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The preparation of SUDELESTE 2007, the first of many
others yet to come, started with the definition of
our main goals and the drawing out of the trip,
always open to changes and, if necessary, last
minute improvisations (which did often happen). The
goals were:
-
Survive
one month on a budget of 350 euros
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To
hitchhike from Portugal to Slovenia in less a
week
-
To
hitchhike from Portugal to Romania and back in
30 days
This journey could not have been done if we did not
use the invaluable use of hitchhiking as half of our
main transport, and
couchsurfing as
half of our way to sleep and wash, always free of
any cost. However, the
couchsurfing
experiences during SUDELESTE 2007 brought us nearly
every time much more than a simple sofa to sleep on
and / or a bathroom with hot water. We also managed
to have lots of meals paid for us, available
computers and Internet, exclusive tour guides and
new friends with whom we had the pleasure to go on
beautiful walks, to have pleasant discussions and to
go out in bars and cafes to drink a cold beer or a
nice warm tea.
To
have a better idea of the trip we did during the 30
days of SUDELESTE, you can access the detailed map
by clicking on it:
The first day of SUDELESTE was marked by a
regrettable and unusual episode in Vilar Formoso,
near the Spanish border. There, we played to see
which of us would keep going in a lorry with just
two spaces, Ivo stayed to wait for the next ride, an
already planned situation and therefore seen as
natural to us. However, absurd was the behaviour of
the Spanish Guardia Civil when they were looking for
a Portuguese man wanted for assault in Spain and
when they took Ivo to the police station just for
hitchhiking at the very same place than the other
Portuguese man. This bad experience with the Spanish
police resulted in the premature abandon. Diogo and
Luís continued to the end of the trip.
From Vilar Formoso, we nearly went to Paris with a
Portuguese lorry driver who wanted to take us to his
final destination, Germany. But Germany was not part
of our plans, and therefore we refused; although,
the invite was not a big surprise, coming from a
Portuguese lorry driver who proved us he could talk
non-stop for just under 48 hours. In a solitary job
like he has, we perfectly understand the need to
have a conversation with someone and it is not a big
surprise that, after days of hitchhiking, a
traveller feels like some kind of ambulant
psychologist for desperate lorry drivers. In France,
we travelled in a Spanish truck driven by a Romanian
going south towards Spain, although our destination
was Italy. While we were driving on the highway, we
found a solution to that problem by asking through
sign language where another lorry driver was going.
Both trucks stopped at the next service station,
where we discovered that the other lorry driver was
also Romanian and that he was in fact going to
Italy. Perfect! Ionica, the name of the second
Romanian lorry driver, now more than a father figure
for both of us, treated us like adoptive sons, like
kings and like old friends. He bought us ice-creams,
coffees and beer; he made us Romanian meals during
the two days we stopped on an Italian high-way, he
even told us real-life stories… Thinking of our
comfort, he asked a Romanian colleague to park next
to his truck so that we could both have a good
night’s sleep. When we said goodbye to him, knowing
that our final destination was precisely his
hometown, Sibiu, he offered both of us 10 euros to
have a “coffee” in his town… An unforgettable human
being.
After
these fantastic experiences with all these Romanian
lorry drivers, we started to “hunt” for Romanian
licence plates, or Romanian drivers driving foreign
trucks. So, we got used to starting a conversation
with “Merge la Romania?”, which literally means “Are
you going to Romania?”. And it worked: in Italy, we
met a Romanian lorry driver who took us to a highway
exit near Postojna, in Slovenia where we waited for
our first
couchsurfing
host of the trip. And to start of, it could not have
been better. The couple, who was going to host us,
came to get us by car in the city centre and brought
us back to their magnificent “mansion”, where we had
a room and bathroom just for us. Nothing was
missing: great food, hot baths, internet, a big
garden with chaise long to relax, company for going
on walks or to go out at night, and so much more.
Perfect! Our last day in Postojna finished with a
free and live concert of a French band, called
Un Swing de R'tard,
whose saxophonist decided, after an interesting
conversation, to become a couchsurfer.
On the
journey from Postojna to Celje, though Ljubljana,
the capital, we discovered that hitchhiking is
extremely easy and fast, and it’s very common in
Slovenian society: you just have to write the
initials of a city (the same than on the licence
plates) for drivers to understand where you want to
go. In Celje (just passing through), we met a friend
who took us to visit the historical part of the city
and the medieval castle at the top of a hill, and to
see a beautiful lake.
In
Maribor, we were hosted by a very nice couple of
couchsurfers, who were “workaholics” and who left
their house in our hands 24/7. We had a laptop with
Internet connexion, a fridge and a larder; we were
allowed to cook anything we wanted, and of course a
bed and hot bath was ours too. Really good people…
Maribor was also the city where we learnt that the
delicious ice-creams, we bought in the street, are
made by the Albanian community, and where we enjoyed
a well deserved afternoon in a spa with a Jacuzzi,
different temperature swimming pools and even a
outside hot water swimming pool. Concerning the
surreal and unexpected meeting with two Slovenian
girls and two French couchsurfers, the best would be
to watch the
video
of that precise moment. It’s impossible to write on
paper…
From
Maribor, we hitchhiked to Hungary, with a Spanish
couple who left us at Siófok, where we were lucky to
see Balatón, an enormous lake which marks the
western landscape of Hungary. Then, we went to
Budapest, historical city we had to go and see, but
that did not suit us because there were too much
tourists in the main parts of the city and too dirty
and chaotic everywhere else, not forgetting its high
density of population. Clean and pleasant are the
endless corn fields on the Hungarian plains,
completed with the comfort of a really old and
nostalgic train which left us quite near the
Romanian border. Once we got there, and having no
other way to get to Romania, we had to walk 10 km.
The worst was when it started to rain after one
kilometre, and having no shelter. After an
exhausting walk, we finished by arriving at the
first city in Romania, Oradea, where we took a train
to Cluj-Napioca, the biggest city of the region,
that, as a great surprise, welcomed us with an
official
couchsurfing
meeting.
From
Cluj-Napoca, we went to Sibiu, city of the unusual,
starting with it being the 2007 European Capital of
Culture. Culture is always found everywhere,
interesting or not, but what we saw was a city with
typical problems of Romanian Transylvania: social
inequality, unemployment, low quality of life,
destroyed or old fashioned buildings. For the “magic
arts”, the city centre reminded us of western
superficiality in every window and lamppost just put
up the day before; and, the cost of life and
lifestyle, completely different than North Romania,
is obviously imposed by the purchasing power and the
influence of the tourist market of the main Central
European countries: cultural neo-colonisation… The
list of unusual things goes on. Staying in a house,
hosted through
couchsurfing,
that was being redone and without the minimal living
conditions, turned out to be a complicated but
enriching experience. The other
couchsurfing
guests were a Brazilian traveller with a serial
killer kind of style and a bag bigger than himself,
who managed to stay still for two hours with saying
a word, and a couple of young Finns who had two
strange umbrellas, a pink one and a light blue one.
As if that what’s enough, one of the Finns woke up
during the night and blinked frenetically his eyes
while putting his head up, then to fall asleep
again. Unusual things are without a doubt the very
salted water lakes of Baile Ocna Sibiului, just like
the sunset at the south of the city, with a heard of
sheep, a wooden outside bathroom in the middle of
the field and a abandoned war tank to complete the
scene.
Before
leaving on an unexpected adventure spending 8 days
sleeping anywhere, because we were not going to met
another couchsurfer to host us until the end of the
trip, we couchsurfed in the beautiful and quiet city
of Pécs, in Hungary. Its small but pleasant
surprises now make us feel obliged to come back one
day: this compensated the negative image we first
had of Hungary after visiting the capital Budapest.
Paradox or maybe not: this period of our 2007
SUDELESTE adventure finished by being, without a
doubt, the one that gave us the most beautiful,
intense and unforgettable experiences of the whole
trip. First of all, there was the magnificent sunset
we had the pleasure to see when we were walking on
an under-construction highway in eastern Slovenia,
and the night spent in an under-construction
football stadium, also in Slovenia, falling asleep
to the sound of the torrential and unexpected rain.
Some days later came the two nights spent on the
snob beaches of Nice. First, we joined a group of
young Croat tourists, who shared their drinks with
us to then share ideas and stories of trips. It was
late at night when the Croats decided to go back to
their hotel, but without forgetting to invite us to
come, and therefore they brought back to the hotel
where we slept 2 hours and where we also got a free
breakfast. We spent the second night with a group of
French who was saying goodbye to a friend
immigrating to Ireland, with a party on the beach
until we got completely exhausted. Unforgettable was
also the relaxing day we spent in Monaco, specially
the pleasant sunbathing and swimming we enjoyed and
the walk on the city streets of the Monaco Grand
Prix.
After the fun and games of Nice and Monaco, we went
back some kilometres to Italy, Ventimiglia, where
lots of lorry drivers advised us to go in order to
hitch a ride back to Portugal. It didn’t go as
planned, but with a lot of luck and a highway entry
being near, a
Czech lorry driver drove us to Catalonia. With him,
we visited the mythical lorry park, La Junquera, one
of the biggest of Europe. “The best” was the nearly
four hours spent looking for the delivery point and
the well deserved swim at night in the warm water of
the Mediterranean, at Arenys de Mar, where the Czech
driver did not hesitate to come. The last days of
our 2007 SUDELESTE adventure were marked by two
things. First, we walked 6 km on the Valencia-Madrid
highway, with an exhausting temperature of 40°C
without any shadow and with our bags on our backs.
Second, the behaviour of the really old security man
of the bus station in Valencia was discomforting: he
didn’t in anyway allow travellers, waiting for their
bus (and with tickets already bought), to sleep or
sit down on the floor in order to relieve the weight
the clock already had (3 AM), and even less to sleep
on the benches, although there were plenty of free
spaces. Even closing your eyes on a bench gave you
the right to a severe reprimand. Mental insanity or
remains of the peninsular dictatorships, who knows…
The positive side, going back home.
As
a final surprise, we left you the links to the three
songs that highlighted SUDELESTE 2007.
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