Trans-Europe Top Speed

14/03/2012

England – France – Italy – Slovenia – Hungary – Serbia – Kosovo – Albania – Macedonia – (Serbia) – Romania – Bulgaria – Turkey

After two years accustomed to hitching in Africa and less-populated parts of Canada, where road choices are generally limited to two directions, staring at a map of Europe and trying to decide on a route can be a little overwhelming – albeit in a fun way. It felt like being a character in an overly-enthusiastic author's choose your own adventure story, with far too many choices at the end of each chapter. There are hundreds of worthy tourist destinations and thousands of possibilities for non-touristy random adventures, and all are very tempting to aim for when you have seemingly unlimited time and transportation is free. However, as a good friend of mine reminded me, it will always be possible to visit the attractions of Europe – this sadly may not be true for other parts of the world (ahem, Iran). So apart from a few key stops along the way, my time was mostly spent making small talk with drivers in languages I don't speak, staring at the European world pass by. This blog will be short and sweet, partly because there are only so many interesting things that can happen while you are behind a windshield, and partly because there are hundreds of other people who have written “hitch Europe” blogs, and probably put a lot more time and detail into them than I am willing to do as I sit here late at night, just a dozen kilometers from the Golden Horn of Constantinople.

Arriving in England, my only goal for the country was to hitchhike out of Heathrow. The last time I flew there, on my way to Africa, I was considerably more naive when it came to customs and immigration bureaucracy, and my happy-go-lucky explanation to the U.K. officials that I had no fixed plans, contacts, ticket bookings or visas, but was planning on taking public transport to Africa (I thankfully wasn't so uniformed as to say “hitchhiking”) didn't go down very well. This time, thanks to family friends and a little experience, I was able to fill out their little white customs card well enough to satisfy the customs official, who waved me through with a superficial smile. Whereas the first time the two hour immigration questioning had shaken my hitching confidence, this time I smoothly made it to the nearest highway on-ramp and within 10 minutes was speeding along the M25 towards Kent. The eastbound journey was off to a good start.

Muddy back roads of eastern France

"The Sacred Road" that linked the eastern front to supply lines during WWI

The first few days were spent hitching and camping the small roads of eastern France, from the front lines of the world wars to the Alps. I'd had the idea to do some Grande Randonee trekking but the rain and mud of France in February changed those plans rather quickly. After accepting the refreshing offer of a hot shower and warm bed for a night from a kind lady who picked me up near Sisteron, I was up bright and early, winding through the beautiful Alps under clear blue skies and sunshine, surely enjoying the scenery a lot more than Mussolini's troops did when they passed the same road in 1940. As I contemplated what it would have been like to have been with them, the weather demonstrated a little of how the Italians would have been feeling: just as we reached the top of the pass that defines the modern border, the blue skies disappeared and were hastily replaced by a severe white-out, screaming-wind blizzard. Without even seeing the flag we were in Italy.

Beautiful blue skies of the French Alps...

...Blizzard on the Italian side

My first experience in the country was a ride with a short stoutly built older Italian man, who spoke only a little French and no English, but managed to bring me straight to a tiny village bar where he ordered us each a shot of warming liquor. It is always a good omen when you are welcomed into a new country with alcohol and hospitality.


Rides in Italy were slower than France, mostly because the roads are too narrow to find a good place to wait, but being a single woman ensured that even in a “hard to hitch country” like Italy, wait times were rarely longer than 25 minutes. I passed through Genoa, La Spezia and Modena, stealth-camping in an olive grove next to a truck stop and then sleeping on an airport bench in Venice (which is a great place to hitch eastbound from). It was a nice surprise to learn that my arrival in Venice coordinated with Mardi Gras Tuesday, so instead of just the regular canals and gondoliers to admire, the entertainment factor was increased tenfold by the hoards of costumed masqueraders running drunkenly wild through the streets. A true cultural experience.

 

Camping in Italy

After a few short rides the next morning I found a trucker heading straight through Slovenia and Hungary to Romania, and as I contemplated which one of these destinations to stop at – or to head north through Slovakia to get to Prague and then Berlin – I got a message from a friend in Albania that if I arrived there by Friday (it was Wednesday evening) I could come along on a hiking trip to the mountains. Sounded like a good plan, so after passing a short night on the second bunk of the Romania bound truck, I switched directions to southbound from Budapest and made it quickly through Serbia to Kosovo. A many-hour delay with the entertaining security guards of the largest factory in the young country reminded me of the African lesson that you should never believe truckers when they say “don't worry, only a short wait”, but nevertheless I was in Tirana by midnight Friday – enough time to grab a couple beers with my friend Edrin and engage in some much-needed reminiscing about life in Africa (we met in Ghana in 2010) and then catch a few hours sleep before a leaving bright and early for a six hour hike up a snow covered mountain near the Macedonian border. Despite my Canadian upbringing, that Balkan mountain will always hold the spot in my heart for the first time I have ever really enjoyed four foot deep mountain snow – definitely worth the two day hitchhiking detour.

After an easy second day of hiking, this time to an old monastery, it was back to Tirana where Edrin and I spent the next five days doing a little city touring and a lot of drinking coffee while discussing the indefatigable subjects of history, current affairs, and the origin of the stick in dried date packages (still no conclusion on that last one). We came across the highlight of the week, and a perfect summation of Albanian politics, on our way to hike up another mountain just outside Tirana. The George Bush statue in the newly renamed George Bush square in the center of the village of Kruja probably sees a lot of tourists pulling out their cameras, although likely not for the adoring reasons the statue's founders had in mind. We amused ourselves with a few pictures, noted the communist party graffiti nearby, and had an obligatory coffee next to the statue (although unfortunately not at the same restaurant where the ex-pres had his, as acknowledged by an honorary plaque at the cafe's entrance and a framed picture of the White House inside). Reaching the Sufi temple on the top of the mountain was wonderful, but the memory of the day has to go to our opportunity to walk in the footsteps of George W..

Getting our kicks with George Bush, Man of the People.

^ Pictured borrowed from the Wikimedia Foundation here. Notice the comparative size of the statue with the security guard in the bottom left corner.

>  Maybe posting a picture of the Hunadoara Castle would be more appropriate, but the most interesting building of the day were in the Gypsy neighbourhood; shiny metallic-topped mansions painted all the bright colours of the rainbow and driveways filled with Cadillacs and Corvettes. There's definitely considerable skepticism from non-Gypsies as to the origin of the money. I wonder...

Leaving Albania I had made up my mind to head back north to make a quick tour through Transylvania, which had been on my bucket list for quite a while. This time I reached Serbia via the Macedonian route and, as if the Bush tribute hadn't satisfied my appetite for politically odd statues, the road through Skopje definitely filled me to the brim. As my sarcasm-loving driver put it, “the nationalistic government has gone insane”. If the randomly placed statues of everything from shoe-shine boys, to beggars, to naked families and other country's founders (i.e. Albania's Skanderbeg) weren't odd enough choices of decoration, last year the government unveiled a 40 ton statue that stretches 70 feet into the air, and called it “Warrior on Horse”. The comedy of course lies in the fact that the statue is clearly a tribute to Alexander the Great (that is, Alexander of Macedon; the statue is actually a replica of an ancient Greek portrait of his), who despite the apparent denial of modern Macedonia's rulers, actually came from the original kingdom of Macedon which lay almost entirely in present day northern Greece. Thus, apart from possibly appealing to the nationalistic tendencies of a few uneducated former Yugoslavians, all the giant statue has accomplished is to piss off the Greeks and add more fuel to the 20 year dispute over Macedonia's name. I suppose every leader has to get his votes from somewhere, although in this case taking a hint from Africa and handing out free t-shirts might have been a better option.

Made it to Serbia easily and by nightfall was exchanging notes in Nis with another Asia-bound hitchhiker – the Iranian route seems to be quite the trend these days. It only took a day and a half to hitch the rest of the way to the Romanian mountains that are the gateway to the Transylvania plateau, and I spent two lovely nights in a log cabin in the middle of territory that has been ruled in turn by many of the greatest empires of Europe, from the Romans to the Huns, Ottomans and Russians, to name just a few. Thus the whole regions has endless sights for someone who appreciates history, and endless more for anyone who loves adventure and beautifully pristine outdoors – visiting in the summer to hike the gorgeous ranges that surround the plateau is a must. As for me, I had had enough of trudging up mountains through waste deep snow, and a night shivering through -13C with an inadequate sleeping bag and Romania's infamously vicious dogs barking near by (apparently the Japanese ambassador was killed by one of the dog packs of Bucharest) convinced me that heading straight to Turkey and getting on with the real adventure was the right choice. I hit the highway, waved madly at the first passing truck with Turkish plates, and the next morning woke up basking in the glory of Istanbul. Despite its enormous population this city is truly exquisite; I know I couldn't do it justice with a little blurb in a travel blog so I wont even try. It seems obligatory to take at least a week to marvel at the wonders here, and then its back on the road – the same one trodden by Xerxes, Alexander, Justinian, Mehmet, and so many others from the list of memorable players in the known history of our world. The journey continues.

Sultanahmet a.k.a. Blue Mosque. Standing in the walking between this architectural wonder and the Hagia Sofia, it's 1000 year old sister wonder, is one of the most fabulous experiences of Istanbul.

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