The second day of hitching on to the new life brought again that old feeling of not belonging, being alone. It's like a roller coaster: one day you feel like on top of the world, the next like you'd just like to return to home to the routine where you feel comfortable. All of it because you are going towards something you have no idea and further away from things you know. Besides that, you have no home base, no person alike to share your whole journey, you feel like you haven’t been in a shower in a month even if you had one yesterday, every muscles of your body is in pain because you forgot to stretch after exercise you did before heading the road with your way too heavy back bag and over all your body is everything else but in balance. There's nothing you want except a place to rest, and you ask yourself why you are in the middle of a cold snow pile your feet freezing and your thumb up with a sign that nobody even looks at when you could be of anywhere else that is way warmer and relaxing?
Yesterday my pal Dave and I had great luck hitching. In between of the rides in Umeå towards Oslo I felt extremely tired but energetic when I saw a sign of a gas station at the beginning of the high way. I sprinted there to warm up and encountered a dude who worked in there, while poor Dave wanted to stand in a bus stop wishing that somebody’s going towards South after mid night.
So, there I was drinking tea in the gas station with the dude in the other side of the counter who welcomed me and told me I looked like a well prepared hitch-hiker for the cold night. All I needed was a pair of those socks with a battery on them and a new mental health. Other than that, I was too much prepared with my heavy bag which had lost some kilos after me adding a fifth layer of clothes.
The gas station dude told how he'd been thinking to quit his job and hitch like he did back in the old days, an that I was like a sign to make the thought come true. The only reason he didn’t do so because he wasn’t sure what he actually wanted, but least it was something else than working in a gas station on a night shift. He didn’t know whether to believe his inner voice that kept saying he wasn’t in peace now. So if I was his sign, my sign was the arrow that had Gas Station on it.
I told him to be honest to himself while at the same time I thought who an earth would take a mentally unbalanced hitcher in the night as a sign for a better life. Never the less I told him to listen to that inner voice, that could have as well been a sign that he had some kind of double personality. No matter how crazy that voice was it was awake for a reason and not satisfied on the present life. He should ask why and change the life, even if it’s by changing the route he takes to the work.
By doing different things a person starts to think differently and realize what it is that drives him if the life lived is not what the little weird voice in the head wants.
After sharing a rather great hour talking and smiling in front of a cup of hot tea I felt like I should put Dave out of his misery and at least bring him some tea. But as I was about to head to the toilet first Dave rushed in to tell he hitched a ride from a taxi that would leave us few miles ahead. The dude from the gas station send me off with a pile of out of date salad boxes and some more tea. (Like I wasn’t in a need of a toilet already.) Few chocolates (which I shouldn’t have eaten, because my body is already confused) and a short taxi ride after we ended up in the middle of a dark highway where the wind was catching up. Looking at Dave one could tell it wasn’t what he had in mind. But then, life is making choices and going for them.
By looking back you can always be wise and say we should have done it differently. But it will not take you ahead. It keeps you in the past, feeling sorry for yourself.
So as we realized how pointless it was to bounder What If's we walked ahead in the empty and spooky highway playing a game called What If with a smile on our face. We ended up in a gas station hoping for a ride or place to warm up and sleep, but since the only interior warm place was the air-conditioned windshield-washer equipment closet, we quickly wrapped our bags in plastic bags to put into the wet floor and ate a salad after squeezing in between the shelf and the roof at 3am. I put my hat over my eyes since the closet had lights like in a shopping window and wished some sleep. Million positions later Dave woke me up saying sun was up and we should move on. I felt like I'd slept only less than an hour but he kept telling me I was fully asleep more than three hours. And if the sun wouldn’t have been up I'd call him a liar. He also told me that a dude had stopped to take our picture while I was snoozing away. I just hope it wasn’t because they were thinking of putting a lock on the closet in case for the future homeless travelers, who are looking of a shelter to warm up. If not, then i don't mind finding my picture in the Most Weirdest Places To Sleep web page.
As soon as I got up from the tiny little closet I was happily asleep again, this time in a Finnish truck. It had stopped to sleep overnight in that same gas station. Three dreamless hours later we ended up in a gas station near Gävla and few hours and some aimless walking later we go dropped off in the city of jävlar Gävla with farewell word’s that it would be a better place to hitch to Oslo than the gas station we were. I wonder, because after few hours my hitching spirit was in a real test. Also there was this little point that Dave had a schedule. He had to be in Oslo by next day afternoon. So he wanted to take a train to Oslo and I decided hitching in the winter with my feet cold in a bad hitching stop was not the way I wanted to do it. I've done it before. And I always told to myself never again I want to return to the cold especially to hitch. (That before was a time when my mission was to reach Finland without public transportation as fast as possible. Oh, and there were the times I’ve hitched inside in Finland, but smaller distances… Oh yes, and the time I left Krakow in Poland to get to a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia… Yes and that one inside Germany... Well, that proves my point: never again.) Now was the time to bounder what I'd like the most. And it sounded awfully nice to take a ride in the train to Stockholm to visit my old couchsurfing pal for couple days before heading towards Denmark to visit a school I was planning to go to (that was also my point B, where I’d head to C).
People set limits to themselves, so does the weird travelers. They think some things are not possible. But the limits are only guidelines that can be broken in mind of your goal. They are there to challenge you. But if you realize after three hours of hitching for a lift, that you don’t enjoy it anymore and would rather enjoy a train ride, you should go for it. If that crazy double personality in your head is not in peace anymore, you should give up and try something else. Giving up is not loosing. It is realizing your limits.
For me more important than keeping my limit was the next goal: Denmark, after which I’d hitch down in the South. Now I also wanted some rest to my tired body.
I've seen Scandinavia, I've seen Europe. I’ve hitch hiked around.
A life of a nomad is unexpected, lonesome, full of ups and downs, schedules lost if you ever had ones and many wise lessons you learn on the way. But it can be more secure, more constant. It can me a life with a routine just like the one back home if you set your mind into thinking it is something permanent like it is. You need things like, jobs, places to rest in between of wandering, a morning tea, a morning shit, a movie on the couch with a friend. And it is those things you learn to appreciate on the road, those things that you need in between of A and B on your way to C.
As I finally said good bye for the time being to Dave who went on till Oslo as I reached my couch in Stockholm after short but nice ride in the Swedish train, I felt relaxed. I was enjoying the company of a old friend again, joking about a job as a windshield-cleaner-automate with my friend being my pimp. I knew I needed these few days to rest.
Speed hitching is awesome, but then, it is not constant and in the cold Scandinavia where people are born to be scared of unexpected things is not the best place to do it in the winter time. Even if I still like to believe I'm like Alice in the Wonderland where everything is possible, even hitching 500km to Oslo sooner than with a ride on the bus. Because when you end up hitching in a place you don’t know, you have no expectations on how to get from there. You just go, because you are crazy enough to be believed.
With these thoughts I fell asleep with every inch of my body dreaming a life as a windshield-washer-closet-machine automate… Which is actually not a bad idea for a traveler wishing to have some work with accommodation included.
Yesterday my pal Dave and I had great luck hitching. In between of the rides in Umeå towards Oslo I felt extremely tired but energetic when I saw a sign of a gas station at the beginning of the high way. I sprinted there to warm up and encountered a dude who worked in there, while poor Dave wanted to stand in a bus stop wishing that somebody’s going towards South after mid night.
So, there I was drinking tea in the gas station with the dude in the other side of the counter who welcomed me and told me I looked like a well prepared hitch-hiker for the cold night. All I needed was a pair of those socks with a battery on them and a new mental health. Other than that, I was too much prepared with my heavy bag which had lost some kilos after me adding a fifth layer of clothes.
The gas station dude told how he'd been thinking to quit his job and hitch like he did back in the old days, an that I was like a sign to make the thought come true. The only reason he didn’t do so because he wasn’t sure what he actually wanted, but least it was something else than working in a gas station on a night shift. He didn’t know whether to believe his inner voice that kept saying he wasn’t in peace now. So if I was his sign, my sign was the arrow that had Gas Station on it.
I told him to be honest to himself while at the same time I thought who an earth would take a mentally unbalanced hitcher in the night as a sign for a better life. Never the less I told him to listen to that inner voice, that could have as well been a sign that he had some kind of double personality. No matter how crazy that voice was it was awake for a reason and not satisfied on the present life. He should ask why and change the life, even if it’s by changing the route he takes to the work.
By doing different things a person starts to think differently and realize what it is that drives him if the life lived is not what the little weird voice in the head wants.
After sharing a rather great hour talking and smiling in front of a cup of hot tea I felt like I should put Dave out of his misery and at least bring him some tea. But as I was about to head to the toilet first Dave rushed in to tell he hitched a ride from a taxi that would leave us few miles ahead. The dude from the gas station send me off with a pile of out of date salad boxes and some more tea. (Like I wasn’t in a need of a toilet already.) Few chocolates (which I shouldn’t have eaten, because my body is already confused) and a short taxi ride after we ended up in the middle of a dark highway where the wind was catching up. Looking at Dave one could tell it wasn’t what he had in mind. But then, life is making choices and going for them.
By looking back you can always be wise and say we should have done it differently. But it will not take you ahead. It keeps you in the past, feeling sorry for yourself.
So as we realized how pointless it was to bounder What If's we walked ahead in the empty and spooky highway playing a game called What If with a smile on our face. We ended up in a gas station hoping for a ride or place to warm up and sleep, but since the only interior warm place was the air-conditioned windshield-washer equipment closet, we quickly wrapped our bags in plastic bags to put into the wet floor and ate a salad after squeezing in between the shelf and the roof at 3am. I put my hat over my eyes since the closet had lights like in a shopping window and wished some sleep. Million positions later Dave woke me up saying sun was up and we should move on. I felt like I'd slept only less than an hour but he kept telling me I was fully asleep more than three hours. And if the sun wouldn’t have been up I'd call him a liar. He also told me that a dude had stopped to take our picture while I was snoozing away. I just hope it wasn’t because they were thinking of putting a lock on the closet in case for the future homeless travelers, who are looking of a shelter to warm up. If not, then i don't mind finding my picture in the Most Weirdest Places To Sleep web page.
As soon as I got up from the tiny little closet I was happily asleep again, this time in a Finnish truck. It had stopped to sleep overnight in that same gas station. Three dreamless hours later we ended up in a gas station near Gävla and few hours and some aimless walking later we go dropped off in the city of jävlar Gävla with farewell word’s that it would be a better place to hitch to Oslo than the gas station we were. I wonder, because after few hours my hitching spirit was in a real test. Also there was this little point that Dave had a schedule. He had to be in Oslo by next day afternoon. So he wanted to take a train to Oslo and I decided hitching in the winter with my feet cold in a bad hitching stop was not the way I wanted to do it. I've done it before. And I always told to myself never again I want to return to the cold especially to hitch. (That before was a time when my mission was to reach Finland without public transportation as fast as possible. Oh, and there were the times I’ve hitched inside in Finland, but smaller distances… Oh yes, and the time I left Krakow in Poland to get to a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia… Yes and that one inside Germany... Well, that proves my point: never again.) Now was the time to bounder what I'd like the most. And it sounded awfully nice to take a ride in the train to Stockholm to visit my old couchsurfing pal for couple days before heading towards Denmark to visit a school I was planning to go to (that was also my point B, where I’d head to C).
People set limits to themselves, so does the weird travelers. They think some things are not possible. But the limits are only guidelines that can be broken in mind of your goal. They are there to challenge you. But if you realize after three hours of hitching for a lift, that you don’t enjoy it anymore and would rather enjoy a train ride, you should go for it. If that crazy double personality in your head is not in peace anymore, you should give up and try something else. Giving up is not loosing. It is realizing your limits.
For me more important than keeping my limit was the next goal: Denmark, after which I’d hitch down in the South. Now I also wanted some rest to my tired body.
I've seen Scandinavia, I've seen Europe. I’ve hitch hiked around.
A life of a nomad is unexpected, lonesome, full of ups and downs, schedules lost if you ever had ones and many wise lessons you learn on the way. But it can be more secure, more constant. It can me a life with a routine just like the one back home if you set your mind into thinking it is something permanent like it is. You need things like, jobs, places to rest in between of wandering, a morning tea, a morning shit, a movie on the couch with a friend. And it is those things you learn to appreciate on the road, those things that you need in between of A and B on your way to C.
As I finally said good bye for the time being to Dave who went on till Oslo as I reached my couch in Stockholm after short but nice ride in the Swedish train, I felt relaxed. I was enjoying the company of a old friend again, joking about a job as a windshield-cleaner-automate with my friend being my pimp. I knew I needed these few days to rest.
Speed hitching is awesome, but then, it is not constant and in the cold Scandinavia where people are born to be scared of unexpected things is not the best place to do it in the winter time. Even if I still like to believe I'm like Alice in the Wonderland where everything is possible, even hitching 500km to Oslo sooner than with a ride on the bus. Because when you end up hitching in a place you don’t know, you have no expectations on how to get from there. You just go, because you are crazy enough to be believed.
With these thoughts I fell asleep with every inch of my body dreaming a life as a windshield-washer-closet-machine automate… Which is actually not a bad idea for a traveler wishing to have some work with accommodation included.
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