1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  “It’s all in the eyes,” she said giving me once again an intense look, “trust me, if I have learnt anything in my life, then that is knowing what kind of person I’m dealing with. I can tell from a mile who’s dangerous and who’s not. I can tell whether a person is neurotic, psychotic, a pathological liar and stuff like that. It’s all in the eyes. The guy who’d contacted me isn't dangerous. He is gentle with slightly strange tastes. His mother must’ve been a dominant figure and she might’ve abused him. I don’t know the exact reason but I can guess it.”

  While she was saying the last words she lowered her eyes. She realized that her eyes might tell a lot of things too. And that wasn’t her plan.

  Day 291.

  After a few days in Amsterdam the road took me to Utrecht, Gent and, finally, to Lille where I stayed at my friend Thomas’s place.

  Thomas was one of the main reasons why I travel today: he was the one who showed me the magic of CouchSurfing. A couple of years before, just as I left my parents’ home I bumped into him in the centre of Zagreb with a French flag and a couple of bags hanging from a cool bike. He explained to me that he was travelling across Europe as a part of a university project and that he was looking for a place to spend the night in his tent without getting his bike or his kidney stolen.

  Since my roommate and I had free space on the floor of our rented apartment I invited him to crash at our place.

  Over a couple of beers, he told us that there was a web page created for hospitable people like us and that he had used it a couple of times on his Journey. The page was – CouchSurfing.

  “Things are still in their infancy,” he said, “there aren’t many registered members, but the number of members keeps on growing from one day to another.”

  That night he helped me set up my profile and left me my first positive reference. That was how it started. Later on, my first surfing experience in Amsterdam took place; travellers began arriving and staying at our place in Zagreb and, finally, the journey I was on.

  The same way we drank Croatian beer and ate Croatian food in Zagreb, now we were drinking French wine and eating baguettes and camembert going through the numerous events that happened to us over the past few years and exchanging different stories.

  “Where are you going after Lille?” he asked me the following day.

  “Frankly, I have no idea,” I replied, “I didn’t plan ending up here either.”

  I threw a quick glance at the map of Europe and in less than a couple of seconds I knew where to go next.

  Paris.

  Day 293.

  Lille and Paris were 222 kilometres of straight highway apart. For a hitchhiker that was always good news because you could almost always count on a single ride – fast, no changing rides and not too much stress. Almost always. This one, however, was another good day for a hitchhiking lesson: when you hitchhike, don’t count on anything.

  The first important thing about hitchhiking is to find a good position to leave the town, one where there are cars going in your direction. You should take care that there are plenty of cars, that they have a place to pull over and that they aren’t driving too fast, that is, they have enough time to notice you and react. I’d taken care of all these factors. I also had a pretty nice ‘PARIS’ sign, which was quite straight forward about where I was planning to go that day.

  Still, despite these contributing factors, no one would pull over. One hour, two hours, three hours.

  Three hours of standing on one place with my thumb stuck out looking all those cars pass by me and not one of them deigning to pull over would easily make you go insane. So you start dancing in order for people to notice you and pay attention, you climb on a small wall and jump off of it improvising all sorts of thumb up choreographies; in the end, you even get down on your knees and start begging for a ride, but still nothing. No use.

  At the peak of my madness, I took the sign, flipped it to the other side and with a thick marker pen I wrote a large question mark. Fuck Paris, I would go anywhere just to leave this place.

  In less than two minutes after putting my new plan into action a car pulled over. I exclaimed excitedly. I ran quickly to the driver and without asking anything got into the car – drive!

  My new friend, a young guy of African origin, didn’t go to Paris. He made a stop at the next gas station, took a road map and went to have a word with a truck driver who was having his lunch break just as we got there. He asked him for a piece of an advice, about which road to take in order for him to leave me on a good place to continue my hitchhiking adventure to Paris. After a few minutes of consulting with the truck driver he left me at a gas station a few kilometres away and took off in the opposite direction. We shook hands and exchanged smiles. I was the reason why he’d lost at least half an hour of what could be his precious time, but still he’d decided to give a helping hand to a stranger and do everything he could to assist me.

  Five hours and four rides later I was in Paris. The last driver gave me an unused metro ticket so I could find Melissa, a girl I was supposed to stay while I was in the French capital.

  Melissa was a CouchSurfer whom I’d met a couple of weeks before, during my stay in Prague. She was staying in the same place I was, along with ten other CouchSurfers.

  She was an 18-year-old French girl, originally from Algeria. I was listening to her talking about her life for the past couple of months to those gathered around the table: being broke, on the road, changing cities, friends and jobs. Each end every person around the table was listening to her words attentively, feeling slightly jealous about her lifestyle, which she shared so naturally with the others.

  I also paid attention to her words, remembering my own experiences with many CouchSurfers who had passed through my apartment and who’d had experiences similar to hers. I absorbed everything, just as I had absorbed everything back then. So I realized that soon I also would have similar stories to tell because just a couple of days before I had embarked on a similar big adventure.

  “So, are you happy?” I whispered in her ear as soon as she stopped talking to the others. Somehow, I’d always imagined someone living like that being truly happy, but now that I was experiencing something similar I was wondering whether happiness came with it, by default. So I decided to check with her.

  She needed a moment to come up with an answer. She looked at me directly, as if she was trying to discern something in my eyes.

  “I like you,” she said self-assuredly, taking her eyes off me and carrying on with her meal, “you’re the first person who’s asked me this. Everyone is pleased with the mere surface of the adventures they pass through when they live this kind of life. They take it for granted that happiness is part of it all.”

  “You see, a journey can be a sort of an escape,” she continued chewing the delicious dinner prepared by our Swedish host. The menu contained a delicious lentil soup (I stole the recipe later and prepared the same meal for my hosts on the journey), and for dessert he prepared muffins (I even took the recipe for the muffins and credited myself with them for many years to come).

  “But the truth is that you cannot escape life. The journey won’t solve all of your problems. It is only going to force you to approach those problems from a different perspective – you may happen to solve some of them when you return home. If you do return home, of course.”

  I thanked her for the answer and for having satisfied my curiosity. So, travelling doesn’t necessarily equal happiness.

  “If you ever happen to find yourself in Paris, don’t be a stranger” she finished and went back to eating.

  Twenty days later I actually found myself in Paris, so I decided to contact her. I came to her door.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she opened the door and gave me a hug, “your beard is a bit bigger than the last time I saw you.”

  “I know, yours too,” I replied and entered her home.

  She smiled and took me to the room where I was supposed to sleep. She lived with her parents,
who were out of town at the moment and who were supposed to come back home the following morning.

  “Take a rest, take a shower if you want to and then we’re going out” she informed me, “but hurry up, I made some arrangements with a bunch of friends, we’re going for a barbecue, you’re invited, too, of course.”

  I was ready in less than half an hour.

  “So, what’s your story?” I asked her as we were walking down the street, towards the metro station.

  “I was born and raised in Algeria where I had a difficult childhood,” she started. She was dressed all in black with a white shirt that was a size too large. She had black fishnet socks and black patent-leather heels. She wore glasses. The way she moved radiated a dose of sex appeal that was only accentuated by the way she dressed. She was barely of age, fully conscious of her youth and beauty and she wore it proudly. And, there was also something French about her. “The people I live with aren’t my real parents, but my uncle and aunt. We don’t get on very well, but they’re the only people I have here. However, I’ve started working recently, so I hope that soon I may have enough money to move out.”

  “And what do you do?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” she observed me closely. “Can I count on your open-mindedness, but also on your capacity to keep a secret? After all, we have many friends in common.”

  “Sure,” I said convincingly while a number of thoughts passed through my head.

  “Guess,” she decided to play with me.

  “Do you work on a hotline?” I blurted out jokingly, but that was my most serious attempt.

  “You’re close,” she winked at me, “just leave the phone part out and that’s it.”

  “Are you being serious?” I looked at her, reminding myself of the promise I’d made earlier on.

  “Dead serious.”

  “You’re a prostitute?” I caught myself whispering.

  “Not really,” she tried to explain, “I’m not some kind of a hooker who can be picked up on a corner and fucked for fifty Euros. I work as an exclusive escort lady and only by recommendation.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?” was the first thing I managed to say, although a handful of other questions crossed my mind.

  “I don’t live in London at the turn of the 19th century,” she laughed.

  “Why are you doing it?” I couldn’t keep my curiosity hidden. Prejudices and judgment tried to fight their way to the surface, but I managed to push them down and give way to curiosity. You need curiosity in the situations like that one, while prejudice and judgement are totally useless, especially since I planned to travel, listen and learn from people who had completely different lifestyles.

  “First, I need the money,” she began, “the school fees at the Sorbonne are high. Second, I don’t have any problem with sleeping with strangers. After everything that the strangers have done to me as a kid, believe me, there aren’t many things I haven’t seen before. Third, by satisfying strangers’ sexual desires, directly or indirectly, I may be preventing them from looking for someone who wouldn’t be that keen on pleasing them. For instance, preventing them from finding a nine-year-old girl in Algeria.”

  “Fuck,” I blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” she was talking about all these difficult things so easily, “it wasn’t that bad for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was eleven I witnessed an eight-year-old girl being raped by three men. I was in the same room. One of the tools they used was a beer bottle. A broken beer bottle.”

  Suddenly, my mind went blank. I put my palms on my knees feeling nauseated. Melissa came a few steps nearer, chewing the snacks she’d bought a few minutes earlier. She was standing up straight in heels, looking at me so intensely that I could almost see in her eyes the horrible scene that’d made me sick.

  “I’m not sure whether I want to hear more stuff like that,” I said as soon as I was a bit better.

  “You asked, I answered.” She was direct. “However, I think that people should be aware of what’s going on in this fucking world and when they hear about those things, and trust me, there are far, far worse things than that one, they should do something instead of simply stating that it’s awful, turning away and finishing their greasy fucking cheeseburger.”

  All I could do was to listen feeling ashamed.

  “Recently I told one of my acquaintances the short story of my life,” she continued, “his reaction was similar to yours. After a few days he contacted me saying that he wanted to hear more. He moved in to my place for two weeks and we spent every day talking about everything I’d been through. It was hard for him to listen to it, but it was also hard for me to talk about it. Now that man is somewhere in Africa, digging wells in the desert and helping people directly. He’s trying to make things better.”

  “Each and every one of us has a story to tell, or the capacity to hear someone else’s story. If we have one, we should tell it, and if we hear one, we should share it with others and pass it on. If we don’t, we’re simply shutting our eyes to the reality and we leave the world exactly as we found it – crappy.”

  I admired that kid who had far more life wisdom than me and most of the people I know. Unfortunately, she’s become that wise only because she had to experience awful things. And now she was sharing her story with people she may not know that well, hoping to shake them up and wake them up.

  Do I have a story? Do I have any life experience that I could share with people and that could, no matter how stupid it may sound, make this world a better place?

  No, I do not. How could I, anyway? I was a kid raised in a fairy-tale only starting to live Life in his early twenties.

  Still. Maybe I could be a good story sharer? Maybe I could live, collect experiences and share them with others? Was that the one thing I was good at? Will I find peace in this?

  There is only one way to find out. I will live, collect stories and experiences and we’ll see how it goes.

  We spent that night with her friends, having a barbecue in one of the parks after which we left the leftovers in front of a homeless guy’s tent. We also went to a disco and I reminded myself once again why I didn’t like that kind of place – they are overcrowded, there is too much smoke and the music is way too loud.

  We returned home just before the sunrise, falling asleep in the bus on the way back.

  “Good night,” I said to her as we came in, “thank you for a wonderful evening.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied and went straight to the bathroom not even giving me a hug or a smile and without looking at me.

  In a few minutes she entered my room, took all of her clothes off and cuddled next to me.

  “Don’t worry, I never take advantage of a man on our first date,” she whispered and gave me a good night kiss.

  Day 294.

  I was woken up by the sound of someone turning the doorknob. An older man walked into the room, threw a quick glance at the bed, made eye contact with the stranger who was lying next to his (nude, but covered) niece, took something from the shelf and returned to where he’d come from.

  “Someone’s just walked into the room,” I whispered to Melissa, shaking her softly in order to wake her up, “and I think he’s going to kill me when I go out.”

  “Ooooh, relaaaax,” she replied still half asleep, “that’s my uncle.”

  “What do I know about Algerian uncles?” I wasn’t very convinced. “I’m not leaving this room if not accompanied by you.”

  She soon got up, we walked to the kitchen where she introduced me to her flatmates, her uncle and aunt, who greeted me politely, but with caution using basic English.

  During breakfast I listened to them talking in some strange language and I could only imagine that their conversation would be much more aggressive if I weren’t there. I kept my eyes fixed on the plate until I was done, politely thanked them for their generosity and left the place with Melissa.

  “I told him
you were my friend and that we’d fallen asleep the last night while we were watching a movie,” she told me as we left her building situated in the outskirts of the city.

  “Did he believe you?” I asked her.

  “I think he did,” she said carelessly, “but he lectured me about how it’s not a good thing sleeping in the same room with men, especially now when I have my husband coming from Algeria in a few days.

  “A husband?” The surprises just kept coming.

  “Oh, yes, a husband,” she said, a bit sad, “but that’s a long story. I’m not in the mood, I have a long and difficult day at the university ahead of me.

  We got onto the metro and arranged to meet at the same place during the evening, after she’d done everything she had to do.

  She went in the direction of the Sorbonne, and I went in the opposite direction, towards Montmartre.

  The day was grey, dull and rainy, not typical of the romantic Paris that I’d expected to find. The narrow streets leading to Montmartre were full of dubious guys who were taking money from passers-by, offering to play a game with three small cups and a marble. They would bugger off the moment they spotted cops.

  I observed the interiors of bohemian cafés, expensive restaurants with white table-cloths, bakeries from which wonderful aromas emanated, colourful patisseries, all the while scanning people looking for a cute brunette with bangs who would be standing under her red umbrella with white dots with her eyes fixed drowsily on the clouds or thinking about changing the course of someone’s life in a playfully crazy way.

  I didn’t find her.

  I observed street musicians, painters, caricature-makers and entertainers. I saw the signs of tiredness on their faces: you could tell that they’d prefer to stay home on that rainy day instead of selling a part of themselves to tourists.

  I browsed souvenir shops and regular shops. I explored the entrances to the buildings where Dalì, Monet, Picasso and Van Gogh had lived. I knew that I was walking down the streets where history took place, streets that even today had an artistic aura, but everything was still grey. And a grey atmosphere always depresses me, no matter where I find myself.