The route

 

4 weeks
2,923 miles
58 car rides with strangers
$0 spent on intercity transportation
$0 spent on accommodation

It all started as I sat in a friend’s apartment in Darmstadt, half working on editing a research paper (my job while traveling) and half scrolling through my Facebook feed, and I noticed a post in the European Rainbow Gathering page asking for hitchhiking partners to go from Berlin to the Rainbow Gathering in Lithuania. The following morning I packed my bag and hit the road, having a friend drop me at the nearest rest stop so I could hitchhike to Berlin. My final driver offered me a couch to sleep on in her apartment which doubled as the office of her doggy day care business, so I spent the night on a couch with a whole bunch of dogs. The next morning I met Jacob on the train as we headed to the hitchhiking spot in the outskirts of the city.

 

[side note: for those who have never hitchhiked, there’s a wonderful online resource for finding the best spots to hitch from, and how to get to them via local public transit, www.hitchwiki.org. You should try it! It saves the environment, and is a great way to meet the nicest people. Everyone who has told you you’ll get murdered is full of shit, taxi and uber drivers can be a hell of a lot sketchier than people who pick up hitchhikers, who are generally former travelers themselves. Check out this article about hitchhiking safety]  

 

Several hours and multiple short rides later, we found ourselves at a gas station just before Warsaw, where we met two other hitchhikers, Mija and Kuba, a random encounter which would end up totally changing my course of events for my next few weeks. They taught me the Polish word “Kurwa”, the most important word to know in Polish, and we exchanged numbers since we were all going to the Rainbow. Jacob and I then began asking for rides into Warsaw, and the man who said yes turned out to be a doctor and a great guy who wanted to add to our travel experience by taking us out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. Several cups of wine later, we met up with Feodora, a Russian girl who I found through Couchsurfing who also wanted to hitchhike to the Rainbow, and the three of us spent the night in a friend’s apartment who I had met when my dad and I picked her up hitchhiking in Iceland. One of my favorite things about traveling is meeting people and having so many connections in every city; always having a friend to visit and a place to stay.
A scrumptious travelers’ meal of crumbling bread, sweaty chunks of cheese, and pickled cabbage

 

We set off the next morning hoping to make it to the Rainbow, but the small northern Lithuanian roads didn’t have very much traffic, and we got stuck in Ukmerge after dark, so we set up our tents for the night to go the rest of the way the next day. We did have some luck hitchhiking that day though; a Polish police man picked us up and at the end of the ride he handed us 50 Zloty ($13) and told us that Poland has the best vodka in the world, “go buy yourselves a bottle.” In the morning were lucky and got a ride directly to the rainbow, stopping at the driver’s friend’s farm house on the way to get a glimpse of Lithuanian village life.

 

When on a road with very low traffic, you have to get creative to entertain the drivers

 

The Rainbow Gathering was amazing. I don’t want to talk about it too much here, because I think it’s something that you need to go and experience for yourself without much preconception of what it will be like, but I spent most of my time making music around the camp fire, cooking and eating as a giant group, swimming in the lake, and attending workshops to learning how to do things like acro yoga and slacklining. It’s not a party like many people think–no alcohol or drugs are allowed–but it is a relaxing event where one can clear their mind, meet fellow travelers, and work on things like meditation, yoga, and emotional healing in an environment free of judgement. As I got sucked into the rainbow lifestyle, I forgot about my phone and connections with the outside world and I never made contact with the Polish hitchhikers who we had met near Warsaw, until, one day, Jacob and I were walking around and I suddenly thought of them and asked him what the word they taught us was. We started yelling “Kurwa! Kurwa!” and, out of nowhere, some people appeared in front of us and began to yell “Kurwa!” back. Fate had reunited us, but only to be lost again an hour later.

 

The lake, somewhere under the rainbow

 

One of the many Teepees
After the Rainbow ended I planned to go visit the small Lithuanian villages where my ancestors moved to the US from, but when I walked out to the parking area to try to find a ride towards Kaunas, I randomly ran into Mija and Kuba for the third time. Nobody was leaving from the parking area so we walked out to the nearest village together and they asked if I wanted to come to an island in Estonia with them, where their friend lives. We split up to hitchhike and I decided that if I was picked up in 15 minutes I would follow them to Estonia, otherwise I would head south to Kaunas. 14 minutes later it was decided, I was headed towards Estonia in a camper van full of Czech hippies.
Our campsite, where we got stuck outside of Riga for the night

 

A picture on the ferry to the island Saaremaa, which ended up getting us a ride to our destination with the guy who took the picture
Estonia was like a dream. Saaremaa is an absolutely gorgeous island in the Baltic Sea, covered in forest and populated with beautiful women. We were staying at the family home of Piret (known by us as Pirate), a girl who had studied abroad with Mija and Kuba, and her mom cooked us amazing Estonian meals and set up their sauna for us so we could run to the sea, freeze in the [actually mildly warm] water, and run back to the hot sauna. We also discovered a little hut by the beach where we made a fire and had a bbq with marshmallows, cheese, and zucchini.

 

The magical hut

 

This is what Estonian swings look like

 

Selfie inception

 

pre-sauna

 

Our entry in the guestbook at the hut
We then headed to Tallinn, an amazingly clean and beautiful city. We were lucky enough to be picked up by a guy who had 4 spaces in his car; hitchhiking in the Baltic countries was proving to be easier than anywhere else in Europe. In Tallinn we explored the city, went to some really funky local bars, watched some of the re-independence day festivities–a holiday to celebrate Estonia’s second independence from Russia, when the USSR broke up in the early 1990s.

 

Tallinn’s main square set up for independence day

 

chachachachachachow

 

As with all of the Baltic countries, there was a clash of cultures between the Estonians and the Russians, and I was amazed to encounter Russians who have lived in Estonia their entire lives but still don’t understand any of the Estonian language because they have always lived in Russian neighborhoods and rarely interact with the Estonians. The tension was very evident, and the majority of the drivers who picked me up while hitchhiking in the Baltics asked me about Russia, Ukraine, and how it is reported in the American media. The general consensus that I encountered in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, was that people are terrified of Russia and think Putin is a power-hungry monster who is trying to reestablish Stalin’s empire. Russia’s takeover of Crimea without any significant penalties has led them to believe that the Baltic countries may be next, and there was a lot of nervousness that the US and NATO wouldn’t do anything about it. All of my drivers were very interested in my perspective on the situation as an American since US support would greatly help them defend against Russia, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to offer them much wisdom, as I haven’t been following the news much at all since I’ve been traveling.

 

Vladdyboy riding a bear, found in a Russian souvenir shop in Estonia

 

A few days later we left Tallinn to go to Upesciems, a village just outside of Riga, Latvia, where we stayed with a couchsurfer of Mija’s. I said goodbye to Mija and Kuba after the first night, as they had to head back to Poland, but I stayed in Upesciems another day in order to go to a traditional Latvian fish party. The fish party was great; tons of tents sold traditionally-prepared fish and beer, and famous Latvian musicians played all sorts of music on the stage. The beach was a short walk through the forest away, and at midnight there was a fireworks show. We talked, drank, and danced until the wee hours of the morning.

 

Fish Party!

 

Fish with onions and peppers on top
A famous Latvian band

 

In Latvia and Lithuania, they sell live fish in grocery stores with the option to take them home dead or alive

 

Finally, the next day, I made it back to Lithuania to explore my family heritage. I went first to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where Jordan, a friend from Pomona, had just moved to. We spent the majority of my first day exploring a magical park in the city. A juice bar with beanbag chairs in a field welcomed us to the park, giving us a good feeling about what was to come. As we continued into the depths of the park, we noticed that everyone around us had some form of wheels. Here we were, being boring and just walking on our feet, while everyone else rode around on longboards, roller blades, scooters, and multi-passenger bicycle-like things of every shape and size. So we went to the rental stand and decided to start out with a longboard and roller blades. The rental man didn’t seem to care much about when our “hour” ended, and time didn’t really seem to exist in that park, so we rode around on our new wheels for a while, discovering new parts of the park, dewheeling and discovering an abandoned bathroom building in the forest, and finding several paths that were unrideable on such small wheels, so eventually we went back to trade out our wheels for something with better off-road handling. We chose this:

 

Jordan and I on the Roller Tractor

 

The Roller Tractor, an off-road monster

 

It started out as a sort of joke that we could ride around on this bike that we had only seen 10 year olds on, but when we asked the rental guy if we would fit, he just gave us a look like “of course, duh, it’s made for people like you”, and moved the seat back. Now we were able to conquer the whole park. And nobody seemed to think it was the slightest bit weird to see two twenty-something year olds riding off-road through the forest on what we had assumed was a child’s toy. I was beginning to really like Lithuania. We parked our newly dubbed “roller tractor” by the river because I wanted to go for a swim. Nobody else was swimming but it seemed like a nice thing to do, so I jumped in, and it was just as nice as expected. Wondering what time it was, Jordan ventured a guess that it was almost 4:20pm, and sure enough, moments later a group of guys came down to our spot by the river and we found out that it was, in fact, 4:20. She had predicted the future. After chilling on a log with our new friends for a while, we set off on the roller tractor for the next adventure, to discover what the blue thing was across the river. As we slowly maneuvered our way onto the bridge, a man gave us a disgruntled look that we were taking so long, but as soon as he saw our means of transport, his expression changed to a look of “oh, now it’s ok, I’ve been there before, I remember my roller tractor days”. Eventually we found the blue thing (mission accomplished!), which was graffiti on a storm sewer drain which doubled as a giant walk-in refrigerator. Crazy. At that point it was beginning to get late and we figured we should return our wheels, so we went back to the center of the park, no questions from the rental man about why we were so late, and went back to the beanbags to finish our adventure in the same place that it started. The day’s adventures had given me a really nice impression of Lithuanian people and culture; I love how they are so active, so accepting, so happy in the summer sunlight, and how they are so creative with their forms of transportation.

 

Beanbag in the park

 

The rest of my visit to Lithuania was more family-focused, and the next day I went to the Jewish information center in Vilnius to ask them what they knew about the Berkowitz [later Americanized to Beckwith] family history. They helped me look through the online archives, finding a couple of people who are likely distant relatives. I headed to Kaunas to stay with a friend there, and the next day I set out to find the villages where my family came from, Šaukotas and Grinkiškis. Hitchhiking on tiny country roads wasn’t quite as easy as the highway, but eventually I made it to Grinkiškis, where I found the old Jewish cemetery that my ancestors were most likely buried in. All of the gravestones were in Hebrew and there were very few last names written, though, so I wasn’t able to find any Berkowitz’s. I never made it to Šaukotas because it was another 20km down a gravel road, but I was told that there are no remnants left of the Jewish community anymore.

 

The Jewish cemetery in Grinkiskis, Lithuania

 

The sign for the Jewish cemetery

 

A Star of David on a gravestone

 

A friendly, questionably homeless man who really wanted me to take his picture in front of the church
I was then planning to head south to Poland, but my plans changed yet again at the last minute when a friend I met in Latvia invited me to stay at her apartment by the sea for the weekend. We spent an amazing weekend drinking beers on the beach and exploring the trails through the bog in Ķemeri National Park under the full moon together. After the weekend I found a truck driving to Poland and jumped on board, reflecting on how one of my absolute favorite things about traveling alone is finding random opportunities with new friends everywhere, and the short travel romances which always feel so perfect.

 

Potato pancakes. Latvian style

 

The beach in Latvia, with Ilona