of wet snow, borders, porsches and other stuff

I said that I was going to try not to describe my travels but I think this time is worth it given the fact that it was close to hell to get from Kaunas to Warszawa.

The last time I hitchhiked with a guy was terribly slow, this time was no different. Although started quite good when we got a ride to Marijampolė. After that it was when hell started...

The first ride came after less than 30 minutes of waiting and off I was direction PL. This girl dropped me off before the turn off to the city. Bad place. After unsuccessfully trying I decided that I needed to move past the entrance. I just changed spot but the situation was the same. No one would pick me up. It was very cold. There was a petrol station nearby in which I had a coffee and after a short warm up break I went to the road again. It was getting darker and colder. I was beginning to scout for places to sleep. One option was going into Marijampole and send an emergency CS request the other staying at the petrol station because the lady employees were really nice. I was leaning towards the latter one which involved not going far from the road.

After I almost had lost hope of getting out of that God forsaking place a bulgarian truck driver stopped. I just got in. First, he said that he was going to take me to Suwałki but somehow changed his mind and dropped me off not even at the rest stop before the border. I got off the truck a few kilometers before! What the hell!? well, at least now I was only a few km from PL.

I got to the rest stop just as it was beginning to get dark. I was outside the entrance when this weird shit started to fall from the sky. In the air it was snow but when it hit the ground, or my jacket, it was water. I knew I've seen this weird shit before but I didn't remember how annoying it was and certainly I didn't remember it even had a name. One thing for sure: I dislike that wet snow.

One hour went by. Lots of truck drivers going in and out of the restaurant. Another hour went by. Lots of truck drivers going in and out of the restaurant. The only thing I had in my stomach was a bowl of chocolate cereal that Kristina gave me, an apple and a coffee.

Finally, after 5 hours of freezing my ass, of asking 735 drivers if they were going to Poland, I decided to crash inside the restaurant. I chose a table in the corner, the only one with a power outlet underneath to charge my phone. I ordered a tea and stayed there until the next morning. The employees were really nice not kicking me out. I even slept, very uncomfortably but at least it was not cold and wet.

Brand new day, brand new attitude. I immediately started asking everyone that was going or coming from a truck. Dafuq is wrong with these people? Why aren't they going to Poland!? 90% of the drivers where heading back to LT whilst the rest were not going to take me.

I decided to walk to the polish side. I crossed the lithuanian former border structure and right after it  I saw a polish truck parked and asked the driver if he could take us, he said no.  Walked a bit more and decided to go back to the LT side when two lithuanian policemen checking the driver / truck's papers. They checked my passport, saw that everything was alright and gave it back, then they left to annoy more people in another spot in the border.

30 minutes later I was on my way to Suwałki. Another half hour and a truck driver gave me a ride to Augustów. I wanted to ask him if he could use the CV radio to ask if someone else was going in my direction but suddenly I was in Augustów. There I found a ride to Białystok. I was praying not to get dropped at the beginning of the city. Once I had to walk across town to get to a good spot direction WAW. The other time at least I hitchhiked to the other end going back to Tallinn. This guy dropped me off at the other end of town, the perfect spot to reach Warszawa... I still have hope in the world :-) There I was confident that we were going to find a ride fast, who knows, even a straight ride!

After some 15 minutes I hear someone yelling at me, two guys that drove by and came back.  They were going to Ostrołęka. They gestured that this place was in a straight line to WAW. It was, through Łomża... I've never  taken this road before but it was too late anyway.

In Ostrołęka I was stuck for a while. I was already thinking about what to do if I don't manage to leave. Tea in Macdonald's and I had renewed energy and went to the spot again. 15 minutes later and I was on my way to the center of Warszawa.

Like when I went to the gathering, I only spent one night in WAW and off I was to Kraków. It took me several rides to get there but all of them were well worth it. All of the drivers were really nice. Never waited for more than 15 minutes. One of the rides left me on the side of the road before Kielce. Some road construction workers gave me a lift to Kielce but were super nice and drove me to the road leading to KRK. I was freezing. Had a coffee in some restaurant and after having a google translated conversation with the owners, the husband drove me to a petrol station... on the main road! I was about to put my stuff on the ground when a car stopped. A while later I was only 70ish km from Krakók. I was walking and thumbing at the same time when a Porsche Panamera GTS stopped. I couldn't believe it... and the driver was a girl! I have the photos to prove it. And she spoke a bit of spanish!

By the way, if anyone knows how to make an alias of a hidden folder or how to show hidden folders on mac, please help me. After I inserted the memory card in my friend's windows pc, all the photo folders are hidden. Immediately I looked for them in my mac but didn't work. The folders are in memory card limbo. The photos are there, somewhere hidden inside the memory card but unaccessible. Please help!

Wojtek, he drove me to Kaunas

old town in Kaunas

 

Kristina

Vasily

 

Marta 

Marta and her Porsche Panamera GTS

distances

One of the biggest mistakes I can make is to underestimate the distance between two places. I mean, Riga is not very far away from Tallinn, roughly 300 km. I was super sure that I was going to make it quite easy. I didn't. Well, kind of.

It was super hard to leave Tallinn behind. I wanted to leave at 7 so I could be at the (HHing) spot around 8. Nope! I started having breakfast around 8. I had all my shit packed and ready. I just didn't want to leave. Had one last cigarette with Liisa. I promise, I will improve my rolling skills so next time I will roll them in no time!

The hardest part about traveling is when you have to say "see you later" to the people you care about. Hard and I hate it! Why can't I take them with me? Why can't they just come with me? Sorry for the sudden burst of selfishness, it's maybe because I still haven't had my morning dose of caffeine.

Finally had the courage to leave. Manuel walked me to the bus stop. By the way, there were no controls, I was nervous the entire time! I was very anxious. A few times I've tried to hitch out of Tallinn but only once I was picked up. I had the help of hot blonde that time. This time is was the green haired, pierced and skinny me. A bit more than an hour later I was standing just before the turn off to Haapsalu. Finally! I succeeded, I managed to hitch out of Tallinn on my own! I was only 30 km away though. 

Another couple of hours and I was in Pärnu living my worst nightmare: getting dropped at the entrance of the city. About three hours later it was getting dark and I was already looking for a plan B in case I had to stay the night there. Thought about going back to Tallinn but doing that would mean only one thing: not leaving again. As tempting as it was I needed to keep going. The walk across town took two me hours. Half an hour later, Wojtek, a weed smoking polish truck driver was offering to take to 30 km past Białystok. Maybe he was just talkative, very talkative or maybe he was very high. Most likely the latter one. He had a gazillion stories to tell. He was in the middle of the storie when suddenly he stopped talking. "Wait, what was I telling you?". Are you fucking kidding me? You were telling me something 30 seconds ago and you already forgotten about it? he was funny as fuck though. At the beginning it was funny but then he kept smoking and we got to a point that it was not funny anymore, in fact it was scary.

Six hours later, a bit of salad and goulash I was in Kaunas.

I was more than sure that I was not going to make it to Kaunas in one day. I was even starting to doubt that I was going to make it Riga! Contrary to my own "rule" about starting early, this time I started late. I was still at less than halfway by the time I could had be in my destination if I had started earlier. But then in a turn of events, when everything seemed lost, when I almost had lost the hope of even leaving Pärnu, when I was thinking of logging into CS as ask for an emergency couch, everything changed. Not only I found a ride but that ride would take me to Kaunas, almost 600 km south.

To round up things, I'm staying in Kaunas with a wonderful host. In a few days I will hitchhike to Poland. I will not do it alone. I'm hitchhiking with a guy from Vilnius. Let's see how it goes.

(un)comfor(table) zone

Disclaimer: There is no right or wrong way to travel. People travel the way they please. I respect that. Please respect my own way.

When I was still living back home I used to frequent fancy pubs. Didn't mind a lot of spending lots of money in partying, gadgets, nice car. Went out practically every weekend. Then one day in 2008 someone introduced to Couchsurfing and it was then when all began to change.

During the year I hosted, traveled and hung out with CSers I met all kinds of travelers: week long holiday travelers. Foreigners wanting to learn spanish therefore staying for a few months immersing into the culture. Long term travelers staying in hostels and couchsurfing. These ones where the ones that really intrigued me.

They were traveling for months straight or even years. The key word they mentioned was "low budget". Many people in Guatemala save a lot (or use their credit cards a lot!) to travel. Then they go back to work more and start saving again, or to pay the debts they got into.

It took me a few years to finally leave my comfort zone. When I started to travel I stayed in hostels, not many but still. Well, only in Central America. In the States and Europe I have never paid one single night of accommodation. In the States I didn't hitchhike. I took trains, car shared and even flew twice.

Summer 2010. I met Jass in København and he told me about this wonderful place in Amsterdam: Casa Robino. There, I met more wonderful people and that told me about this thing called the hitchgathering. In the couple of pre-gatherings that I attended I met more wonderful people. One person in particular caught my attention: Tomi. When I met him he had been traveling moneyless for a few months. If he can, why shouldn't I give it a shot? I still suck at traveling moneyless but that was a turning point in my life when I decided that at least I was going to travel spending as little as possible. I quite good at it, except when it comes to booze and girlfriends.

I stayed for year in Estonia. I got quite comfortable here. Not that is anything wrong with it but it's just that I liked me more when money was the least of my concerns. My friend wrote that the comfort zone is inside your hear, like my happy place. In my case is not exactly like that. It's so easy to eat Macdonald's or go to Rimi to buy a frozen pizza... or two. A couple of days ago I cooked something for the first time in a few weeks. Cereal, sandwiches and pancakes from Knight House don't count.

I don't even know what I'm writing. I had my last shift last night. My last shift at Alur Hostel. my home for almost a year. I'm very sad. Timing sucks. Timing is shit.

I'm leaving Estonia in less than 24 hours. I think, I  hope that this small roadtrip to Portugal will help me  leave my comfort zone again.

Not sure how often I will post after I leave. For sure I will not write about the road itself but about life on the road. I will try not to describe the trip.

I have a long, cold road ahead of me. But people will make it warm. Eeer, that came out wrong, anyway, you get my point. I was hoping to start hitchhiking without snow but the first snow came yesterday.

There are no "goddbyes" but "see you laters"

new life = new haircut

A few months ago I wrote something about life being like a bad haircut. It actually is. 

Last week I decided I needed to change some things in my life. Later that same week I had an eye opener. Things needed to be done. I have improved myself since then, even though it has been only a week.

And yes, I have a new haircut that it's growing on me even though I only had it for about 24 hours. Or it just "don't matter no more".

Today is the day that I hit the road 4 years ago. I've changed a lot. Life has changed me, a lot. I'm far from being the same person I was when I left home. Home? Yankees have a saying "home is where the heart is". Where is home? What is home? I carry my home on my back, it's a 50L+10 Salewa backpack.  Who will I become in the next 4 years? I guess I'll find out in four years...

speaking of

...my soon to be fourth anniversary of being on the road...

Someone asked me if I was going to celebrate and said no. What's the point? I mean, I can go out to eat or (most likely) to drink any day. Instead of celebrating being 4 years on the road I should celebrate 4 years of not quitting and going back home. Now here I am, in Estonia having a free beer while attempting to write something meaningful and interesting (good luck to you!). Now if I end up writing something meaningful and interesting then that is something that I should have a drink to... or eight.

It was not long after I started my travels (long ago back in late 2009) when I was in Costa Rica finishing up what I used to call "the first leg of my travels": one month from Guatemala to Costa Rica (I quit dividing my travels into legs long ago, actually don't even remember when) when my couchsurfer in San José asked me how I funded my travels. I have to be honest, I started traveling with the insurance money after my car was stolen. I paid off debts and with the rest I took off. But the answer now is: I work every time I need cash.

I worked for what? three weeks in a Asian fusion restaurant that I'm not going to put up the link because for a change, they fucked me up not giving my last week's paycheck. It was not a lot but still. After I moved to North-Eastern Florida I worked for two (again) restaurants: The Burrito Gallery (you probably seen me wearing the Tshirt in some photos but now is probably being worn by some  motherfucking thieve) and The Uptown Market. I'm know for not particularly being a fan of the US but I knew that going there and working a few months would get me enough money to travel and it did for a few months. In my 6 month long stay in that country I worked a total of 3 non consecutive months and traveled for the other 3.

I was in Prague drinking my life away with the best and cheapest beer I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy. but I needed another job in order to be able to leave and keep traveling. By now all of you probably know that my main form of income is working in hostels (and now that we're into it, my main form of outcome are booze and girlfriends). But I also had so far other ways to make a bit of that precious item we use in this capitalistic world we live in, that necessary evil, that thing that unequally distributed among people, that... alright: money!

I was working my ass off between two jobs. It was around my second month in Prahaha (in Spanish only, sorry) when I needed another way to make more money. Talking about it with one of my colleagues he told me that I could take over his side job because he was not able to do it anymore. "What is it about?" I asked. "you will have to pose nude for a group of art students" he told me... So there I was, showing my naked and very boney body to some 20 czech students, some of the cute girls.  So far doesn't seem that bad and it actually wasn't except for the fact that the classroom didn't have heating!  What was hard was not to get the awkward boner because standing next to me was this gorgeous girl: long black hair, ocean blue eyes, tattoos - one just above her perfectly trimmed and pierced vagina.  Now you see that it was hard (no pun intended) to do the job? I actually made more money doing this than the money I was making at the hostel. I was able to save up all this and live (and drink) from the money I was making from the hostel. It was also hard to stand (or sit) in the same position for 45 minutes straight!

If I'm not working I try to at least not spend the little money I have therefore I look for work exchange positions. This is how I landed a bartending gig in the Nicaraguan Pacific. It was  Hogmanay, it's super fucking hot but it was good. I also volunteered or was enslaved by (the owner of the hostel I would later work in Panama City, Panama in which I also got fucked) in the small "mountain" town of Boquete. It was not that bad, I mean the town. There was this huge flower and coffee festival, didn't see any of the flowers nor the coffee but I saw a huge amounts of alcohol. This was earlier in 2012. I met some nice people like Mario, we met up again in Heidelberg earlier this year.

I also volunteered for two hostels in Colombia. One is owned by this nice dreaded German Couchsurfer married to a Colombian. The place was awesome, the people I met there were equally (or more) awesome, except for the Mexican asshole. I met Ilona and I visit her in Switzerland a year later. Anyways, it was not what I was looking for and I left. I found myself (along with the person I was traveling with) in the city of Armenia a few months later working in exchange of accommodation, (toast) breakfast and unlimited Colombian coffee, which is almost as good as Guatemalan coffee... almost.

But what I really wanted to talk about but I had to go all this way around the bushes is about my brief incursion into the Estonian (short) movie industry. Carlos, one of my colleagues is going to film school and got me a part as an extra in a short movie promoting an Estonian fashion designer. It was cool! Not only did I have my own scenes, you can see my arm once and my ass a few times, well my trousers filled with air given the fact that I don't have an ass! They even paid me for doing this! Certainly not a lot but I would've done it for free!

If you want to see my incursion into the movie industry click here: Ron's incursion into the Estonian movie industry from now on known as his 5 minutes and 47 seconds of fame even though he's not in the entire movie but who cares, he was in a fucking movie!

I guess this entire entry is also like an update of what I have been doing since "my three year anniversary". 

I've given myself a certain amount of time to re-evaluate my shit, I mean my life: where am I going. What am I doing? When am I doing it?. Nothing is keeping in Estonia, unfortunately. Big changes are coming. I have been here for almost a year, that's the longest I have ever  been in one place. My feet are starting to itch. I wanted to settle somewhere temporarily and I did. Many good friends of mine are already or are going to South America and even "worse" they all are asking me to join them down there! World Cup is next year in Brazil. Would be super awesome to party the hell out of Brazil with Alonso. Andre is about to hitch the boat to Colombia. Tomi is in lovely Nicaragua. Matt is going to be in Argentina sometime in March. Lempi's dream is to go to South America. Jass is looking for a boat soon.

It's going to be sad when I leave this place. Very, very sad. My happy place. Estonia became the only place I could call it happy place. I don't want to leave but I have to. I'm a traveller, that's what we do. Go places to fall in love with them. I'm not leaving now but I know that the day will come and is not very far into the future. But I know that I cannot be too far away from here. No matter where I may end up, no matter how far, how deep, I know, I will keep coming back here.

I feel weird. 

I've discovered that I'm a better writer (or less worse?) if I have a beer with me.

I still feel weird. 

No, I'm not drunk. I wish I was but I'm not. 

I just want a hug.

Don't know what to think.

What's wrong with me? A lot!

I want a puppy.