I left the Baltic countries in a truck driving to Olsztyn, Poland. It was 10pm in Kaunas, Lithuania, and I was at a very empty gas station asking the few cars that came by if they were going in the direction of Poland. Finally, after about an hour of no’s, a truck with Polish license plates pulled up and I asked him for a ride. He had a lot of stuff in his front seat and looked a bit apprehensive about letting me in his vehicle, and after a moment’s pause he asked me if I speak Polish. I replied “Cześć! Kurwa! Poproszę piwo!” (Hello! Shit! One beer please! — my full Polish vocabulary) and he laughed so hard that he waved me in. Nearly three weeks earlier when I had asked my new Polish friends, Mija and Kuba, what the most important word to know in Polish was, I had no idea that “Kurwa” would actually turn out to be so useful.
Traveler’s tip #2: If you ever go to Poland, remember the word “Kurwa” (pronounced kur-vah, with a rolly r)
We got to Olsztyn around 4am and I was exhausted after sleeping on and off in the truck, feeling like I should talk to the driver since he was giving me a free ride but also just wanting to pass out. This is the downside of hitchhiking, especially overnight trips or if you don’t feel like being social. I walked about 200 feet away from the road and set up my tent in a field to get some sleep, only to be brutally awoken two hours later to realize that very busy road had materialized about 10 feet away from me, just out of range of my flashlight earlier that night. I packed up my tent and walked 6km across the city since the spot I was in was terrible for hitchhiking and found a much better spot at a bus stop right next to a beautiful lake. This is the other downside of hitchhiking, sometimes you get stuck in a bad spot and have to walk a lot. [Side note: I just realized that I’ve started thinking of long distances in kilometers but still think of short distances in feet and inches. Weird.]
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| The lake near the hitchhiking spot, perfect for a refreshing swim and a few back flips! |
After swimming, I was really lucky and found a truck driving directly to Wrocław (pronounced vrots-wav). What should have been a 6 hour drive turned into 9 when the extremely slow trucker decided to take only back roads rather than pay the tolls on the freeway. He spoke no English and very minimal German, so I got quite a bit of blog writing done on the road since all we could talk about is stuff like “My name is x I am from y” type of thing.
Traveler’s tip #3: Trucks are great for hitchhiking because they’re going long distances and the drivers are usually bored and appreciate the company of a traveler, but they are also very slow-moving and foreign truckers rarely speak English.
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| The Sky Tower, Wroclaw’s phallic landmark
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Eventually l got there and spent the next week having an awesome time in Wrocław. It’s a really amazing city; big but not too crowded, full of students and events, and I got the impression that it was a very liberal and open minded city. Go there if you ever visit Poland (which you should). Mija and Kuba, who already felt like very close friends after basically living with them for the last couple weeks since we met at the gas station, introduced me to their amazing friends and I immediately felt like I could fit in in Wrocław and have a great time living there. Wrocław also has an incredible fountain show at night, with a fountain that lights up to the music in an insanely trippy display.
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| The fountain show |
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| The fountain show |
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| Aiko, my new favorite dog |
After a week of chilling, exploring Wroclaw, and getting quite a bit of work done on my current editing project (a grant proposal for an Israeli psychologist), I wanted to go to the mountains. I made Zakopane my next destination, in the center of Poland’s Tatra mountains. After some thorough research on hikes in the Tatras and consulting with several other hikers and travelers through the Couchsurfing website about the least touristy and most wild hikes, I felt prepared for Poland’s mountains. Just as I was about to leave to hitchhike out of Wroclaw, my plans took an unexpected 180. As I stuffed the final t-shirts into my backpack, Mija looked up from her computer, “dude, a guy just posted on the Poland hitchhiking facebook group that he’s going to Slovenia tonight and has space for an extra passenger.” I stopped in my tracks. Change of plans, I’m going to Slovenia! Ever since visiting Slovenia in the winter, I had wanted to come back and hike Triglav, the tallest and most sacred mountain in former Yugoslavia and the Julian Alps. This was the perfect chance. So I jumped on a tram in the opposite direction and met up with this trucker who was driving overnight to Slovenia, extremely thankful that I had no bookings to get in the way of this spontaneous decision.
Traveller’s tip #4: Never book anything in advance. Anything! You never know what great spontaneous opportunities you’ll miss out on if you don’t leave your options open. The best things happen at the last minute.
This time I couldn’t hold back from sleeping, and fell asleep immediately in the front seat, feeling a bit bad that the driver was listening to me snore instead of having a nice conversation to keep him awake, but he was really nice about it. After 6 hours of driving, we pulled into a rest area so he could take a nap also, and he let me sleep in the bed above the truck cab for a couple hours. That was a unique and cool experience, being in a tiny compartment above the truck cab where the floor was covered in mattress foam. When I woke up, I took advantage of the free wifi to decide where I was going in Slovenia, but a few hours later my idea to go to Maribor changed when we took a different route. So my next idea was Ljubljana. I sent a bunch of last minute couchsurf requests and got a couple responses saying they could host me later in the week, so, a few miles outside of Ljubljana, I finally settled on going to the mountains.
The trucker dropped me off at the turnoff to Bovec, and I hitched a ride with another guy the rest of the way. He was really nice and had some free time, so he took me on a little tour of the area, showing me a spot on the river where there are music festivals and nature parties all summer, and eventually taking me about 30 minutes out of his way to my destination. People are so, incredibly nice! Hitchhiking really restores my faith in humanity; it’s the best way to meet the nicest people, because only really nice people are willing to pick someone up and take them to their destination just for the sake of helping out. And yes, I still have both of my kidneys. I arrived in Bovec with the warm fuzzy feeling in my heart, knowing that there are millions of people out there who always have my back.
The trucker dropped me off at the turnoff to Bovec, and I hitched a ride with another guy the rest of the way. He was really nice and had some free time, so he took me on a little tour of the area, showing me a spot on the river where there are music festivals and nature parties all summer, and eventually taking me about 30 minutes out of his way to my destination. People are so, incredibly nice! Hitchhiking really restores my faith in humanity; it’s the best way to meet the nicest people, because only really nice people are willing to pick someone up and take them to their destination just for the sake of helping out. And yes, I still have both of my kidneys. I arrived in Bovec with the warm fuzzy feeling in my heart, knowing that there are millions of people out there who always have my back.
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| The Soča River, on the way to Bovec, Slovenia |
