So I've been on a bit of an adventure since my last post. Maria (from Dresden) and I have been on a hitch-hiking trip we'd been planning for a while. I won't bore you with all the details, instead I'll attempt to put in some of the things I particularly enjoyed as well as a rough run-through of the route.
We began in Graz, having both successfully hitch-hiked there from different places. Graz is a nice city in Austria and we had even nicer hosts.
We've been through Slovenia from top to bottom. First Maribor, then the capital Ljubljana, all the way to the coastal towns of Koper and Piran. We've had fun in a road-trip style van with two Slovenian friends and even more fun hanging out with Erasmus students in Koper - our host was a girl from Finland, her best friend was Lithuanian, and there were others from tons more places. Yep.
We walked over the border into Croatia.
In Croatia, though not as hot and tourist-infested as it would have been in summer, we stayed with some great hosts in Rijeka and Zagreb.
In Zagreb, we were even inspected while fare-dodging on the tram but the guy was far less strict and intelligent than the German inspectors and it was pretty easy to just walk around him to the exit door and avoid any possible fine.
From Zagreb, Maria successfully hitch-hiked north back to Dresden because her school holidays had come to an end. I successfully hitch-hiked to the eastern city of Osijek, and from there across the Serbian border to the capital city, Belgrade.
This was the city I chose a few days earlier to be the city of my 19th birthday, and what a birthday it was. I couldn't have picked a better place to CouchSurf. I was hosted by Natacha, a Belgian student living and studying in Belgrade, and her French room-mate Amelie. We also had another CouchSurfer at the same time, Simon from Germany. On my birthday, around 30 more people came for a party that just happened to take place in this apartment on this day, and they came from a wide range of countries. Around 3 were actually from Serbia I think. We had lots of drinks and conversations before going out clubbing, in a night that lasted one extra hour because of the end of daylight saving time.
I had a slight hiccup in my plans today - I got up earlier than usual and got myself out to a hitch-hiking spot with a bus. My destination was Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But I never made it. Not one Serbian person stopped for me in around 3-4 hours of attempted hitch-hiking from 3 different spots. By the late afternoon I was fed up with the whole concept of hitch-hiking and became a quitter. Unlike the time I had to sleep on the grass in Leipzig, this time I was able to get the buses back to the city centre and surprise Natacha and Amelie with the bad news. They were totally cool with me staying for an extra unexpected night.
This cuts Bosnia and Herzegovina out of my trip because tomorrow I was going to go back to Zagreb, now I'll be making this journey from Belgrade rather than Sarajevo, and I won't be risking another hitch-hike. I'll take a train like a normal person. ARE YOU HAPPY SERBIA? IS MY SPIRIT CRUSHED ENOUGH FOR YOUR LIKING?
Before I go, here's yet another video update, somewhere in the middle of Croatia just before I'm taken to Belgrade by a nice man, his son, and his son's friend, all of whom spoke great English.
from Belgrade (for the last night this time, I hope!)
Patrick
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