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TRAVELING IN EUROPE, FEBRUARY-MAY 2000
writen by Skot Robert Rogers
Greenville to Malmö - 1 March 2000
Malmö to Vilnius - 7 March 2000
From Radom (Poland) - 22 March 2000
Message from Pula (HR) - 20 April 2000
Trip to Fazana - 27 April 2000
Greenville to Malmö
My flight from Greenville to Newark left around noon
on Friday the 25th of February. From Newark I flew to
Paris.
It would have been an uneventful flight had I not
realized the woman sitting next to me only spoke
Spanish. I thought she might need help talking to the
flight attendants, so I told her I knew "un poquito
español".
Luckily, she was from the Dominican Republic and not
Spain, though she lives in Madrid. We made fun of the
"Castellian lisp" which is so hard for me to
understand. Her accent, on the other hand, was very
easy to understand.
I felt very sorry for her. Her husband had left her
for another woman, and her two sons wouldn't work.
She said she works about 14 hours a day in the kitchen
of a bingo parlor. And yet, she was a very friendly
and happy person.
She gave me her phone number and told me that if I'm
ever in Madrid to call her. She also gave me what she
called a rememberance gift: a CD which she said was by
her blind sister. I felt embarassed that I had
nothing to offer her in return, but perhaps one day I
can journey to Madrid and repay the favor.
Getting out of a big city is one of the hardest parts
of hitch-hiking. Paris turned out to be nearly
impossible. After getting my bearings I spent at
least 6 hours trying various spots in the maze of
loops around the Port d' Bercy,to absolutely no avail.
(All the major highways and freeways coming out of
Paris began at places called "ports" along the a loop
around the city.)
As the sun was setting I walked back to the metro
station nearest the port and called my friend
Elizabeth who is a French major and currently on an
exchange program in Paris. Thanks to her I received a
hearty meal and got a bed at a youth hostel. I hope
she knows how much I appreciate it.
The Parisians themselves were not particularly helpful
and often walked away when I asked if they spoke
English. Yet, Elizabeth told me no one would speak
French with her once they detected her American
accent.
Due to packing and my flight, I had barely slept for 2
days, and was only awakened by the hostel clerk
telling me it was time to pay at about 11 Sunday
morning, so I got a rather late start. On the advice
of the night clerk, I took a train to Euro Disney, and
then walked several miles to the freeway and along it
to the toll booth.
I stood there for 3 hours until a Bulgarian returning
home to Stuttgart, Germany picked me up. We spoke
German and listened to Techno, Balkan music, and Kenny
G on his broken stereo that kept beeping at us. He
bought me coffee (which I normally would't drink, but
he didn't hear me say "nein"). I could have ridden
with him all the way to Stuttgart, but didn't realize
hitch-hiking is difficult throughout all of France and
so I opted for being dropped near Metz so I could take
the shortest route to Sweden.
I ended up waiting for 12 hours until 10 the next
morning when a former French hitch-hiker, on his way
to close a deal with a major grocery store chain to
sell his company's cakes. He told me about the
cheeses of France and how some of the best ones don't
do well in America because they aren't pastuerized.
>From Strasbourg on the German border, where he dropped
me, I made it all the way to Hamburg by the end of the
day, thanks to my favorite Germans: the truck drivers.
They are the cowboys of the Autobahn; the only
Germans who have no schedules;will drive anytime and
for however long they want; and know that not getting
exactly 3 meals a day doesn't kill you.
They always offer you whatever food or drink they
have. One of them gave me a map of Denmark and
another gave me his cell phone number to call if I
ever have problems in Germany. He also gave me his 8
year-old daughter's address to give to any children I
know in foreign countries, as she likes pen-pals and
collects postcards from all over.
At any rate, after only one night in the cold at a
rest-stop near Hamburg, I arrived safely in Copenhagen
Tuesday night (2 days later than expected) and took
the jet ferry to Malmö, Sweden, where I had a lot of
touble with the border control because of the
condition of my passport (they are very strict because
they get a lot of illegal immigrants). Finally, I
arrived at my friend Zsolt's.
Tomorrow I head for Vilnius, Lithuania.
I hope everything's going well for all of you on the
homefront.
--S R Rogers
1 March, 2000
Malmö, Sweden
Malmö to Vilnius
Many people are wondering how I have access to the
Internet while I'm across the pond. In Sweden I used
my friend Zsolt's connection. Scandinavia has the
highest per capita Internet access in the world. It
is much more of a problem in Eastern Europe. Most
people can't afford to get online at home. Right now
I am writing from Augustas' desk at work. His boss
said I could use their LAN connection.
...
On the advice of Zsolt's father, I took a local train
to Helsingborg last Thursday morning (2 March, 2000).
It across from Helsingor (Elsinore-- where Hamlet
lived), at the narrowest point between Denmark and
Sweden. Ferries arrive every 30 minutes, and the
major road to Stockholm starts in that city.
With few problems I made it to Stockholm by midnight.
My first ride was an unemployed burnt-out hippy
driving a 1981 Volvo he said he got for $300. He was
a bit strange, but I could tell he was a very sincere
person and totally harmless. He was going to visit a
friend dying of cancer. He took my about halfway.
I got a short hop from where he dropped me off to a
gas station that was back on the main road. There I
waited in the cold for several hours, asking all the
drivers pumping gas where they were going and
approaching all the trucks at the rest stop. Luckily,
a Polish truck driver changed his mind when he was
leaving.
The only language he really knew was Polish, but it's
sort of similar to Russian and Croatian, and he knew a
little Russian and German. So, we were still able to
communicate on a rudimentary level. He asked about
where I was going. Like most Europeans the distances
I am travelling seemed very far to him (the Germans
are usually the most surprised). He said he used to
transport goods from Germany to Moscow, but not
anymore, and just said problemy (Russian for
"problems") over and over again. Finally, he said go
there if that's what you want. He dropped me off in
the outskirts of Stockholm around midnight.
Scandinavian cities are the safest in the world. And
everyone in Scandinavia speaks English, though they
usually mistake me for a Swede and try to speak
Swedish at first. (I was even asked for directions
once.) So, it was no problem for me to navigate the
bus system and find the ferry even in the middle of
the night.
Many people have heard me complain about the lack of
winter in Greenville. Well, I've had no lack of
winter since Stockholm. The ferry didn't open until
6:15, but I got there around 2:30. "It's not so
cold," I thought and resigned myself to waiting it
out. Then the blizzard hit. Finally, in an attempt
to escape the wind and snow I wrapped myself in my
sleeping bag and huddled next to the wall. It gave me
a better perspective on how bums live.
Being behind on schedule, I hoped the ferry company
could take me to Riga, Latvia, or Klaipeda, Lithuania.
Naturally, the 2 major lines don't run to such
places. With the snow hitting me right in the eyes,
it took me forever to find the obscure company called
Estline, which contrary to rumor only went to Tallinn,
Estonia. That still had a slight advantage, so I took
it, arriving 13.5 hours later at 9:30 on Saturday.
The blizzard caught back up with me in Estonia right
about the time bus #18 was dropping me off where the
highway towards Riga and Vilnius starts in the
outskirts of Tallinn. After a while a girl about my
age showed up to hitch, too. I think she was Russian,
since most Estonians that age speak English, but I had
to talk to her in Russian. I was told by a lot of
people to always try English first in Estonia. Many
of them hate Russians because Russia has conquered
them several times and Stalin moved a huge number of
Russians there in attempt to hold it. These days
there are a lot of problems because those Russians are
between a third and half of the population (depending
on who I asked).
At any rate, this girl left when she didn't get a ride
after only 30 minutes. I didn't have that option, and
attempted to shrug off the growing numbness in my
feet. But evetually, I made it to Pärnu where I had a
nice conversation about Estonia with one guy and a
not-so-nice "conversaition" with a bum I kept telling
I didn't speak Estonian. I was prepared to hit him
over the head with the beer bottle I had in my hand,
when he finnally got bored and went away, so I didn't
have to waste the last of the Estonian beer I was
sampling.
I find you can tell a lot about a country by how good
the beer is, as well as what kinds of cars and
appliances people have. Estonian beer wasn't too bad,
so they must have had at least some German influence.
Most of the cars were Western and I actually saw very
few Russian Ladas. I had heard that Estonia was the
richest of the former Soviet Republics, and based on
what I saw, I'd say that was true.
After "talking" with the bum, I wrote "LV" (the
abbreviation for Latvia) on a piece of cardboard I was
using for a sign, and shortly thereafter received a
ride all the way to Riga, it's capitol. I almost
always use a sign when hitch-hiking, as do many
hitch-hikers.
It was a Latvian father and daughter who picked me up.
I spoke Russian with them for a while until about
halfway through the ride when we were at a cafe, for
some reason unknown to me the conversation switched
completely to English.
We arrived in Riga around 18:30 when the sun was
starting to set. They pointed various things in the
city out to me including the president's house and
told me the president is a woman. The father
repeatedly told me it wasn't a good idea for me to
hitch out "so late". First they wanted to take me to
the bus station. Under normal circumstances I would
much rather hitch than ride a bus and would have
refused anyway, but it seemed to me that it would be
especially bad to go to a hitch-hiking conference by
bus. Next they told me I could spend the night at
their apartment. It was a very nice offer, but I was
already late for the conference and didn't want to
miss the 2nd and last day of activities of Sunday.
It worried me slightly that a native of the area
didn't want me to hitch at sunset, but I put it down
to parental concern and decided to risk it anyway. It
turned out I was fairly close to the edge of the city
anyway, and quickly got a short ride to the nearest
gas station where with "LT" on my sign I again quickly
got a ride from a Lithuanian truck driver to the
Lithuanian border.
I spoke German with him until there was another
mysterious language switch to Russian towards the end
of the ride. He told me that there are no problems on
the route to Russia because the mafia runs all the gas
stations. The mafia, for all it's faults, does
actually keep things safe, because it's better for
buisness. He said all you have to do is pay a couple
of bucks at a gas station and they will take care of
everything, even give you a room. So that certain
female relatives of mine won't worry, I will mention
in advance that I will take a train to Moscow instead
of following his advice.
This border, which I had been through before going the
other way on a bus on my last trip, is one of the
weirdest I've ever seen. There are 3 checkpoints
where you have to show your passport. At each
checkpoint they ask you exactly the same questions
about where you are going, and exclaim in surprise at
an American in the Baltics. At the second checkpoint,
you are supposed to get your passport stamped. The
guard was a bit carefree, and didn't care about proper
protocols. Fortunately, he was willing to "amuse" me
by stamping my passport when I pressed him. He
thought I was just one of those people who wants a
stamp in his passport for fun. In fact, the main
reason I wanted one was based on past experiences in
which I actually needed the stamp later for official
reasons and didn't have it due to similar incidents.
Unfortuneately, after passing through the first 2
checkpoints at the border I had no luck. After the
guard changed around 21:00, they finally let the huge
line of mostly trucks through, but those that paid me
any notice all signalled they were going to sleep. It
wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the high
wind. Finally, around midnight when all the trucks
had gone through and my feet and hands were totally
numb, I walked through the final checkpoint and down
the highway about 1k to an all night bar and gas
station. I needed to warm myself and decided it since
I was only about 200k from Vilnius, it was pointless
to get a ride until sunrise. That way I would arrive
at a time when my friend Augustas would be awake, so I
could call him, but I wouldn't miss the activities at
the conference.
I periodically, purchased something to keep my hosts
placated, and although I sampled both Lithuanian vodka
and beer, I was the bar's most unobtrusive client.
Unlike the Russians and Lithuanians I was carefully
monitoring how much I drank each hour and even ordered
some food once I realized there was a kitchen in the
back. All was copesthetic and I got a ride with a
truck all the way to Vilnius in which I got the first
sleep I'd had since the ferry. The truck driver even
called my friend Augustas on his mobile phone, and so
Augustas met me where I was dropped and escorted me
immediately to the conference.
Today is Uþgavënës, a Lithuanian holiday celebrating
the coming of Spring. It is 20:30 and Augustas is
trying to hurry me so we can get to a party, so I will
write about my experiences in Vilnius and at IHHC4
(the 4th International Hitch-Hiking Conference) later.
--S R Rogers
7 March, 2000
Vilnius, Lithuania
From Radom (Poland)
It's been a while since I've been able to write
email. In Lithuania and Russia I didn't have many
chances to access the Internet, and when I did I
only had limited time, or was just too tired to
write very much.
I had a wonderful time in Vilnius. The conference
was an incredible experience for me, because I met
so many interesting people, from all over Europe,
and even Australia and South Africa. They all had
many stories to tell about their various trips, and
about their homelands. One couple (Vladas and
Inga), who are in the Vilnius HH club which
organized the conference, had even hitch-hiked all
the way to Iran, where almost no one had heard of
Lithuania. Vladas said that you catch rides very
quickly in Iran. His favorite ride was a Turk who
took them all the way from the middle of Romania to
Turkey. He wept openly at their departure, saying
he hadn't done enough for them, that he was worried
about how they might be treated in Turkey. (In
fact, they were often overcharged, and were robbed
while they slept one night.)
People also had many questions about America, which
I tried to answer to the best of my ability. When
you are in a foreign land, you suddenly become the
expert on your own country. Then you realize how
difficult it is to describe the subtle points of
your homeland to someone who has never been there.
What I also found very interesting is that the
oldest member of the Vilnius Hitch-Hiking Club is in
his 60's and only took up hitch-hiking a few years
ago. There is also a member in his 40's. In fact
not only did I see more hitch-hikers in Lithuania
than anywhere else, but I also saw plenty of older
men and women catching rides.
At the conference there was also a man named Robert
from Holland. He is a 39-year-old computer
programmer who now lives in England. I was told
he's in the Guiness Book of World Records for
hitching over 160,000 km (100,000 miles). Although,
he told me there is a Russian who is way ahead of
him with over a million kilometers. He keeps an
incredible log of detailed statistics on all his
rides, and wrote a program that makes calculations
on average wait time in each country, or for a
certain month, etc. He told me he used to hitch
from Holland to Greece through Yugoslavia every
summer, until the war, and that he once hitched
around Turkey. He said the hitching in Turkey was
excellent, that drivers were very friendly and often
bought you meals.
In fact, a very large number of the hitch-hikers I
met either worked in IT or were studying computers
in college, including my host Augustas (pronounced
owgoostus, for native English speakers like me who
need help with Lithuanian pronunciation). He is
also a hitching maniac, as he refered to himself.
He has logged over 60,000 km (~38,000 miles).
These are just a few tidbits from IHHC4. There's
much more to tell about my experiences in Vilnius,
Latvia, and Russia. But now it is the middle of the
night after a long day of hitching and I'm very
tired, so let me just quickly update all of you as
to where I am.
Passing through Latvia I went all the way to Mocow
and Ryazan, where I visited my friends and my
goddaughter (who was much bigger). Afterwards, I
caught a train back to Vilnius, where I arrived on
Monday the 20th of March, and immediately left after
calling my friend Augustas. At first I was having a
bad luck and only made it to the Polish border by
sunset, where I couldn't get a ride until I got up
the next day. Today, I had only made it 160 km or
so by 18:00, and was beggining to think I would
never get out of Poland, when suddenly my luck
turned and in only 2 rides and maybe 4 or 5 hours I
was in Radom, on the other side of Warsaw and 3/4 of
the way to Krakow and the Slovakian border. And to
top it off, my last ride (a Pole who speaks
Spanish!) is letting me spend the night at his
apartment and use his computer to write this email.
I'll fill in the details later, for now, it's to bed
for this weary traveller.
--S R Rogers
22 March, 2000
Radom, Poland
Message from Pula (HR)
As everyone can see, I wrote that quite a while ago.
My gracious host went to bed before I finished it, and
I had forgotten to ask him for his password, so I
could dial up his ISP. He forwarded it to me, but I
have had absolutely no access to the Internet because
the Fedex agent I spoke to in America didn't know what
he was talking about and gave me the wrong infromation
about shipping computers to Trieste, Italy.
I know a lot of people have been trying to contact me,
but I've had major problems since arriving in Pula,
Croatia on the 26th of March. I couldn't have
afforded an Internet connection even if my computer
had come. Istarska Bank where all my money is closed
because of a political dispute over who would be the
next president of the bank. Luckily, my girlfriend
had already paid the rent on my apartment, but I was
down to eating on $1 a day. My girlfriend doesn't
know anyone with a computer. I tried using a
connection at a library, but it was so poor it would't
connect to Yahoo, or much of anything.
Luckily, the bank is "open", in other words, they have
special limits on how much money you can take out each
week. This week I finally got enough money, that I
can afford to pay for this access at a shop that
happens to close in 5 minutes.
-- S R Rogers
20 April, 2000
Trip to Fazana
Two days ago (25 April, 2000) Zorana and I decided to
hitch to Koper, Slovenia which is on the coast in
northern Istria, just across the border. For those of
you who don't know, Istria is a descent-sized
penninsula on the Adriatic mostly in Croatia and
partially in Slovenia.
It's often been controled by the Italians, in
particular, the Venitians (who controled all of the
Croatian coast for several hundred years, including
during Marco Polo's lifetime-- in fact he was really
Marko Piliæ, a Croatian). Because of that, there's an
Italian minority, and in the northern half of Istria,
all the signs are in Croatian and Italian, or
Slovenian and Italian depending on which country
you're in.
At any rate, Koper is only about 110 km (~70 mi) from
Pula. We were going there so Zorana could buy shoes
for her friend's wedding, in which she will be the
maid of honor. The Croatian government imposes rather
high sales tax (nothing compared with Sweden, but high
enough for people on Croatian salaries), so lots of
Croats go to Italy, Austria, and Slovenia to do their
shopping, and there was a department store having a
sale on shoes in Koper.
There is a circle that people use to hitch out of
Pula. The roads to both directions on the major
highway outside of the city connect at the
circle.(Europeans seem to be fond of circles, and
often use them as intersections for major highways.)
Around noon, after Zorana's morning classes and our
trip to Istarska Banka, we stood there for an hour,
turning down two rides from people going to a nearby
village called Fažana (ž is pronounced like the s in
pleasure), hoping to get a longer ride. We joked that
we should go to Fažana instead of Koper.
Finally, we took the third ride (also going to
Fažana-- must be a very friendly village) and asked to
be dropped at the first gas station on the main
highway going towards Koper and Trieste (about 1-2 km
from the circle).
For anyone who wants to hitch out of Pula, I recommend
that strategy. From the circle it's easy to get a
short ride, and that gas station or the bus lane just
before it is a good place to get a longer ride.
We waited there for maybe 30 minutes and then got our
next 4 rides in 15 minutes or less, the second of
which was an oyster delivery man who was a war
veteran. We had time and his deliveries were in the
general direction we were going, so we stayed with him
when he went off the main highway and drove from town
to town along the coast.
We had good conversation with him, and saw every major
town on the Adriatic coast of Istria, except Ravinj.
We even stopped for coffee (I had a nice glass of pivo
Favorit, a good Croatian beer, instead). It was free,
courtosy of the manager of one of the restaurants
buying oysters.
The fourth of the easy rides was slightly scary, as we
realized the Italian driver was drunk after we got in
the car. At one point he started stopping and staring
into the woods on the side of the road muttering in
Croatian that he only needed 3 more of something to
kill a mysterious "him", but he had to wait til after
five. But we were only in the car 5 or 10 minutes
when he stopped at a bar in Buje (a village near the
border). Declining his offer to drink with him, we
set off to find another ride, and ran up a side street
when he left the bar and drove past us.
Lesson number two on hitching in Istria: don't take
the shorter highway from Buje to Koper. The driver
inbetween the oyster man and the drunk told us it was
the better road to take, but we waited for at least 1
1/2 hours before an Italian couple returning home from
Pula took us all the way to Koper. The other route is
a bit longer, but it is the main highway, and goes
through several major towns on the Slovenian coast.
We had a great time in Koper where Zorana didn't find
any good shoes for the wedding (though she did find
some other shoes to replace her old ones and some
shampoo she had been looking for since she came back
from London five years ago). Being 19:30, we should
have turned around and gone back to Pula, but first we
decided we had to see the town, and then had to sample
the cuisine.
We were having such a great time, laughing about how
we should be going back. Zorana asked why we didn't
come the day before on Easter Monday, a holiday in the
Balkans, and spend the night. "We were poor
yesterday," I said.
The highway was calling to me, and I wanted
desperately to push on to Venice, only a few hundred
kilometers away, but unfortunately Zorana had a
meeting with a professor at 9:00 the next morning
concerning a practical exam next week.
So at almost 22:00 we went back to the road we had
come from, crossing over the road we should have taken
(the one with lots of cars). All the signs to Pula
pointed in the direction of the road we had come from
and we didn't realize the other one went to Buje, too.
That was when Zorana stopped laughing and began
worrying (excessively, in my opinion). Of course, we
did have to wait until a little after midnight, when a
Croat in a twenty-year-old Yugo took us to Buje.
I wasn't worried. But I did realize hitching in
Istria at night, though possible, takes a while,
because there are very few cars. At around 2:00 we
got a ride almost to Pula. When we turned off the
main road I thought the man must know a shortcut or
something or I would have had him drop us on the main
highway. But he took us to a village he insisted was
much better to hitch from.
It was Fazana!
A few kilometers on foot, another ride, and we were
back by 4:20.
--S R Rogers
27 April, 2000
Pula, Croatia
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