1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  Feeling a bit disappointed I dragged myself to Sacré-Cœur Basilica, one of the most famous monuments in Paris situated in the northern part of the city. I placed myself at the foot of that colossal white building and absorbed what was going on around me. I observed the tourists, the street band that was getting ready to perform a couple of songs, Africans who were trying to sell some bracelets to the tourists. There were all kinds of things. But, still, everything was grey.

  And from one moment to another everything changed. The clouds made room for the sun, everything around me became a bit livelier; I could spot in the distance the roofs of Parisian houses in all their glory; the tourist murmur was toned down by an invisible hand, and the band started playing the opening lines of their first song on acoustic guitar – one of my most cherished songs ever – Imagine.

  All of a sudden, Paris transformed from a boring sad town into a wonderful and colourful town with bright facades and red roofs, vivacious tourists who, during the sunny afternoon, sit on the stairs of basilica and hum how it would be nice if we imagined.

  I knew that I’d just experienced the moment by which I would always remember Paris.

  I took a stroll along the bank of Seine, visited Notre Dame and returned to the metro station, just in time to meet Melissa.

  I didn’t find her there, but I did find her uncle. He wasn’t there because he was planning to kick my ass or kill me. Instead, he was there to show me the way back home: Melissa had sent him a message saying that she’d be late so he should pick me up.

  We walked towards the apartment in silence. We didn’t speak the same language but also we felt a bit awkward due to the eye contact we’d shared that morning. We tried not to let the awkwardness of the situation show, but I’m not sure whether we actually succeeded.

  As soon as I got into the apartment I ran into my room. An e-mail was waiting for me from Maaike, from Amsterdam:

  I’ve been thinking about you a lot since you’ve been gone.

  It surprises me since I usually don’t miss people. But this time I feel that something is different: I feel that you’re the person I could learn so many things from, and whose company I would truly enjoy. You’re the only person in whose eyes I discern wisdom and who’s not fucked up. The fact that you didn’t try to take me to bed (and you had a couple of chances) as nearly all men who I meet try to do, made me even more convinced of it.

  I know that you’re a traveller and that you’re on your Journey, but, at the same time, I know that we’re not that different. The only thing that is different about the two of us is our situation. You’re going somewhere, and I’m not, even though I would want to be headed somewhere, more than anything.

  So, what do you say about this idea: come back to Amsterdam, make love to me every day, talk to me about your life over dinner with candles and we’ll take long walks on the streets of Amsterdam. Maybe we could even go somewhere together, let’s say Spain. I’ve always wanted to go there. And with you there next to me, it would be amazing.

  Say yes. Just like you’ve been saying to me that accepting everything new and saying ‘yes’ to the new challenges has changed your life, let the Universe change your life right now. Say yes.

  M.

  I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to Amsterdam, I wasn't sure I wanted to make love to her and I wasn't sure I wanted to go to Spain with her.

  “What should I do?” I asked Melissa as soon as she came home, explaining the whole situation to her.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked me instantly as she did the same thing she’d done the previous night, but this time she kept some pieces of clothing on. She turned on the laptop and started browsing through the photos she’d taken that day. The outfit she was wearing in the photos was identical to the one she was wearing now, the only difference was that in the photos, she wasn’t under a cover.

  “Most likely, I’m afraid of hurting her,” I answered, taking my eyes off the laptop and trying to concentrate on what I was saying and thinking. “I’m not sure that I like her strongly enough to go back to Amsterdam for her and carry on my journey with her. I don’t want to give her false hope and promises because I know how much it hurts.”

  “Everybody knows,” she said, “I’m sure she knows it, too, just like I know that she’s a big girl who’ll know how to handle it. Don’t be selfish, please the girl. You see that she wants you. She needs you.”

  She made a good point. Should I play against myself in these situations and not think about my needs and desires? Should I forget about them all together and become a psychologist, psychiatrist and, above all, friend to the people I run into on my Journey? Should I focus my attention on them and, respecting their wishes, help them to get their lives in order by simply being there? Or at least do my best?

  “I agree,” I said after brief contemplation. “Still, if I return to Amsterdam I will be losing a lot of time I planned to use for hitchhiking towards the south of the continent. I could get back because that’s what she wants, but by when? If I focus my attention on other people and their needs and neglect my needs, in the long run, it will only mean one thing, my ruin. It is impossible to take care of others and not hurt oneself. At least not constantly.”

  “Work your way around it,” she said not taking her eyes off of her laptop. “Find another option. Flights to Spain aren’t that expensive. You can suggest to her that she buys you a plane ticket in exchange for your sexual services,” she burst out laughing “and then you’ll become the person you’d judged just a few days ago, before you’d met me. A prostitute.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was joking or being serious, but I decided to give it good thought.

  The fact was that plane tickets from the Netherlands or Belgium to Spain weren’t that expensive, only about thirty Euros. However, that thirty Euros, given my budget, equalled almost an entire week longer on the road – a week of adventures, new acquaintances and experiences.

  I didn’t want to over-think it so I grabbed the laptop from my semi-nude friend and composed an e-mail in which I set forth my sincere doubts:

  I could go back to Amsterdam, but there are two problems – first, I’m going to spend a lot of time I was planning to spend on the hitchhiking towards the south and I can’t afford a plane ticket; second, even if I had the ticket, I’m not sure whether I could respond to your feelings as you would like me to and I’m not sure whether I would like to continue my journey with you.

  I got a reply in less than a couple of minutes.

  I bought you a ticket from Brussels to Barcelona. I got myself one, too.

  We’ll make other arrangements when you get here.

  M.

  “Wow, colleague,” Melissa exclaimed when I read the reply out loud, “I’m so proud of you.”

  She put away her laptop, pulled me closer and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Remember,” she whispered “the one who doesn’t take risks, never finds out.”

  Day 299.

  As soon as I was back in Amsterdam I ended up in the bed of my new/old host.

  With a high temperature and an unbearable stomach-ache.

  “Where exactly does it hurt?” she asked me, lying next to me for the second day in a row and rolling the God-knows-what joint in a row.

  “Here,” I indicated the part under the belly button, grimacing. The night behind me was terrible: I’d spent it curled up in the foetal position paying a visit to the toilet every half hour. To make the whole thing worse, that very same day my health insurance policy, which I’d bought just before I left Zagreb, expired. What if it was appendicitis? Or a hernia? In the middle of the night Lola, the dog, joined me in the bed; I guess she sensed I had some health problems so she cuddled next to me, just next to the part that hurt. Her small body seemed to be emanating benevolent warmth, which helped me a lot to make it through the night.

  “Here you go, this will help you,” Maaike offered me a spliff and starting rolling herself another one.

 
“Thank you, but I don’t feel like getting high.”

  “You seem to be forgetting that marijuana is also a medicine,” she pointed out.

  How could I have forgotten? How many times had I talked in favour of its consumption, mentioning its healing powers and discussing its legalization, giving valid arguments?

  I don’t smoke cigarettes, I don’t drink coffee, I don’t drink much alcohol, but I have a habit of smoking a joint every now and then. I’d usually have one after a difficult day. Or not so difficult, it doesn’t matter that much. It has a relaxing effect on me, and it has a strange effect on my brain cells: they function completely differently than when I am sober. They seem to be freer, not restrained by the stereotypes that I was taught by society.

  Some of the best (but also some of the goofiest) ideas came to me when I was in that state of mind. The following morning, sober, I would reconsider the applicability of those ideas. I discarded most of them instantly, but the rare ones...well, they were precious.

  I used it as an entrance to the world of an alternative way of thinking, but also as a sleeping pill and a medicine for loneliness. I’d only heard about its healing powers from articles I’d found online and from other people who talked about its beneficial effects.

  However, there I was, in Amsterdam, ready to test its beneficial effects on my own skin.

  Still with an intense stomach-ache, I inhaled the first toke. Then the second. I felt the famous sensation spreading through my body and my mind. A few minutes after, I stubbed it out and left the filter in my host’s ashtray and tried to leave the bed and take a few steps.

  I staggered round to the kitchen and back. The stomach-ache was almost entirely gone. I was cured. And stoned. Two birds...

  Since I was no longer distracted by the pain, I could finally start the one thing for which I was in Amsterdam: spend some quality time with Maaike.

  She was different that time than the last– probably because of the e-mail she’d sent to me while I was in Paris in which she completely opened up and revealed what was most precious to her – her feelings. She didn’t care about shocking me or tickling my imagination with comments or sexual innuendo. She simply talked about her life.

  And her life was shocking.

  She spent her childhood running away from her parents, being a victim of her father and three stepmothers. She spent her teenage years in violent relationships with older men, she was even raped, and, in her early twenties, encouraged by her then boyfriend, she worked in striptease bars as an escort.

  She’d left her old life behind her, but you could still see the consequences: the introversion, the lack of trust in people, agoraphobia and demophobia, and in order to overcome all those fears she was smoking five grams of marijuana on a daily basis. That’s way too much even for big guys like me.

  The reason why Maaike wanted me back in Amsterdam was my lifestyle, which terrified her. Travelling, depending on strangers in unknown places, not knowing where you’re going to end up that day or where you’re going to sleep. She had to have everything under control, which was basically the last thing I thought about. She wanted some advice, she wanted guidance, and she wanted me to take her with me as some sort of rehabilitation – to cure her. Also, she wanted to listen about my life, which was, compared to hers, tediously beautiful.

  It’s not that hard to end up with no scars when you’re surrounded by your parents’ love all the time, when you have two additional mothers – two aunts – who pampered you and your brother, and when your biggest problem is a broken heart.

  The conclusion was that, given everything she’d been through, she’s turned out quite normal. And now, simply, she didn’t have any will to carry on. The only thing she was capable of was living in her apartment, getting social welfare, and leaving the apartment to run some errands and get herself a couple of grams of Amnesia and Afghan Haze.

  While I took some walks down the beloved streets of Amsterdam I thought about the story of her life. I was sure I could help her. I could take her by the hand and take her to another part of Europe and lead her slowly into my lifestyle. I could show her the beauty of freedom, of the unknown and uncertainties.

  I could. But I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do it.

  I, too, was in the process of rehabilitation from the life I’d been leading as a stockbroker in Zagreb. I wasn’t ready to be someone’s guide and to show someone how to do something, to be someone’s lover. I had a lot of work with myself and I knew that, with her, I would neglect myself.

  Moreover, I couldn’t respond to her feelings. I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t see her as a person that I needed in that moment.

  When I returned to Amsterdam, from the very start I’d been honest with her about everything and it was high time that I made the right moves and made some decisions.

  “I think I want to go to Spain alone,” I said to her three days before we were supposed to get on the plane for Barcelona together. It wasn’t easy to say it. I was afraid of hurting her. However, I’d made my decision – honesty was my new policy. Even though I’d always thought of myself as of an honest person, only then did I realize how calculated I’d been in the past. I’d always avoided situations like that one, situations that could lead to a person getting hurt right in front of my eyes. The one thing standing behind it was nothing more than more cowardice, cowardice camouflaged by good intentions.

  “Yeah, I knew that you’d make that decision,” she said after a short pause, “and I don’t have anything to hold against you. You’ve been honest with me from the very start and I knew that there were some risks involved. And I thank you for it.”

  And that was that. She got my point; she was being reasonable about it and didn’t make a fuss. Honesty really is the best policy. And when you think that I could easily torture myself with a sense of guilt after she bought me, bought us, the plane tickets. I could’ve stalled, gone around it, tried to inspire her so that she was the one to give up on the journey so that I didn’t feel guilty.

  However, I did not. And I was proud of it. Still, that was relatively easy. I wasn’t sure if I would’ve done the same thing if I hadn’t been dealing with someone I’d only known for a few days. Would I have been that honest, not caring about the consequences? I wasn’t sure.

  I’d passed the first level of honesty. All I had to do was keep on going with it.

  “Rose invited me to visit her in Prague, and I think that I’ll do it!” – that was the text message I received as I was on my way to the airport in Brussels.

  It was a wonderful text message. Rose was a girl from Amsterdam whom I’d met during my first visit to the city and whom I’d introduced to Maaike a couple of days before. In less than five minutes they found a mutual language, became friends and now Rose was inviting her to go with her to the city she’s moving to in a few days.

  The universe took the cards in its hands, shuffled them and arranged the rest of the game. Maaike was going to Prague as part of her therapy and I was going on my new adventure, alone. In the end, everybody won.

  With a smile on my face I put my sleeping bag on the floor at the airport intending to doze off a bit before I fly to Barcelona.

  Day 305.

  I started noticing that the Spanish didn’t speak much English soon after I got off the plane, and my suspicion were confirmed when I started hitchhiking from the airport to the city. A cab driver pulled over.

  He mumbled something in Spanish, and I replied in the same way, only in English. He looked confused.

  “No dinero,” I said with a smile on my face slowly walking away from the car.

  “Mmhmm, mmhmm, peaje,” he replied using one of the few Spanish words whose meaning I knew. Peaje. I’d heard it in France when I was hitchhiking, the only difference was that the French version was péage. Even though it wasn’t exactly the same I guessed the meaning was the same: toll booths.

  I made a logical conclusion: the good taxi driver would give me a ride from the airpor
t in Girona to the toll booths, which weren’t that far away. It would be easier for me to hitchhike to Barcelona, almost one hundred kilometres away.

  I thanked him sincerely and got into the taxi.

  In less than a couple of minutes we arrived to the toll booths, but we didn’t stop there. As there was a dead silence in the car I didn’t dare to mention anything. I assumed that he wanted to drop me off at a better place for hitchhiking. However, I didn’t get an opportunity to confirm my assumption.

  I kept quiet and enjoyed my first impressions of the new country I was in. The driver, too, kept quiet and kept on driving.

  Only when we came close to Barcelona did it occurred to me that the taxi driver maybe wanted me to pay the toll as he would give me a ride all the way to the city. After all, it was possible that in Spanish, the words ‘toll’ and ‘toll booths’ were exactly the same.

  I got the confirmation some hundred metres ahead when we arrived to the toll booths.

  “Mmhmm, mmhmm, dinero,” the driver said, indicating with his thumb and index finger the well-known sign for money.

  “No dinero,” I repeated the same sentence that I used when I was getting into the taxi. I also made a face that I hoped was showing how sorry I was for the misunderstanding.

  He wasn’t quite satisfied with my answer, let alone the expression on my face. He was persistent in getting his six Euros for the toll.

  Since I’m not a person prone to conflict, I got the bag where I kept my money and shook out all the coins I had. I had about three Euros in coins. I offered them to him.

  When he saw me shaking out those coins, a heap of yellow coins, and the look in my eyes he mumbled something, turned around and kept on driving. He didn’t stop until we got to a certain point where I got out and started searching for my new CS hosts.