Hitching Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania

The night of my last rambling blog, the hostel people took us out to this sweet hole in the wall bar. Literally a hole in the wall. The bar was made up of what used to be an old courtyard, heated with rickety heat lamps. To get in you had to push through two shabby doorways covered by heavy plastic strips hanging down, you push through them the way cars push through those things at car washes. I was sure that we were sneaking in the back way or something, but no, that was the main entrance. There was no advertising or markings whatsoever on the street, yet inside was packed with locals and there was a really cool vibe. The guy who had brought us there said that it had taken him months to find this place and we were lucky that he lead us there. They usually dont take their hostelers that far from the hostel in case they get lost. There is another thing that you should know about Budapest (just one haw haw). On the way to the bar we bought some beers from the 24hour corner store for the walk. When one of us pointed out some police I hid my beer like a good Canadian and the hostel guy looked at me. He said: no man, its legal here. They sell hot wine on the street corners. I guess I assumed it wasn't alcoholic. I really couldn't get over that and started laughing. That was too much, drinking in the streets is legal and you can buy alcohol 24/7. That is one way to teach self control I guess.

In this sweet bar that I was talking about I had a conversation with an American from Kansas. I was surprised that he was from Kansas because he didn't have a strong accent, he was very well read and had impeccable grammar. Contrary to a few stereotypes that seem to have spread themselves around. He said somewhat viciously: "we're [Americans] not all like that you know," referring to a group of Americans that bustled into the hostel, made some ignorant remarks, kept to themselves, complained a bit and then left. I definitely believe him, some of the more exciting alternative thought aired on my campus radio station: CJSR comes from the states; but he remained the only example (except for one of the hostel hosts) of an enlightened American that we met.

The British guy who lives in Budapest and had brought us to the bar said that one of the downsides of Hungary joining the EU is that crazy backwater places like this bar will be shut down. There is no way it would pass any sanitation requirements. Some really unique culture that isn't necessarily harmful would be lost in his opinion.

The British guy left with the Swedish girl and the two Argentinians called it a night and it was down to 4 of us. The 'enlightened American', the really cool hostel host, from California... I could call him an enlightened American but he wasn't insecure about being American, and he had lived in Europe for years now, myself, and this really cool British Hungarian who had come to Budapest a year ago to teach English and now had a serious girlfriend and has no plans to move on. He couldn't resist the charm of Budapest. The language is a challenge though. He had only just mastered all of the sounds of their language. I understand that the reason their words are so long is that groups of letters make phonetic sounds, so a Hungarian will sometimes see like 3 or 4 letters together and read it as one sound. Also Hungarian is a phonetic language, which makes English particularly difficult for them to learn and they are boggled by how little we care about the sound of our vowels. You say potayto, I say potahto wouldn't fly in Hungarian.

One of the jokes that he tells his English class is this: How do you spell 'fish' in english? answer: 'ghosch', the 'gh' from enough, the 'o' from women and the 'sch' from schedule. I made the last one up, I cant remember what he used, it was even weirder than the 'sch' from schedule.

One of the realizations that I came to this night is that closing times can stifle the philosophical substance of Canadian conversations. Between the hours of 2am and 4am we concluded that:

1. Jesus Christ, Budah, Mohamed and all of the other founders of religion were just philosophers with good intentions and that it was power hungry men who perverted their messages of love into crowd control and war mongering. Jesus would have been crushed to hear of people killing in his name and Buda would have been appalled to see people worshiping him instead of meditating to enlightenment. If you want to found a religion, you have to find a way to keep power hungry men from institutionalizing it and using it to serve their own ends.

2. Hungary has to own up to its mistakes. It was on the wrong side of both world wars. In the first world war that is acceptable, it was a war about nothing, who cares what side you were on. The second world war is a lot more serious though and it isnt good enough to say that they defected to the other side at the end. The British guy said that Hungary's current borders reflect more of less the ethnic Magyar population. Some Hungarians on the right wing still want their old empire back: Hungaria. This is totally absurd in the 21st century. The British guy was saying that most
former colonial powers have let go of the glory of subduing other countries to make themselves feel big. Does your average Brit really care about ownership of northern Ireland, or do they want the commonwealth back under their controll? No. Some Hungarians however in his opinion (and this is the only opinion that I was exposed to, so it could be completely off the mark) haven't let go of seeing glory in imperialism. I objected to this because there is still active imperialism, but he was saying that your average Americans for example doesn't care about controlling Iraq, its the power hungry politicians and the oil and economic interests that push for being imperial. By contrast the protectors
outside of the parliament buildings, that the riot police were worrying about in that picture I took in the last blog, were chanting HUNGA -RIA, HUNGA-RIA, not MAGY-AR, MAGY-AR. (And they do call Hungary Magyar, like on the front of my map of Hungary. I found that very confusing at first).

On a side note, these demonstrations were the first that I had ever seen of a right wing population protesting a socialist government. Normally I have seen right wing capitalist governments squishing left of center protesters. This opened my mind a bit, it sounds silly now, but I had usually associated protesters with the political left. Socialism has a different meaning in northeast Europe and it is not nostalgic like for the former Yugoslavians I met. Socialism is sometimes seen as a scary downward spiral towards totalitarian communism.

3. I don't remember, there was definitely another important revelation that we came to over the tipsy buzz of our 0.5L beers, but this was too long ago now. Its gone.

We finished the night by going for some donair. Spot on.

Hungarian money is devalued by two orders of magnitude, that is their dollars (Foints) are more or less cents, with a converting factor. However when it is late at night after some partying vicious bank machines, designed for high rollers can get the best of a person. I meant to take out the equivalent of $30 CAD for beer and food for the next while and I took out $300 EEK. It ended up alright though, every time I crossed a border I just converted another 10 000 Huf bill, about $75 and I only recently ran out, but for the Californian made the same mistake and it was a different story. He went to take out $90 and he took out $900. He only had $600 in his account, this was the second time he had overdrawn and he had no income for a while. It totally killed his night (this was the night before) and after that a string of little shitty things happened to him, like he broke his beer trying to open the pop top for example or he would end up the odd man out for chairs at the bar. I felt really bad for the guy because he was the type who bought a bottle of wine that he was looking forward too, poured a glass for everyone in the hostel and then had none left for himself. When these types of things would happen he said nothing. No complaints, he just kept on. Whenever something bad would happen to him he would just shrug and keep living. That sounds so obvious, but it was super powerful, because little things are easy to make a fuss about, even jokingly, but he would let go of them. Also he didn't even think of checking the legitimacy of my suspiciously high deposit on the hostel key that I was trying to redeem on the last day in the morning. I had made a big deposit with a different employee because there was no change for my large bill, but I could have been trying to rip them off. I guess there isn't a good chance that I will ever run into him again but he is a good friend, someone you can really bond with regardless of logistics.

My second day in Budapest I didn't feel too hot. I had a stomach ache and my knees and feet were tired from so
much walking, then I hadn't brought enough layers for the fierce wind that kicked up. I wandered around a part of Budapest that I hadn't made it to yet half heartedly and then decided to check out one of the legendary bathhouses. I had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be the sweetest thing ever and it was exactly what I needed. The bath house has a series of geothermically heated pool-sized hot tubs with strange minerals dissolved in them. There were also a couple large saunas, a steam room, fountains that you could stand under, powerful underwater jets to play with, beer for sale and most importantly high level chess! In two places the pool had a spot where there could be 3 chess games going on at a time on plastic boards, partially submerged with the chess players standing next to the board, only their head and shoulders out of the water. At any given time there would be about 10 intense middle aged men watching the chess go down. Some of them were lost in thought, some of them looked insecure and a couple of them looked completely at ease and relaxed. I saw some really killer moves and a lot of moves that made no sense to me at all. All told I think I called 4 or 5 strategic moves out of the hours that I watched. I was under the impression that if you stood there long enough you would get a chance to play. I was nervous and excited, but it never happened. Later on a couple of guys my age set up next to the old men and played a game and not one of the old men watched it. It was like they wern't even there, or they were an unwelcome feature of the pool. I think maybe the older guys were serious ranked chess masters. I watched a few games through to completion, but kept on getting distracted with cute girls and jets turning on. There were a couple games where one guy gave up seemingly in the middle of the game and they they would shake hands and set the pieces up again.

The one image that stands out to me is happened like this: There were a few clouds and a fierce wind. I had found a good vantage point and I was really into one of the games. A gust of freezing wind came down from over the building and turned to steam as it hit the hot water of the pool. As the steam curled around the relaxing hot tubbers and the chess master put his hand on the chess board to stop it from blowing away, the sun came out from behind a cloud and another of the chess guys took a sip of beer. Then one of the smiling relaxed chess gurus said in a slow satisfied voice: Jó napot! This was one of the few phrases that I had memorized. It means good afternoon.


That night the first British guy who left with the Swede had promised a house party hosted by two other Sweedish girls. But he had also complained that he had invited too many people. I think he decided not to bring the people from the hostel that he had invited, dammit, but I had a fun time with absurdly cheep wine: 2L for under $7 in a plastic bottle
HAHA it was almost embarrassing sharing it, but don't worry I tried some of the higher quality cheap wine too.

That evening I splurged on a restaurand and ordered:
Bacon, stuffed with turky, rolled in bacon.
Just for the name, like what could that possibly mean? It was an anticlimax of course, just a bad translation. It was a couple strips of bacon cooked onto a turky breast. The 0.5L beer made up for it.

The next morning I woke up, paid my dues and made a B-line for Finland. Ok what I mean is I walked to the train that went the furthest north in the city. Along the way I met a British couple who told me that the reason there were so many police at the demonstration I had witnessed is that bigger demonstrations were coming and there had been some
violence in previous protests.

Another thing I forgot to mention about Budapest is the pedestrian streets. They were really cool but extremely touristy. They made for perfect saxophone busker acoustics though. I concluded that real Budapest youngsters hang out in the skate park with trick bikes and skateboards. I saw some pretty big tricks. At first I thought they were being punks, grinding all over classy monuments, but the more I thought about it the more the only thing these monuments could have been for was for skateboards and bikes, which is really cool. Older Budapesters I think find sweet hole in the wall bars and talk really fast. Those will be my generalizations.

So I took the train to the end of the line and started walking north.

I got on he wrong side of a river and the first two ferries marked on the map were out of commission (for the winter?) I was a bit worried about the third and last one for awhile, but it pulled through for me. It was marked as a pedestrian ferry and it totally was a pedestrian ferry, except it was chained securely to a floating platform for cars which was pretty cool. It made for some intense maneuvering because the engine was off-centre with the wetted area.

I got onto the island which looked like a cool weekend/summer outing type place from the map, but I had a bit of a rough time. It wasn't particularly scenic and there was no sidewalk so I walked on the wrong side of the road so that cars wouldn't sneak up on me and then just stepped into the bushes whenever a car came. I was trying to decide if it was possible to walk the 17km to the ferry leading to the city of Vac on the far shore of the river, when my bad times came to an end. A really cool man picked me up. He was 77 years old and he spoke Hungarian, English, German and Italian, possibly one more. It was 10 degrees celcius outside and he said that in his 77 years he had never seen a winter near like this one. He had a summer home on the island and he was just doing some upkeep stuff. When he dropped me off he gave me some bread things that he said go best with beer and bought my ticket for the ferry. He was another guy who seemed to have nothing but good in him. When he said goodbye it wasn't the sort of
wave, forced smile and I'm off- that I was used to, it was a double handed hand shake and a warm look straight in the eyes wishing me well in my adventures.

I walked through the old part of Vac and then the industrial part and found a secluded place to camp.

The next morning I got going bright and early and soonish after I had finished my sign, a black car with all black tinted windows pulled over for me. I played it cautiously, but the driver was young, clean cut, his car was immaculate and he had a bobble head on his dash. He had a good vibe so I took him upon the offer. He couldn't take me all the way to the Hungary/Slovakia border but it would be the bigger chunk of the trip. He didn't speak any English at all so our conversations were nonverbal and boggled. Half way there he told me something and I smiled and nodded. Then he didn't drop me where he had expected and took the turnoff that I needed to take. I thought about what he had said to
me and realized that he was saying that he would take me all the way to the border. I made it clear that now I understood and thanked him very much in Hungarian. On our way we got pulled over by the cops though. there was another car that had been pulled over and the driver didn't look happy. My driver and the cop had a longish conversation and tapped his tinted windows a couple of times. When he got back in I asked him if he got a ticket and he explained that he wasn't speeding and I think he said that the cop was checking for seatbelts though that doesn't make sense so I might have misunderstood his signing. He showed me some official looking ID for some reason and
I read the words HUNGARIAN NATIONAL DEFENSE. So either he was a cadet and the cop let him off easy on the tinted windows (ya right) or he was a crazy secret service dude who was allowed to have tinted windows because he needs them to be super elite... ok I got carried away fantasizing about it, but either way it was pretty rad.

Slovakia!

I wandered into the border town and had lunch on a park bench. A stray dog was looking hungrily at my bread. I felt a bit like a stray myself and gave him a piece that had landed on the ground. The dog took it and spat it out. I lost all connection with the dog right there. It was damn good bread. The dog went over and eat some old potato chips that had been spilled across the path.

I hiked to the end of the town and was picked up before I finished my sign. My ride could only take me 15 km but it was long enough to finish the sign and have my standard conversation with him. He dropped me at a good place and withing 5 minutes I was picked up by an awesome ride.

This guy was a business man for some large company that for some reasons had to drive a lot for meetings all around Slovakia. He gave me the run down on the country and corrected some of my misconceptions. He was bitter about Gypsies. Slovakia has one of the highest populations of Gypsies in Europe. He said they had a 90% unemployment rate and were content to drain the system. He also said some pretty racist stuff that a business man in Canada could easily have said about our First nations people. Is Gypsy the proper name or is it a derogatory term? He said it with venom. I wondered what the story is with Gypsies, I don't really know anything about Gypsies or their culture or history.

The automobile industry is large in Slovakia, there were a few other industries that could be the industries of any fully developed first world country (whatever that means). Slovakia was very beautiful and mountainous but tourism was down on the list of major industries. I commented that, They'll discover Slovakia soon (thats how some Slovenians talk
about tourism in Slovenia). He snapped that They already have discovered Slovakia and tourism is doing well. (oops)

I think my misconceptions about Eastern Europe come from social studies, when you learn about the 4 worlds of countries in high school. 1st world is like Britain, US, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, and so on, 2nd world is the former soviet countries who were having trouble recovering from communism, 3rd world countries are underdeveloped and have a long way to come to become 1st world countries (as if everyone could live the wasteful life that we do), and 4th world countries are countries that aren't even on their way to development. There were 2
examples of this in the textbook... one of them was Ethiopia which was struggling with war and drought and 1000 other things.

This bogus assessment of the world lead me to loads of unfair assumptions within each category of 'world'.

He dropped me at a shopping center and told me that if I wait an hour and a half he would drive me all the rest of the way through Slovakia because his daughter had a dentist appointment on the other side of the country. He enjoyed the opportunity of practicing his English and telling me about his time on the Slovakian dance team, touring the world as cultural ambassadors. He also gave me two sweet pens when I couldn't find mine and tore off some cardboard from a box for my next sign.

Once again, my next ride came before I had finished the next sign although the name of the town I was aiming for was really long. A friendly guy approached me in the parking lot. Sometimes I wonder if people regret picking me up when they find out that I cant speak their language, but this guy had every opportunity to change his mind about me and he was eager to help me out.

I asked him to take me to Strecno, wich was a little out of my way, but I wanted to spend some time in the mountains in Slovakia rather than just bombing straight through to Poland. He dropped me at Strecno castle which was closed
for the winter but I walked around it and it was very impressive. I wandered around Strecno town but didn't find anything too exciting and collected a lot of strange looks from locals. I found a map of the area and a cycling trail that I could hike along to get pack to the Highway leading north to Poland. It seemed to be a stroke of luck, the minor highway that I had planned to hike along on my map of Slovakia was a marked bike trail and it looked as though it would take me past some beautiful mountains.

However it turned that although the highway was marked with bicycle trail signs, you would have been absolutely crazy to cycle along it. I'm sure you would have been run over or blown into the ditch by the draft from a car. As it was I
could step into the ditch whenever there was a problem, but it was no fun at all and I was stepping into the ditch regularly.

The hiking trails marked along the mountains that I figured I could follow if the cycle trail didn't pan out turned out to be snowed out. I guess its a summer thing. It would be pretty spectacular to traverse the tops of those mountains in the summer. They aren't particularly tall compared to the Rockies, but there are some super shear cliffs and there would have been a sick panoramic view.

That night I camped in the trees beside a graveyard. I payed my respects and quietly asked permission to sleep there, even though I don't really believe in that sort of thing. It wasn't spooky or anything but I didn't get a very good sleep because I was worried that someone would come by and be really angry about me being so close to the graveyard. There would be no way of communicating that I was in a tough situation as far as a place to sleep the night and that I was trying to be really respectful. In the morning I found out that I had accidentally stepped on a candle that was hidden in the snow. It was an old one, covered in dirt and leaves, but I felt terrible about it. I set it upright and decided that camping near the graveyard was not a good idea.

By lunch I made it to the town below the 'scenic road' where I took the first couple pictures in this blog (see the last blog for a couple more pictures of it). I hiked up to the ski area and was super close to throwing my budget out the window for a bit and renting some skis and getting a pass. The price was really steep though and while it had snowed big lovely
flakes for some time leading up to this, the slopes at the bottom looked pretty gross.

I wanted to hike up a trail to the peak that I expected to be a series ski boot-kicked steps, but it was a trail for people with skins. Next I backtracked and followed another road that, from the map, looked s though I could make my way back down the mountain to the highway a different way than I had came along a hiking trail. Again it was closed for the
winter so I was a bit disheartened, though the views I did get had been great.

Now it was back to the sketchy road that nobody would pick me up on. I trudged along and fortunately I was eventually picked up and driven to Dolny Kubin, back on my rout to Poland.

That night I bungled an effort to use the Hospitality Club to find a billet. For the life of me I couldn't figure out the pay phones. I swear I was doing it right...

The next morning I found a supermarket and bought the Nugeta: a peanut ripoff of Nutella. There is so much sugar in it that it had congealed as syrupy goop on top of the supposed peanut stuff, which was still mostly sugar and coco. What I wouldnt have given for some crunchy 100% peanut, peanutbutter. Ah well. With a bit of trouble I found the on ramp to the highway and was picked up very soon after finishing my sign. Despight my state of mind (kind of down for the moment), the hitchhiking on main roads had been stellar in Slovakia.

This person who picked me up From Dolny Kubin was another truck driver and he took me all the way to the town nearest the Polish border. In my last Blog entry I posted a bad picture of a stunning castle. A guy called Mike sent me a message telling me that it's name is Orava and it is definitely worth a visit. No kidding... check out the link he have me!

Orava Castle

Poland!

I hiked across the border and to the first town on the Polish side. I was pretty stoked about being in a new country again and I had a good collection of Polish phrases for when I was picked up. These ones were spelled out phonetically so I wouldn't end up brutalizing the simple phrases before I had heard someone else say them.

It was just after school was out and there were kids everywhere. They were having snowball fights and giving me dirty looks. I was a bit worried because I knew that Poland elected a fairly hard rightwing government and I had heard that lots of people in Poland consider hitchhiking a thing of the old days under socialism that is now dead.

These turned out to be completely invalid stereotypes (when will I learn) and although I did get a couple middle fingers and souls in my hitching Poland, I also got a peace sign, a lot of smiles and I actually had to wait in a couple hitchhiking lineups around Biala Podlaska.

I was picked up by my first serious trucker at the end of this first town. Not one of these town to town delivery truck things, but a loaded down land-train. Once again communicating was a bit frustrating because the he knew Polish, German and Italian and I knew English French and a few words of Spanish. Together we had the west of the continent pretty well covered but we still could only communicate nonverbally.

He took me all the way to Krakow, but getting him to stop was another story. I assumed that he was going to be unloading or fueling up at Krakow because he had listed it as one of the cities he was going through on his trip (bound for Scandinavia).

We came over a hill and saw a bunch of lights and he said: "Kracove"

I nodded, and was a little puzzled because he took a turn onto the ring road. but then I thought about it and if was obvious, what would a massive truck do in the centre of the city, he was going to a truck stop or industrial place on the outskirts. Sure enough, that wasnt the only exit for Krakow, we came to another exit, and then another. I was trying to figure out the best way to clearly ask him where in Krokow he was stopping, but I couldn't think of anything. I asked "Krakow?" as we drove past another exit, and then quickly corrected my pronunciation. You are supposed to pronounce the ow as an 'ove' or 'off'. He interpreted my comment as a question about the pronounciation and he replied "Krak-off."

We got to the first road sign that no longer mentioned Krokow and I put both hands on my chest and said "I'm going to Krakow."

"okokok" he said and pulled the massive truck over onto the side of the road. I thanked him very much and he smiled and nodded and we went on our separate ways.

It turned out to be a good thing budget wise to be dropped off in the farmland around Krakow rather than at the centre because it was pretty mild weather, secluded and this meant that I didn't have to waste a whole day's hostel fee on 7 hours of sleep.

The next day I hiked for hours into Krokow. It is neat hiking into cities because you get a thorough look at the outskirts, which you would probably breeze by and miss on a buss, train or plane. You get a feeling for the part of the city where your average Joe might work or go to the bar, away from the pretty tourist hub.

I saw some crazy crows with big, long beaks, opening wall (which I guess grow on the trees here) and picking at garbage... ok so with that as the highlight, the outskirts wernt actually interesting, but it was refreshing until I was footsore.

One thing that stood out for me on this walk was a strange building with intense bars on the window below sidewalk level. As I walked past I looked down in and hundreds of workers in close quarters working on sewing machines. It could easily be that they were paid well and had long breaks and it is as good a job as any, I dont want to say anything that isn't true, but it looked really intense and I had never seen one of these places before. It was a bit of a reminder of the struggle of the working poor. I'm not calling these people poor, how would I know and what does poverty really mean, I'm just saying the world isn't necessarily butterflies and rainbows.

After lots of boring buildings and some suburbs, the scenery suddenly opened up as I climbed a little rise and I was looking out over a river with a metropolitan-looking downtown straight ahead and a castle to my right. There were no butterflies or rainbows, but there were swans and cathedrals.

I made my way to the old town and found an internet cafe to search for cheap hostels. When I went in it was rainy and grey outside, but when I came out it had cleared up and the sky was bright blue and sunny, as I explain in my picture caption.

I dumped my bag at the hostel and explored some of the sights. That night absolutely nothing happened nightlife wise, which was a bit of a let down after Budapest, so the next night I tried to make things happen. The attitude of the hostel guy was that if I wanted to party that was my project. It was unfortunate because at the moment the official languages of the hostel were lightning fast Spannish (Mexico and Madrid) and Polish, so I couldn't talk to anyone properly. I introduced myself to a few people and was about ready to give up, call it bad luck, and get some much needed sleep, when the Polish couple asked me if I wanted to come out to a show with a local band with them.

She was a student and he was a music journalist, SCORE! They knew the band who were playing so we got in for free and hung out back stage. The lead singer was pretty much the only other guy in Poland that I met with long hair.

I was super excited because they had said it would be punk rock and the bar was really groovy. It had torn scarlet drapes, flames coming off the lights and blood splatters painted all over the place. It turned out however that it was decidedly classic rock, not what I would call punk, but the audience loved it so it was easy to get into.

The audience was pretty strange in my eyes, they were nicely dressed (there I was in my grotty white vintage Alberta Sailing Team t-shirt) and they ranged from about 26 to 46. I'm sure I was the youngest there. But they danced together like drunk 17 year old college students (and they were drunk).

The band had a couple of songs of their own that they sang in Polish and the audience loved, but they mostly did classic rock covers: eye of the tiger, a few ACDC, that sort of thing. They were really tight and had some stellar solos. They had been together for 8 years and this was their regular Friday night show. They didn't speak too much English so a lot of the singing wasn't pronounced right, but the feeling was DEFINITELY there.

After the show we started drinking beers outside with the band... In canada you usually drink before the concert, though I guess that is for people who wont be operating musical instruments. I wanted to object because I had had a good night and was ready for bed, any more alcohol or sleep depravation and I was worried that my doemant cold would catch up with me. But they would have none of it. They said: "This is Poland, you drink".

I figured that it must be legal to drink outside like in Hungary because they were so open about it. But then a guy dressed in black came up and opened his coat showing a badge, just as I had the tallboy we were passing around...
"Policija!" -busted. I think the band apologized in Polish, and as usual I forgot my phrases at crunch time. I stammered that I speak English (oh boy). I think the cop told us to stop and not do it again, letting us off with a slap on the wrist. When he had gone I asked what happened. The base player told me that I had been lucky for two reasons. He pointed to my two friends from the hostel, Aga and Martin. The policeman had let me off because I was with locals who spoke Polish properly. (The reason locals were hanging in a hostel was because they were going to move into an appartment together but it wasnt ready yet or something.

On a side note Martin the music reporter hadn't seen Almost Famous. I made sure to tell him to get on it... that boggles my mind, a music reporter that hasn't seen Almost Famous, I had been pretty sure that that movie is responsible for 90% of the people who become music journalists. Maybe it was actually a front for a drug smuggling operation.... just kidding.

In the evening before this concert I had found a shop advertising cheap calls to Canada and it was the right time of day - FINALLY. I went in with a grin on my face and the guy told me that it wasn't working today, but his English wasn't good enough to tell me why. I don't know what to say, how could it not be working? How is that possible, I was
pretty choked. I have only made one successful call home so far this trip. Thank god for email.

The next day I took a train north-east to the end of its tracks and then hiked through an intense ugly industrial park to get to a good hitchhiking spot for the highway I wanted. I didn't have to wait very long once I got into position with the sign and scored a ride with a very young couple all the way to Lublin. He was at school for materials engineering and she was in chemistry. They had met on the rowing team. I got the rundown on Poland's economy and politics. They told me they don't really know why their government supports the war in Iraq, maybe its for the oil interests, maybe it is to buddy up to the Americans in hopes of economic spin offs, either way they lead me to believe that the average Polish person doesn't think the war is good.

They told me that it had been very hard for Poland, taken over by the Germans and by the USSR and that the Soviet system was very brutal. This is partially why Poland is so right wing, to get as far as possible from those bad old
days. They were quite nationalistic and told me about how Poland used to be an amazing empire ages ago, but the last couple hundred years had been really rough. Thats why Poles drink and go to church so much the guy said.

They were interested in Canada and in what I knew before I came about Poland. I told them that I had heard about the opening of the communist files documenting how the system manipulated people into spying on their neighbours. They didn't want to talk about that.

They told me that in the government there were too many old people doing things the same old ways and that Poland needs younger more open minded people in politics (doesn't every country).

I mentioned the haze and they told me that it came from everyone heating their house with coal.

I asked them about farming because I had seen a lot of small farms and I was jealous. In Canada we have huge industrial farms that are gross and use too many harsh chemicals and have terrible livestock conditions. But from
their point of view they were jealous of Canada. They said that after Communism the Polish government had given out lots and lots of lots of land (...ya...) and so there were a lot of small farms so that everyone could make their own food and sell some as well. But this was bad economically. The farming in Poland doesnt make enough money because it isn't as industrialized. So economically Canada's system is desirable, but for health and quality of food, Poland's system is better. Do Canada's farms actually make money though? I thought they were always struggling anyway? Maybe thats just the small farmers?

I was dropped off in Lublin and spent a frigid night camping outside there. The next day I hitched a ride with a guy going to visit his 4 year old son in the town I was aiming for.

The next ride was two twentysomething guys, taking me to the town on the border of Belarus. They looked cool at first, but then I noticed a baseball bat tucked under the driver's seat and they didn't want to talk (understandable because I didn't speak their language). But my imagination started to run away with me. The more I looked at the reflection of the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror, the more I imagined them as a couple of thugs who wanted to beat up some foreign hippie with a baseball bat. When they stopped to let me out, I got another look at their faces and my first instincts had served me well, they looked completely harmless and they were very smiley and wished me good luck. He
probably plays baseball or something, man I'm a dork.

The border with Belarus was different than all the other borders. They wouldn't let me through on foot. They, actually instructed me to hitchhike across...strange. I asked if that was what the group of middle aged women hanging around a hundred meters away were doing and he said maybe. It turned out that they were. There were a group of thirty to sixty year old women, some of them with dogs that were waving down each car and some cars would take one or two of them. How was I ever going to compete with that? they were locals and I was some foreigner with a huge
backpack.

I had tried to exchange my Polish money for Belorussian money and they had given me a American bill. Great, I look American and now I have American dollars. It turns out that Belarus doesn't have a currency of its own and you can use Polish Zloty, American dollars or Euros. I wasted another 5% and converted my American money back into Zloty. It
didn't look as though I was going to make it in anyway.

As it turned out someone did randomly pick me up instead of the women and we drove through the first set of gates. I had told him that yes I do have a visa -like the card to take out money right? Wrong. You need a special thing from the
Belorussian consulate in the town I had just come from. Thoroughly discouraged I hiked back towards the town as darkness fell. Someone slowed to a stop for me and then took off as I got near. Despite how desperate my situation was getting *It was a bit too cold to camp) it made me laugh. If it happened too many more times I might get pissed off, but I can appreciate a joke atmy expense. I did however get picked up and taken to a cheapish hotel.

There was no Engish tv, but the manager was convinced that I wanted to watch ty, so he searched and searched and finally found me a blurry French tv channel. It actually was nioce to listen to something that I could more or less understand for once, and I watched a very well spoken right wing French politician speaker crush half hearted points made by a meager host who was quite happy to be interrupted and talked over. Ah propaganda.

The next morning I decided that it wasnt worth getting a Belorussian entrance visa seeing as it costs 105 dollars or zlote or something, when I could go straight to EU-Lithuania for free. I had wasted a couple of days on the Belarus thing, oh well, how was I to know (I mean other than if I did my homewoek:), and it was definitely an experience.

Hitching out of Biala Podlaska turned out to be extremely difficult. There were local hitchhikers there who had to wait a long time too, but they eventually they got picked up, I just waited and waited. Eventually I started hiking down the highway to warm up and got picked up after an hour or two.

This ride seemed to be proud to speak nothing but Polish and was quite happy to communicate nonverbally. He did a fair bit of talking over the CV radio. He dropped me at a corner in a town where I waited for ever for a ride in a lineup of 3 hitchhikers (the other guys were local and didn't want to communicate with me). Once again I hiked down the highway to warm up and got picked up a few kilometers down by a guy who spoke English. He told me that he had hitchhiked around Europe when he was my age, but that not many people do it now because they are afraid that it isn't safe. I don't know how it has become inherently less safe though?

He told me that CV radio is so popular because the police are a pain in the ass and the drivers tell each other whenever they see a cop, like my experience in Hungary. But the police presence is legitimate because apparently Poland has the most traffic accidents or casualties or something in the continent.

I stocked up on food where he dropped me and was picked up by a guy who brought me all the way to Bialostok (sp?). He works in Ireland because of the strong pound. He said it makes no sense to work in Poland because you can make 3 times as much per hour in Ireland. The couple who drove me to Lublin had mentioned that the drain to the UK was a problem, but he had said that he loved his country and would take the crappy pay so that the could remain a loyal Polish person and support his country. Neat how you meet the different sides of things hitching.

This guy got me to talk in English with his girlfriend, supposedly so that she could practice her English, but he later explained that it was to show that he didn't only pick up female hitchhikers.

He had just taken his truck drivers test and was really bitter because he said that no matter how good a driver you are you can't pass without paying a bribe. He said that is the way of Poland, its not the same in Ireland. This was the only complain that I heard of this sort, but he was really bitter about it.

He was a super cool guy, and a good driver which was a relief because the roads were really sketchy and a car that had blown by us earlier was in a rough looking accident that we passed later on our way. My ride looked like a guy who could handle himself in a rough part of town, but he warned me that Bialostok is not a safe city, even for him, so i should
stick to lighted streets. This worried me a bit and I was nervous getting out my map to figure out where I was and where the hostels would be because I would be playing the part of a big vulnerable tourist. Funny how people are afraid of you when you have a backpack on the highway, but you are afraid of them when you have one in the city.

It turned out however that I attracted the right crowd. A middle aged lady and her daughter about my age came over to help me find my way. They walked me a long way and were really eager to help me out.

The girl ended up walking me to a university dorm at least half an hour away so that she could practice her English. The dorm was super cheap and I had another good night's sleep.

The next day I hiked out of Bialostok and was picked up straight away by a guy in a work van who didn't speak English, but still managed to tell me a story about one time when he picked up three hitchhikers and two of them road in the back of the van where there are no windows. Two of them were Czek and the other was German. He was extremely friendly and tried to hook me up with a ride to Vilnius over CV.

Without me really knowing what was going on because it all happened in Polish, my ride pulled over at a large bus stop (they have bus stops all along the highway) with a road train behind me who had told my driver over CV radio that he was heading to Vilnius. That would have saved me 2 days in retrospect, but it was not to be. He was too tired and dropped me at the same town that the other guy said he could get me to. It was about 25 km to the border which was a touch further than I could walk, but I got a 10km ride and tackled the rest. I made good time and crossed the Lithuanian border before sundown.

After I uneventfully crossed the border a security guy ran after me with a 'who the hell are you' look on his face, no doubt sure that he had caught a drifter sneaking across the border. He asked me if I had been through the pasport control and I said that I had, then he checked my passport. He said in a surprised voice: "looks good to me".

I camped in the cold again and had another rough night. The next morning I couldn't get a ride for the life of me and walked a long way. In the end I caved in and took my first buss since Kranjska Gora Slovenia. It is strange how when hitchhiking in the cold or in a really deserted place, you can be on top of the world one moment, riding in a warm passenger seat with good company, then withing minutes be thinking WHAT am I doing there? Live is brutal, what was I thinking, going on this trip, then minutes later be back warm and comfortable again.

At this point I was on a serious down and I was missing my parents and sister more than ever before and was feeling the intense loneliness of only ever having 2 hour friendships and rarely sharing a first language with anybody.

I missed all my wonderful friends, I missed my dog, I miss sailing regattas (even though its the winter and the lakes are frozen at home anyway) and the trip seemed like pointless unenlightening hardship. I even kind of missed doing engineering homework and worrying about the curve.

I took the bus and it only cost the equivalent of $1.50 to get to the next town where I could hitch toward Vilnuis. But this was the first public transit that I had used outside of major cities since Ljubliana, so I felt bad about it. It rnded up being a good thing though because the warmpth and security of the bus was exactlywhat I was missing.

When I got in to Mariample, Lithuania, I noticed another strange Eastern European fad, to go along with the tons of women who die their hair dark red. Lots of the girls had red dots stuck on their faces much like the sprinkles that some girls wear to the bar in Canada. I I found my way to the library to wright my folks and appease my feelings of loneliness, desperation and futility, when I saw a red heart glued to the computer and Googl.ca came up with a chocolate strawberry in it's name. Of course, I checked my watch.. 14th of Febrewary, it was valentines day and this supposed fad wasn't some Eastern European thing, it was just a bunch of girls excited about valentines day, covering
their faces with heart stickers.

That evening I headed for a motel because I had promise my family that I would take care of my sick and lonely self for a bit, but a guy started following me for a while from behind. I turned and made some full on eye contact with the guy. I thought: What is the deal buddy? Do I have a problem?

Shortly after he turned off from the path I was following and trekked through the snow. I caught another glance and
saw that he had a rose in his hand. Oops... I was just being paranoid, he was going to see his girlfriend in the same direction as me and I had just scowled at him for no reason. Now he had wet feet from the snow.

I went to the hotel and it was booked up because of valentines day. This was the second hotel that I had no luck with. I decided to rough it for one more day then take care of myself for real once I got to a hostel in Vilnius.

I had some difficulty finding a good set of trees for my hammock because Lithuania seemed to be mostly planes and the trees were just surrounding people's properties and the ditches. I was getting cold and fed up and I convinced myself that one group of trees that I had found was good enough.

In the morning it turned out that I was a lot closer to the highway than I thought in the darkness. I was in plain view and the ditch that I had camped in was a pond in the summer.

I was woken up by the police as I explain in the picture caption. I thought I was really in for it, but they were super nice and this stroke of luck put me in a much better mood that has revitalized my trip after being pretty down.

I caught a ride all the way into Vilnius after a bit of waiting around. The road was pretty scenic, but if someone had told me that I was looking at Canadian landscape I would have believed them. There were deer warning signs, which were the first wildlife warning signs that I had seen on my trip and the forests were pine and birch and I saw some people ice fishing.

My ride was also a mechanical engineer, but we kept on getting confused when we tried to have more in depth conversations, so I didn't learn as much about Lithuania as I had about some of the other countries from my rides. I was dropped on the outskirts and hiked several kilometers to the centre. I had read in the tourist brochures about
medieval Vilnius, so the super-urban metropolitan feel took me off guard. I was excited by the English graffiti, because it meant that more of the locals could probably talk to me. There were a few graffiti markings that caught my eye: flower-power and live life without dead time, along with a slew of skater and pothead graffiti bits that made me excited for the sub-culture. I only stayed in Vilnuis for 2 nights, so I really didn't get a popper feeling for this sub-culture, but I was definitely intrigued and I have to go back.

When I got to the hostel, there was beautiful acoustic Tracy Chapman playing and I was the only one in the hostel and the hostess was a really cool. That night we went to a bar that doesn't like tourists... however I somehow fit in.

I am pretty used to sticking out like a sore thumb when I go out in public, so I was really thrown off when about half of the guys had long hair, chin beards and were pretty into dancing.

Unfortunately there were excited about classic rock... which I do like, but its hard for me to really lose myself dancing to, especially sober. I was surprised when the hostess and her local friends took their one free drink that came with the cover charge and went straight onto the dance floor dead sober and started tearing it up.

I had to call it a night early ~3am because I got really sick in my stomach with the combination of moshing to nirvana and my dormant illness.

The next day I slept in, wrote some of this blog and explored more of Vilnuis. There are a lot more girls wearing rainbow coloured gloves and scarves or with facial piercings and punk hair and guys who aren't strictly clean cut than in Poland or elsewhere on my trip. I wondered if these signs are exclusively associated with the classic rock scene or if it was
just that one bar.

It turned that the next day was not only a Friday, but it was by coincidence Lithuanian Independence day. As the day wore on, hundreds of vibrant people were filing drunkenly into the square below the castle beside the museum.

I have a few pictures of that night and my encounter with a cheap, siropy, 16% alcohol local wine which was recommended to me.

A couple of blond Australian girls who were sharing the dorm room with me told me that I absolutely had to check out a hostel called Fun, Frindly Franks when I went to Riga. I thought about my promise to take care of myself and how I was running short on time for making it to Turku, Finland by the last weekend in February, so I wimped out from the Hitchhiking thing and took the buss for about $23 canadian.

I took a front row seat because I really wanted to see what this northend landscape between two distinct countries would be like, but it was almost a carbon copy of the rout from Edmonton to Calgary in the winter. Same distance, same expanse of planes, same types of trees, pretty monotonous, the major difference is that the villages obvioulsy had a more European feel.

At the moment I'm at Frank's Hostel in Riga and it is pretty manic. The hostel is an attraction in itself and though it has all the best features of the other hostels that I like, it is a bit too big and impersonal, though I met a few really cool people that I want to stay in contact with (out of the 60 plus that are staying here).

I enjoyed the medieval old town, but these 'old towns' are all starting to look alike. They are amazing in that they have been around forever and they have cook nooks and crannies, but in the end they are just gross tourist attractions that I think I would need to have a friend and money to actually have fun in.

I spent most of the day today in the old soviet-style market which was significantly bigger than the biggest Krakow market. I tried some greesy Latvian junk food and perused the wide variety of food and goods for sale.

Tied with the over stimulus of the market, the sweetest thing so far about Riga was the night club La Rocca that 54 people in the hostel poured out to visit last night. It had three separate rooms, one for hip hop (haha they played Livin in a Gangster's Paradise!), another room for random dance music that I passed through a couple times, but the biggest room and the one that I spent most of my time in was for a big DJ with laser lights and a couple levels and there was earth-shaking base.
This is not Chicago
This is not Milan
This is not New York
This is not Dubai

This...
IS RIGA

ok the song goes This is Ibiza, but thats what I heard... and the ladies were fine. I was severely disappointed with the quality of dancing though. Granted it wasn't a proper Drum and Base show, but there were only a couple people who could dance properly and I got a couple compliments myself.

Speaking of Drumb and Base, there is a bank in Lithuania and Latvia called DnBNord. I cant get enough of it. That is a sweet name. I dont know what it stands for other than North Drumb and Base.

I Have a riddle: What do icecream, cigaretts, bicycles and firearms have in common?

answer:

They are all expressly prohibited from Hansa Bank with little graphic stickers on the glass door, sketching them, circling them and crossing them out in red.
-Bank robber: "Damn, how am I going to rob Hansa Bank if guns aren't allowed?"

So here I am finally cought up with my blog. My plans are to go out tonight on the crawl dispite my sore throat, hike out of the city tomorrow morning and try to make it to Tallin, Estonia, or at least the Estonia border tomorrow. I want to make it to Turku by early afternoon on the 23rd to check out Finland Vodka with Kaisa and frinds and I hope to make it to Britain by the 7th to meet up with sister before she leaves on a small tour and with my dad who is in the country for a funeral/reunion.

(That want entirely true, because I have changed city since I wrote that)
NOW I'm in Tallinn, Estonia. I woke up with a fierce headache and stomach ache and a brutal cough. Moving was painful and it was difficult even to drink water.

It took me forever to pack up my stuff and I was cursing my brilliant idea to go out last night, but after La Rocca I had to chance it. Too many people buying me 0.5L beers. You don't say that too often. But this was more than a hangover. I think I had just put my immune system on hold and let my cold get a serious hold on me. So much for taking it easy at the hostel. So I got some vegetable soup and a plate of meat and potatoes from the super cheap shop at the market and then sat and waited for a bus, barely awake, coughing violently, too weak to brave the cold and wander the city.

I more or less slept for the whole buss ride and then slept 13 hours when I got to the hostel, after getting lost in the castle. It did my head in. I would normally love getting lost in the castle, but not in this state of mind. I found the hostel, havn't touched alcohol and have been staying warm and eating well. I need to recover so that I can face the Finnish Vodka . This hostel has a sauna, how perfect is that. Once my cough and headache clear up I'm excited about Tallinn, it had a really cool feel as I walked to the hostel from the bus station, though the language once again is boggling.

I met a Canadian from Vernon and we randomly have mutual friends of friends. Only my second canadian this whole trip.

I love you all. I miss you all.

Ian

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