Discover, Money, Travel

2000 km hitchhiking around Europe

Firstly, we take a plane from Kaunas to Copenhagen for 5€. The offer was attractive… We took an one way ticket because we thought that it might be interesting to come back by the road and visit some cities along our way.

Day – 1 Copenhagen

We realized imediatly that this city is not suitable for our volunteer’s salary... In the city, everyone moves by bike, for us, it’s by foot. On our way, we meet Nicola, another volunteer in Lithuania who is Italian. With him, we visit the neighborhood of Christiania, a self-proclaimed “free city of Christiania” founded in 1971.

Day – 2 & 3: Hamburg
After a complete day hitchhiking and takin 3 or 4 different cars, we arrive in Hamburg, where our couchsurfing host is waiting for us. We arrived quite late, around 23 pm, but anyway he kindly opened his door. The day after we visited Hamburg and the harbour, wich is the largest in Europe!

Day – 4 & 5: Berlin
The fourth day of our travel, we wake up early to reach Berlin. We take some advices from the website hitchwiki” (website listing tips for hitchhikers) and then, we start to hitchhinke again. Luckily, we find a driver who is going directly from Hamburg to Berlin. He is a musician, listening to loud rock music, and driving an old Volkswagen T3. Music for the mood!


Arrived in Berlin early enough, we have time to visit a little before to join our host, a Polish girl who have made few years ago an EVS (European Voluntary Service) in Germany and who works now in Berlin. The day after we visit the city, we go to a museum (culture is important!), we walk in the streets (a lot!), we take sometimes the metro without paying our tickets and, of course, we get control and penalty … Anyway, after that, we pay every transport ticket and we finally reach the famous Berlin Wall by night.

Day – 6 & 7: Prague
Around 9 am, we start to hitchhinke. Unfortunately, we are not in the right direction to go to Prague … So we try somehow to get out of the city towards the south, but nothing works. We waited more than 4 hours before that someone takes us on the way. This car is going to Dresden, in southern Germany, with 2 men and 1 girl. We understand after many questions about Europe and about our European Voluntaring, that the second man is actually a member of the European Parliament.

In Dresden, it is already night when we arrive. We start to be a bit desperate, but after about 30 minutes, a car stops to bring us directly to Prague.
We arrive in the center of Prague so late that we decide to go directly to party in the old town to discover  the atmosphere of the city by night.

Day – 8 & 9: Krakow
For the 8th day, it is difficult again to get out of the city and find a transport to reach Poland from Prague. We first made a stop in Brno (CZ), and then we take a car going to Krakow, that we share with a Dutch hitchhiker. We have the same destination so we take twice the same car. In Krakow, we arrived very late, as usual, and we almost slept in the street because our couchsurfing host was tired to wait for us. Finally, he accepts anyway to host us in his flat. Good news according to the temperature outside. The day after, we visit the Auschwitz camp located near to Krakow.

Day – 10: Warsaw and Kaunas
This is already the last day of our trip. We leave Krakow quite late because I lost my phone the day before in a bus, and we move heaven and earth during hours trying to find it. The bus station’s information point does not have any information for us, the bus drivers give me the phone number of the company that I can call (if luckily, I had my phone of course …) and the public telephone works with a prepaid card, but nobody knows where I can buy it. Fortunately, my team mate is a very helpful Spanish girl (a little bit smarter than me!) who convinced me to stay at the location of the bus we took the day before. And … magic! She comes back from a bus with my phone in her hand!
Then, finally, we can continue our way to Warsaw, and then to Kaunas in Lithuania. As fast as possible because we don’t have other free days anymore.

After hours and hours on the road, all day, all night, we reach Kaunas. Tired but alive …

 

 

 

 

Standard

Leave a comment