Waltzing Barefoot in Bratislava

Congratulations Slovakia, a new high, promoting wine drinking to children!

So, I have another sidebar post, and its only because so much seems to happen all the time, that it is hard to keep up, is it me, or do world wide bums have amazing experiences?
It all started on the 26th of August, a few gross things occurred, which I won’t mention in this blog…as…well, what happened was just plain weird. The hostel I am currently working at allows room for me to make a complete fool of myself, which I tend to take advantage of, and do so in the most extreme ways…
It was another pizza night, and Mariska had made sure to buy plenty of wine for me to sell, as always out of a frying pan…its my gimmick, and works well, especially if I’m a drunk mumbling fool, more people tend to buy wine. Long story short, I had gotten a few stuffies from “Manchester” to loosen up quite a bit…quite a lot actually…thats the other part of the story I would spill…
Anyway, one thing led to another, and I ended up drunk, running around barefoot, with a Guy Fawkes mask on (I acquired this at the Istanbul Protests in June). Before I knew it, Mariska and I were running barefoot through Old Town Bratislava. Two to three tourists ended up taking our photo, I as a masked Mr. Fawkes, and Mariska as my host and speaker.
As we were returning towards the hostel, we ran into a couple of Scottish men that were staying at our hostel. Somehow, we began talking about dancing, and one of the men grabbed Mariska, and whisked her away, twirling her about in a Waltz. I began to stare in awe, as I have never seen a man do something like this, and before I know it, I am taken up in the second man’s arms, and twirled through the square. I felt like I was floating…
There was a man sleeping on some fancy bus that was for one reason or another, parked in the square, and we woke him. Instead of what I thought would turn into a yell fest, he saw us Waltzing, and decided to help by turning on his headlights, which became like two spotlights on us, drunk, barefoot, and twirling on an empty Bratislavan square at 2 a.m.
I slept soundly that night, knowing that I had finally achieved some sort of class…

Just a Sidebar: Confessions of a Frustrated Hostel Worker

Me selling local Bratislavan wine out of a frying pan.

I would like to interrupt my story to put out some information about hostel workers, as this is what I do when I decide to stop hitching for a while, I stop at a hostel for a month or two break from the road.
1. Hostels should be nice to their workers, don’t abuse us, and take advantage of us (I am talking of my personal experience with a hostel owner in Romania).
2. Hostel workers can be extremely fun people, ask the people from the hostel I am currently working at…last night was weird to say the least, but I had quite a good time.
Although we seem fun, and completely cool, we do have time off, whether its just a few hours a day, or a whole day off, its our time off! Please don’t assume that just because we are hanging out with everyone that it is okay to sit there and ask us a bunch of questions to do with working.
3. DON”T assume that its okay to sit and watch us sleep, waiting to run up and ask one million questions as soon as the first signs of consciousness appear…If I haven’t even had my first thought of the day, or haven’t even sat up in bed yet, why do you think it is okay to do this? There is someone working, sitting at the desk waiting for these questions!
PLEASE, when staying at a hostel, don’t assume everyone is working all the time…
that’s the end of my rant!

On to Venezia (Venice)!

So, after much pain and annoying bus driver issues (apparently no one knows anything about their own city) in Rome, I finally arrived at a highway heading out of Rome, towards Venice. Most hitch hikers know to not get n the highway itself (no autostopping allowed in Italy on the highway, or the “Autostrada” as its known. I had to walk up the on ramp, and discovered that there were many splits in this particular chunk of highway, which because hitcher’s purgatory, as you will stand for many hours, since no one knows your true direction.
I walk a bit along the highway, and find a better on ramp, which I exit, and head on down to where it is legal to hitch. It’s about 7 p.m. and the sun is setting, which is not a good thing for me, being in this particular spot, I begin to search for places to sleep just in case, before it gets too dark.
It just so happens that I have parked myself across from a small restaurant, full of pitying boys. They call me over, sit me at a table, feed me a panino and water, and I return again to my spot. I am at this spot for about 15 minutes more, when finally, someone pulls over and lets me know they are headed to Firenze (Florence), which is what my sign said, (basically to hop distance to distance, most wont pull over if you give a city name an incredible distance away, they wont even stop to just bring you that direction.)
I hop in the vehicle and in my tiny amount of Italian and lots of sign language, I find that this is a university teacher. He takes me to a restaurant on the side of the road as we are traveling, and although I have recently eaten, there is an unspoken rule of “eat whenever you can, you never know when the next meal will come.” While eating, he draws a quick picture, explaining what he is thinking. He invites me to sleep at his home in Florence, in his children’s room, and will return me to the highway in the morning, I agree, as there are no uncomfortable vibes from this guy. At this point in my travels, I am relying heavily on intuition alone, so I figure, I will be more wise when this traveling business is over, and pay attention to my intuition more often.

The grove outside the university teacher’s home.

The next morning, he takes me for breakfast, and drops me at a perfect hitching spot outside of Florence, Italy. It is about 8:30 a.m., and the weather is amazing. I don’t see any reason to rush, so i sit on ol’ blue, my tent, and begin writing in my journal, attempting to catch it up, even with all that has happened in such a short period of time, I have a hard time catching up.

Italian vineyards at 8 a.m.

It is heating up fast, and I would make a guess that it has already become about 30 Celsius, and so, I believe it is time to begin sticking my thumb out. An innocent looking, overweight man pulls over and offers me a ride to Bologna, so I jump in, and we weave in and out of the mountains, until we reach the spot at which he drops me. The next driver takes me about 5 kilometers to a completely horrible, horrible spot. It is here that I stop and think “One year ago, I was in Alaska, building a banya (sauna) for the Russian family I was living with. At this time, I thought I would be settling down soon, I believed I was happy, and had you told me that in one year, I would be in the middle of nowhere in some Italian field attempting to hitch hike, I would not have believed a soul.”
It sure is amazing how much changes in such a small amount of time.

Italian Hitchhiking Adventures!

So I believe it was August 1st (seems like forever ago, but was only 7 days ago) I entered Italy via hitchhiking. There is a rule in Italy about truckers driving at certain times on the weekends, and so, if I had waited with the trucker, 30 km outside of Rome, I would have been waiting for over 24 hours. I decided it was in my best interest to head out, at 7 pm, with really no money and no exact place in mind to sleep. So I thank the driver, and grab my pack, walk 100 meters, and stick my thumb out. It couldn’t have been five minutes, and someone already pulled over to pick me up. His name was Marco, and I’m guessing he was about 35 years old.
He told me he was from Naples, but only going to Rome to stay at a friends apartment for the weekend, then to head back to work (he owns a photo book binding company). So off we headed to Rome, and I explained my situation. He called his friend, and I was invited back to the apartment to clean myself up.
I get a shower in, and get dressed, and am invited for dinner, my first real Italian dinner. I am asked what I would like, and thinking that we would all share a pizza, I say I will eat whatever. Basically what happens is that we each have our own pizzas, and at this point, I have only been eating once a day for a month (the whole time I was in Romania). So to even think about eating half a pizza is too much for me. I try, but quickly learn a new rule: If I can’t finish my plate, I have to invite one person to help, if they cant finish it, I have to. This is crazy.

After a long walk and heavy eyes, we get back to the apartment, and I crash on the couch. I feel safe, and full, and happy, amazed at how quickly my life has changed.
I am awoken the next morning and told to be ready for the beach. I rush excitedly, since it has been so hot, and I could use a relaxing day. We spend from 11 am to about 8 pm on the beach, I gain a great tan, and lots of good rest. When we leave, we head to an amazing fish restaurant, and I stuff myself silly, knowing that this may be my last meal for who knows how long.
I am almost right, the boys feed me in the morning, danish and coffee, and take me to a hostel, that a friend I had met in Istanbul just happened to be staying at. The boys shook my hand, and put some money in it for the hostel, I thought only enough to cover one night, but when I went to pay the cashier, I saw that they had given me 100 Euro, and I still pray that they have good karma for all that they had done for me.

Leaving Romania/Hitchhiking Nonsense

So on July 29th, I packed up my stuff in my brand new backpacker’s bag, and began to head out into the great unknown…that is until after 10 minutes of walking, my first strap broke, and then I realized I had accidentally thrown my train tickets in the McDonald’s garbage at the train station…just minutes after buying them…lets just say, the workers ended up dumpster diving, as I was no longer at the station.
Okay, attempt number two, I decide my laptop is weighing my backpack down, so i buy a smaller backpack for it…then the zipper on the bigger pack breaks in half, impossible to fix. I’m really not off to a great start! Finally after feeling like I am about to “turtle” (fall on my back from the weight) I finally make it on the train.
On the 30th, as we are entering into Belgrade, Serbia (my destination) I attempted to grab something out of the smaller back pack, the zipper broke on that as well, and as I began trekking the two mile uphill (no joke) road to the highway in Belgrade, one strap tore off the smaller backpack.

Now, all of this seems to be full of bad omens, but, turns out, its better to get all the bad out of the way, that way the rest of the trip will be good, in theory.
Anyway, I get to the motor way, and my main objective is to hitch hike (or Autostop) to Plitvice Park in Croatia. So the first driver picks me up, after waiting for 1 hour, I don’t seem to be off to a great start. He takes me 5k, and I begin to wonder if the rest of my tip will be full of pitfalls and shortcomings.
I get to the truck stop that the driver leaves me at, and I slam my pack on the grass, sitting and having a hard time breathing, partly from me being out of shape, and partly the heat…as well as the bag being just too damn heavy. Before I know it, a guy sits his pack next to mine. “You in the same boat as well?” I asked him. And yes, he was, only not so deep, he was just hitching back home to Poland. I told him my destination and he referred me to a trucker that was headed there. The trucker seemed nice enough, he was old and Serbian.
We made it to Croatia, all the while he is paying for my food, he didnt have to, and I told him as much, but I guess he was glad to have the company. As we began to sneak up on Plitvice in Croatia, the driver says “One kilometer to Plitvice, or a few hundred to Rome, Italy, your choice.” And so, as he was slowing down to let me out, I yelled out “Rome!” so off we went, to Italy.