Hitchhicker's Guide to Europe
So I am hosting a joint birthday party with a close friend at Saaremaa where my summer house is. For this occasion, I invited people from all around, including high school and uni friends from Western Europe. We've got quite a bit of people coming, around 50. I will not dive into the headache it has been to organise something at that scale. Instead, I want to speak about one friend coming from Western Europe.
For the sake of storytelling let us call him Frank. Frank is half-German half-French. We clicked in high school over music – mostly drum and bass. Since then the friendship has had a solid base. Sending each other songs is a great form of communication! Either way, Frank decided that he'd be down to come to said birthday and see Estonia for the first time.
The little catch is that he only bought a plane ticket back. He decided to make his way to Estonia via hitchhiking. I think this is a bold and inspiring move. Especially since hitchhiking is not as popular as it was 30 years ago. So on the 25th of July, he started from Brussels with a single direction in mind – Tallinn. The expected travel time he had was about 5 days – he thought it would be reasonable.
Within the first day, he got to Berlin. In half a day he managed to do a third of the way. Mad. He explained that his tactic was to go up to people at the gas stations and ask where they were headed. Surprisingly enough it worked wonders! The next day he got from Berlin to Kaunas, Lithuania. So that was two-thirds already. It just happened that I went to a festival near that town with my sister.
So the last 500km we rode together to Tallinn. Phenomenal scenes. He was joking at a gas station that buying a hot chocolate and some pastries was the biggest expense of his trip so far. He did express that even though it was a really cool experience he would not be doing that again any time soon. It was still very stressful and the uncertainty related to such travel is on another level.
This is the same person who inspired me to do the Portuguese Camino. Which I am truly grateful for. So he just keeps inspiring! Furthermore, he is completely sober, never tried alcohol and does not want to either. But that's a whole other story. What I want to get across with this story is that you do not know until you try. Get involved, as scary as that mountain might seem – climb it. What's the worst that can happen?
This Week's Suggestions:
This is the band we went to see in Lithuania! It was truly cool to see that the rendered versions of the songs are not that rendered. The songs performed were just as good if not better than the streaming versions. This is one of my new favourites of the band!
That's all for the 150th post! Till I see You again!
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