Hitchhiking Blog p2

The new wife of my Dad is from ex Jugoslavian and because I lived with her for over seven years, I had much contact with Balkan culture. Very lovely people and good food is what comes into my mind when I think of it, especially because of her loving mother, my step grandmother, who always sends me sweets and homemade food. But besides the two party holidays I made in Croatia, I never really visited the countries from where half of my family comes from. But now my chance was there. With some advice from my stepbrother, who is head of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian service at Deutsche Welle, I headed out in the nightly Belgrade. My stay for the Night was the Balkan Soul Hostel, which is in a great area with nice narrow streets that brought me to Kalemegdan. The park and fortress, which was used by the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, and Serbs as a military stronghold, gives also a beautiful view over the Sava and Danube rivers, which I could sadly not see because it was already dark. After enjoying the view of the City covered with lights, I walked around in the beautiful old town and grabbed something quick to eat, before going home because my next day would start quite early.

I learned of my mistakes from the day before and wanted to start with hitchhiking as soon as possible. But before that I wanted to see something of the city in daylight. I walked around in the old town, went to the Parliament and then, I went to the church of Sankt Savas - which is one of the largest orthodox churches in the world. The architecture is combined with the Serbian and Byzantine style and was really impressive for me. On the way back to the hostel I grabbed three pieces of serbian puff pastry filled with cherries, apples and cinnamon. Tasted great but sadly I cannot remember the name of it. At around 11 I was ready to try my luck again with hitchhiking.

The evening before my friend Fynn gave me some advice that I wanted to try out. He recommended the website Hitchwiki (https://hitchwiki.org/en/Main_Page) where people recommend places to wait at and what to write on the board. So I went to one of the Places at the highway in Belgrade and wrote both Rampa (tollbooth in serbian) and Nis (a City near the Bulgarian border) on my Cardboard. I waited an hour but didn't get taken… … again! -Maybe hitchhiking is not possible anymore like my parents experienced it? Should I just take a bus to Istanbul and give up again? I gave it a last try and waited at the real spot shown on the website. ( I stood ca. 200m away from it because I thought I was smarter than all the other people) And whoops, 5 minutes later a old looking guy stopped the car and opened the door for me. I was shocked by happiness! I put my bag in the car and sat myself in the passenger seat. But then the driver recognised that I'm not Serbian and, except for Zdravo (Hello), couldn't speak the language. So he suddenly explained to me that he changed his plans and didn't want to go to Nis anymore. I can totally understand him, surely he looked forward to some nice conversations in the 3 hours of driving, but of course I was disappointed. But I couldn't get totally frustrated because the next car had already stopped for me. Vesna, an old handyman, had the honor to be the first person I really hitchhiked with in my life. He took me to the Toll station where he dropped me off. He told me a little bit about his experiences with hitchhiking and was really happy to help me.

My plan was to stop the trucks waiting at the Toll station who were on the way from Belgrade to Sofia but there were almost no trucks. But no problem, apparently I was on a lucky streak because ca. 20 minutes after I arrived, Julka offered to take me half of the way to Nis. With yesterday's disappointment in mind I said yes, what looking on it now maybe was a mistake.

Julka was a lovely woman who was full of good spirits. She just visited her Mother in Belgrade and was now on the way back. She works as a teacher but had also experience with volunteering so we had some interesting conversations. At some point I fell asleep, even though it wasn't really late. But standing in the cold for hours was tiring. She woke me up when she left the highway and gave me advice on where I should stand to have a good chance of being taken.

The place was dead. Maybe one car each 5 minutes. When it started to get dark I calculated it would be almost impossible to get taken until Sofia so my goal was just to arrive in Nis. But even until Nis there was still 70 km to cover…

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