minutes Thomas is here and pick us up. We arriving to Karma Guen around midnight on sunday night. It took us two and half day to get there... and it totally worth it!

CZ

Už si nepamatuji od kdy, ale nápad stopovat tu již nějakou dobu byl. Asi před měsícem se začal formovat do určitější myšlenky s touhou být na konci září se všemi přáteli v Karma Guenu a také s přihlédnutím k pohledem na mé konto.

Pak jsme se bavily s Aniko a zjistily jsem, že jsme obě vlastně v podobné situaci a obě jsme chtěly stopování vyzkoušet. Nebylo to ale v tu chvíli jisté, jelikož jsme okolnosti byly dost nejasné, tak jsme to nechaly otevřené. Za tři týdny později jsme se opět setkaly a okamžitě bylo jasné, že do toho jdeme. A obě jsme z toho byly natěšené!

Několik dní poté jsem u ní v Salzburku a plánujeme naše dobrodružstí na příštích pár dní. V sobotu jsme se vydaly na cestu, kterou jsme začaly s jejím kolegou Rafaelem, který nás vzal do Mnichova. Kouzelné počasí a společnost, zajímavý rozhovor. První “doopravdické” stopování je na benzínce na okraji Mnichova. Pomalu píšeme naší ceduli LINDAU, CH a stoupáme si k silnici před pumpou. Asi po deseti minutách nás jedna řidička bere ven z Mnichova na jinou benzínku. Je úžasná, krásná, otevřená, milá a nadšená z našeho plánu. A jak vrchol toho všeho nám dává doslova svůj doma vyráběný med. Jsme z toho jen více ohromené. Tahle pumpa se ukazuje být ne zrovna nejlepší volbou pro stop naším směrem. Několik lidí, převážně krásné ženské, mimochodem ;) , by nás rádi svezli, nicméně jedou jiným směrem. Dáváme si jídlo a přesouváme se k silnici před stanicí. Později se vracím, zatímco Aniko stopuje, s úmyslem pokračovat s ptaním se na benzíně a vedlejším McDonaldu. Po chvíli se objevuje dodávka (myslím Renault, asi Trafic?) se slovenskou značkou a já se k ní ženu zkusit štěstí. Ukazuje se, že jede přesně naší cestu, do Zurichu. Jenže je to něco jako taxi na dlouhé trasy a je to na “pasažérech” jestli se můžeme přidat. Jsou tak milí (nebo my vypadáme už tak zoufale ;) ) a berou nás. A to na celý zbytek jejich cesty, chápete? V autě je mladá slečna navštěvující svou sestru, starší paní svou dceru a mladý řidič Matuš. Matuš nás zanechává na benzíně blízko Bernu kolem 23h. Je to menší pumpa, padá nám do oka pár muslimských rodin a dvě pěkné “sociální pracovnice”, ale necítíme se ohrožené. Zajímavé. Poté, co mi Aniko přiměje se uklidnit (okamžitě začínám plánovat jak najít další odvoz) objevuje se odvoz s kouzelným mladým párem z Bernu, kteří se zrovna navrací ze zábavného parku. Christian a Lea. Odváží nás na větší odpočívadlo blízko Bernu. Tady asi po 15ti min. a několika pokusích vidíme auto s maďarskou SPZ a Aniko se k němu nadšeně rozebíhá (Aniko je maďarka ;) ). Řidič vypadá zmateně, ale jede naším směrem a souhlasí, že nás vezme. Brzy se dozvídáme, že Hans je švýcar žijící v Maďarsku, kde se oženil se svou maďarskou manželkou. Po chvíli se rozhovoří a vzniká moc milá konverzace. Zastavuje na benzíně na kávu a zve nás na typický francouzský zákusek – něco jako koblihové těsto plněné čokoládovou šlehačkou.. lahodné! Hans nás odváží na francouzskou hranici, kde už se loučíme jako staří přátelé.

Jsou dvě hodiny v noci a my akorát začaly psát náš směr, když zastavuje Lisa, aby nás nabrala a odvezla dalších 30km svým směrem. Je to okouzlující mladá francouzska a také velice otevřená mysl. Jelikož již ve svém životě také prožila a zkusila různé situace včetně stopování, vyměňujeme si naše nadšení a zážitky. Zanechává nás na vjezdu na z franc. dálnic – kde musí člověk zaplatit, aby mohl projet zkrze závoru. Po chvíli rozvažování končíme na straně silnice asi 50m za závorami. Netrvá to tak dlouho, zastavuje nám starší francouzský “bussiness man” a bere nás na další benzínku. Spíš vypadá naštvaně, jak můžeme být tak hloupé a stopovat v noci na takovém místě, ale díky naší chabé francouštině se moc nebavíme. Pumpa se ukazuje být absolutně opuštěná. Dáváme si kafe a malou sváču zatímco uvažujeme, co je momentálně nejlepší další krok, když jediná osoba, která je poblíž, sympatická franc. prodavačka, vychází ven a začíná se s námi bavit. Nějak to tentokrát zvládáme i s naší chabou francoužštinou a za chvíli nám nabízí své auto k přespání než jí skončí za skoro 3h práce. A jelikož jsou asi 4h v noci, jsme dost unavené a kolem není nikdo, s vděčností přijímáme. Takže náš první officiální “spánek”..

Prodavačka nás budí a chvilku po té se objevuje mladá slečna, sama v autě. Ptáme se jí na svezení a ona je velmi milá, zdvořilá a dokonce jede do Marseille, což pro nás znamená docela pěkný kousek cesty. S Duňou máme další velice zajímavý rozhovor o chudobě a bohatství, snech, svobodě, našich rodinách a pracích.. prostě typický ženský drb ;) Takto cesta rychle ubíhá a už nás vysazuje na veliké benzínce blízko Orange. Je ráno, nádherné počasí na jihu Francie – jen si to představte – ano, je to prostě skvělé! Rozhodujeme se dát si snídani a pomalu se porozhlédnout kolem. Tady jsem už podruhé zaznamenala, během našeho pohybu z benzíny na benzínu, chlapíka, který vypadá jako řidič kamionu a nějakým způsobem mám tendenci se ho zeptat o svezení. Je to španěl a jede do Španělska a i přes moji chabou španělštinu jsme nějak schopni se domluvit. Bohužel nemá dvě volné místa. S díky se obracím zpátky a už o tom více nepřemýšlím.

..pokračování brzy..