Hitchhiking part 1

When volunteering in a Country, I believe you achieve the best and most authentic impression of it,if you don’t leave it during the period. When going home, you get ripped out of everything; Your work, your social surroundings and the culture. But still, I decided to go home over the holidays because I couldn't wait to see my family, friends and of course my girlfriend! The time in Germany was amazing and I’m not regretting anything, but that’s not the topic of the blog I’m writing today.

I celebrated the new year, me, my girlfriend and a few friends of ours flew to Budapest. We all wanted to see the city for a long time and our reunion through my homecoming and the celebration of the new year seemed the perfect chance to implement our plans. Despite the weather not being the best, we had an amazing time and really enjoyed the beautiful city at the Donau. On the third of January the others flew back to Berlin. During the process of planning i also thought about to go with them and spend a few extra days in Berlin before going back to Rustavi but if you look on a map, you clearly see that it doesn’t make much sense + I think it's not necessary to harm mother nature through flying 3 times in 10 days.

But what’s the other option, to fly from Budapest to Tbilisi? Boring, and what should I do until 8. where work start again?

I always wanted to try out hitchhiking, my parents are from east germany where it was one of the most used transportation options so I heard much of their experiences in my childhood. When I came to Georgia, I got told, hitchhiking is really often used here so I made some plans but never implemented them, probably because I was too comfortable. So I got the Idea of hitchhiking from Budapest du Rustavi. Definitely not impossible but really hard in 4-5 days + if I really would do it, the whole days would be used for traveling and there would be no time for some sightseeing on the way. So I decided to only hitchhike from Budapest to Istanbul. 1300 km and it was my first experience in hitchhiking, it was definitely still a challenge!

Still in Budapest Henriette, my girlfriend helped me with my first sign. BELGRADE stood on the cardboard box that I found infront of our apartment. After the hurtful goodbye I went to a Street that looked promising on google maps. During the first hour I was still in a good mood, the sun was out so the 5 ∘c didn't feel that cold. But the sun went away, and with that my good mood too. And after 2 hours I started to not believe in the idea of hitchhiking anymore. But I went on and tried to change the goal on my cardboard plate, maybe Belgrade was a bit too far? But that didn't work out either and after 4 hours I accepted my loss and booked a last minute flixbus to Belgrad. It started to get dark and I couldn't really afford to get behind schedule so it was the best option for me. In the next few days the hitchhiking went much better and I saw wonderful cities and met even more wonderful people!

To be continued…

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