She was fully concentrated as she finger-picked the guitar and hummed a relaxing song. Suddenly, she got up, turned to a group of people and started a monologue.
Since she spoke in Spanish I didn’t understand almost anything of what she was saying, but she seemed pretty upset. There was something theatrical in her performance and I was so impressed by the whole scene that I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, enjoying a performance of which many Hollywood actors would’ve been jealous. The movements, words, energy she was emanating; it didn’t even matter what she was saying, but the way she was saying it.
“I don’t know what that was all about, but it was wonderful,” I whispered in her ear when she sat back next to me, puffed out.
She looked me deeply in the eyes and smiled at me.
“Nothing new, I sensed that they didn’t like my playing.”
“I liked it,” I smiled back.
“Then come with me, so we can play in peace.” She offered me her hand.
I didn’t give it much thought, even though the old me would’ve thought tons of things: what would the others say seeing me taking a naked woman by the hand, a woman who could be my mother, and leaving the tepee with her? I didn’t care about it at that moment, I was free to do whatever I wanted. There was no one who knew me, and even if there was someone, I knew that, there, gossiping, talking behind people’s backs and judging weren’t the usual activities.
We went out into the night, there wasn’t a moon or any other source of light lightening up the sky. I let go of her hand and looked for a flashlight to help us see in the dark.
“Put it away, you won’t be needing it,” she said softly, stopping in front of me, “just follow me.”
I did what she said, put the flashlight away and followed her blindly. Literally. It was pitch dark. Even though my pupils were dilated, there was no help in the middle of the forest. She was a few steps ahead of me, saying a word or two every now and then so that I knew which way to go. I was wondering how it was possible for her to see, while I didn’t, but I was also wondering where she was taking me. Excitement, curiosity, and even fear were growing stronger within me, especially when I heard the murmur of the water and realized that we’d have to cross over a bridge in order to get to the other side.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said simply, and with nonchalance crossed over to the other side.
I was listening closely to the murmur of the water, which appeared very loud when compared to the silence of the night; it only increased my awe of the bridge I had to cross over. It still was still pitch dark.
I felt the wooden bridge with my right foot and unbelievably slowly, millimetre by millimetre, I engaged in the adventure of crossing over. The bridge was, in fact, made of two thick branches placed next to each other with a small gap in the middle. I thought of the movies in which people crossed the suspension bridges. I was shaking, feeling the adrenaline rushing through my body.
A zillion moments later I was on the other side.
I kept on following the Forest Woman, all the way to her home. She lit a candle, which illuminated the entire space in which we found ourselves. In the centre of the forest there were a few thick blankets that served as a bed, and from the branches hung three sheets that served as walls, while there was a framed photo hanging from a tree. And that was it. A few pillows, a guitar and a few pieces of clothes, which she was apparently using. Only not today.
We both played a few songs, after which we started talking. I liked her: her way of pronouncing the words, the confidence that accompanied her words, the impulsiveness with which she changed the subject. She was crazy. However, since the smile never left her face and since I could see the spark in her eyes, I couldn’t do anything else, but enjoy her company.
After all the wonderful stories, mostly hers, we lay down on the blankets in the middle of her home, covered ourselves with a couple of more blankets and pressed ourselves against each other, after which we – fell asleep.
The following morning Forest Woman was gone. I looked up to the sky, stretched and laughed at my situation. I’d spent the night in the forest, in someone’s home made of a few blankets and sheets with a photo on the tree, next to an insane woman who could be my mother.
Life is full of wonders.
Leaving her home I was faced with the big challenge from the previous night once again: the dangerous wooden bridge, which I’d crossed shaking. I burst into laughter. Although the previous night it was extremely difficult to cross it, in broad daylight I realized the simplicity of the situation. I could’ve literally stepped over the bridge, without the slightest effort.
Soon, I ran into Lukas, who showed me the place where people would leave clothes, shoes or anything they don’t need any more. Free exchange of goods. He told me that you couldn’t find remains of food, garbage or pollution of any kind, which was something the civilized world has to face every day.
“People here produce their own food, or they buy it on Thursday at the market in Orgiva; they take what the sellers don’t sell that day,” he said, “so, they cherish it as pure gold, which is the reason why nothing is thrown away.”
“As opposed to Western countries, where nearly half of the food produced is wasted,” I added.
“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Besides, everyone here builds their own homes, makes their own furniture and the things they need every day so they respect it and do not throw it away so easily.”
“As opposed to Western countries, where people change and buy things depending on the current fashion,” I added once again.
“Bingo,” he laughed. “Here, if it’s possible to recycle something or reuse it, then people do so. And as far as the pollution is concerned, our lives depend on a couple of sources of water – if there was no water in Beneficio, there would be no us. Everyone here is educated about the importance of protecting the environment because it’s the only home we’ve got. Also, we know that the environment will treat us the same way we treat it.”
“That’s something modern society keeps on forgetting, because people’s lives are so detached from Mother Nature,” I carried on.
“There is practically no trade here, no richness or poverty, people don’t need new mobile phones, kids don’t need the newest toys,” he was finishing, “you’ll find pure life and self-sustainability here.”
A few moments later, we bumped into my companion of the previous night. That is, she bumped into us. She was a bit more decent then the previous night: she was wearing her panties.
“I would like us to sleep together tonight.” She was straightforward, not paying attention to Lukas.
“Well, we...we did sleep together,” I stammered, smiling reluctantly, “right next to each other.”
“Yes, but...” she smiled seductively.
Soon, I was with Lukas climbing to the top of the mountain, to the cave where he resided. I wanted to see his home, but I also used the opportunity to escape from my new fan.
I had a wonderful night with her. Still, a thought kept coming back to me: she was old enough to be my mother. And that put me off thinking that there could be something more between us than simply hanging out. Was I discriminating against her because of her age? If she’d been twenty years younger, most likely I couldn’t have stayed away from her and her craziness, nudity and smiles.
After an hour of climbing, we arrived at the cave. It seemed to be carved into a cliff on the top of the mountain and you could tell that people had been using it as a residence for quite a while.
“This cave doesn’t belong to anyone,” Lukas told me, “nobody owns it, or owns the rights to it. Except nature. If somebody wants to live there, they’re free to. The only thing that matters is that the person who is already in it should not be disturbed; however, if it’s free, it’s free for someone to move in.”
“It would be wonderful to live here,” I was thinking out loud.
“If you want to, it’s yours for tonight,” he said, “either way, I
was planning to sleep at a friend’s place.”
And so I became the Cave man.
I took out a big mattress in front of the cave entrance, very close to the brink of the cliff. I enjoyed the clouds, as I wasn’t able to enjoy the stars; the only thing that was disrupting the atmosphere were the sounds coming from Orgiva nearby. I assumed the Spanish national football team had beaten someone in the World Cup.
Even though a couple of years before, I had been a strong supporter of Dinamo Zagreb and the Croatian national football team, the idea that at that moment, nearly all Spanish people were riveted to television screens, drunk with celebration and happiness because the team that represented their country had had a sporting success seemed pointless to me now. So far away.
I remembered the moment when I decided to stop watching sports: a match against Turkey, 2008. After the most shocking end to a match ever, I couldn’t bring myself to stop crying. For the weeks that followed, I felt nausea in my stomach. All because of the failure of a group of eleven well-paid players. They made me feel bad, depressed.
I found a recipe in those days: if they win, I’d celebrate with them. If they lose, which was more often, I wouldn’t get too upset. A perfect compromise. The world was full of things that we could let affect our feelings and our mood. I didn’t want sports to have that privilege.
I survived the night on the cliff and the following day headed off to the northeast.
Don’t judge. Don’t compare. Don’t categorize.
Those were the lessons I was taking with me from the little hippy village situated in the mountains of Alpujarra. Also, I would take the need for compromise between two extremes. I would live life somewhere in-between, not label myself as a hippy or an urban man, or in any other way. Explore all the worlds that there were to explore, decide what I liked in each and take only the best from them.
Follow my own path, away from all categories, labels, groups. Be myself.
Day 577.
“We screwed it up,” I heard the driver talking to his co-driver, “it’s a diesel after all.”
I was on the highway somewhere between Granada and Alicante when the car that had pulled over just a few moments before, started spewing dark smoke, as if it was a cousin of that tepee from Beneficio that everyone would gather around at night. The two men had filled the tank with gasoline instead of diesel.
Somehow we managed to drag ourselves to a car mechanic where we spent a few hours, after which they gave me a ride to a small village of a couple of hundred inhabitants. I spent a couple more hours on the road waiting for one of the few cars and their drivers to have mercy on me and give me a ride to Alicante: I had a flight scheduled the following day to Venice, sponsored by my father.
During the hours spent there, I was the main attraction in the village. People approached me to have a talk with me, children offered me lemonade and old people observed me from their balconies. The only ones who didn’t find me interesting were the drivers, the only ones whose attention I really needed.
“Are you hungry?” a couple of kids asked me, after I realized I was having sunstroke from all that standing on the road.
“Yes.” I didn’t hesitate.
“Come with us.”
They took me to a mandarin tree and helped me pick a few mandarins, which were still a little unripe, but still delicious. They showed me the way to the spring where I could fill my empty bottle, and, since it was getting dark, they took me to an abandoned house, telling me that I could spend the night there and, that, if I wanted to, I could play football with them, which I accepted whole-leggedly.
They accompanied me to my mattress and my sleeping bag telling me not to leave the place the following morning before meeting them.
The following morning each of them had a plastic bag with all sorts of gifts: cookies, fruit, sandwiches, juices, just in case I needed them. They left me speechless. They even offered me some of their savings so I could buy a bus ticket to Alicante, which I couldn’t accept, no matter how grateful I was.
We said goodbye and took a photo together. I left them the cardboard I used for hitchhiking and playing in front of the castle, and arrived at the airport the same day. A few hours later, I was in Venice, with Sarah, and a few days after that in Zagreb.
Another adventure ended successfully.
But this time, I wasn’t alone. At least not in the virtual world. I had a couple of hundred of people with me, following me on my new Facebook page. I received words of support from complete strangers, who’d come across my page because of recommendations from their friends, or by pure chance. They congratulated me on my courage, encouraged me to continue with what I was doing and some of them even asked me whether I had the intention of bringing someone along with me – they were willing to join me.
And, when I returned home, that was what filled me with positive energy. Unlike my first journey across Europe, after which I felt completely drained, the situation was different. I had a plan. An idea I was working on.
All I had to do now was improve it.
I took my marketing book out, not to study for my last exam, but to see what my next step was. I needed more attention from the media, more people following my page. I needed sponsors.
I had thirty-five thousand good reasons for it.
Day 794.
“The man I was staying with in that village,” I went on, “found me a guitar, so I played it and earned some money, along with a few sodas and sandwiches.”
I could’ve said to her that I was working as a drug dealer. Or at least that I was trying to.
The public dug those wow-stories. The little peculiar details that could be combined in their heads creating an entire scenario that, in most cases, was completely unrelated to reality. And travellers, once they found themselves in the situations like that, would smile mysteriously and let their imaginations run free. Or, they would even add fuel to the fire and make up a few tiny details.
There was a thin line between personal growth, growing mature and wisdom that the Road can bring you on the one hand, and boosting your own ego on the other. A very thin line indeed. I had crossed the line a couple of times when I thought that I was so smart and superior just because I had a bunch of kilometres and interesting stories behind me - a couple of illegal actions, broken hearts and nights under the starry sky.
At the same time, I was perhaps forgetting the most important lesson a person can learn when travelling: the one about being modest. I was perhaps forgetting that we are small, irrelevant, just passing by. Forgetting that each and every one of us has a story of their own and a life path, and that no one’s more important or better than anyone else.
I’m a traveller, you know. I’m a hitchhiker. The world is my home. That was only a different way of saying, I’m so great and there’s no one like me. I mean, I’m one of a kind. So unique.
Just like I was telling my colleagues from the university that I was a stockbroker. I thought that I was defined by it, that this fact showed others people who I was, and that people should know how to treat me, how to respect me. I thought that I was the man.
Just as, one day, I would say proudly: I’m a writer, you know.
“So, do you travel on your own?” Daniela asked me.
“Yes, I do…”
I guessed she wasn’t interested in hearing my story about a sheep which accompanied me on my journey in Andalusia and which even got a name, Maria Juana del Campo. The choice of the name came from her cute face, soft smile, half-open eyes and the things we consumed that night.
I’d given up on travel companions a long time before, after my first trip to Amsterdam. I knew that most of my friends didn’t want to travel the way I was doing it, or if they did want to I was sure they’d drop out at the last minute. And convincing and adapting were tiring for me. Still, at one time, I’d given it a try.
“…well, apart from my second to last journey,” I added, “One day I created my Facebook page...”
Day 501
.
One day, as I was considering either a career as a gigolo or a bank robber, when preparing for my last exam, I received an e-mail:
Hi Tomislav,
We’re soon organizing a conference on travelling, which will take place in Zagreb. The travellers/presenters will do a ten-minute presentation on any subject related to travelling. Our aim is to get the attention of the audience (especially the young ones) and make them begin travelling and make them realize that in order to start travelling all you need is a bit of will and courage.
We would love someone to do a presentation on CouchSurfing, so let us know if you could do it.
The timetable of the presentations and the list of the presenters are in the attachment.
Regards!
I read the e-mail once again, threw a quick glance at the list of presenters and saw some familiar names, and one in particular, Hrvoje Šalković, a.k.a. Shale, the writer whose intercom I buzzed on ages ago.
You can count me in.
How could I refuse the offer to do a presentation on CS, which had taught me so much and which was responsible for all the changes in my life over the past few years? Moreover, I’d be with people who’d started travelling when I was at elementary school. Maybe Shale wouldn’t refuse my invitation for a beer this time?
During the following few days all I could think of was this presentation. I invested hours and hours in choosing photos, arranging slides, trying to think of witty jokes to make my audience laugh, coming up with questions to hand out to my friends in the audience so they could ask them at the end of the presentation, just in case no one else had any.
1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker Page 14
