1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  INFORMATION

  Everyone who wants to participate in the race has to:

  Send me an e-mail with their full name and surname, address, date of birth, and a link to their CS profile (those who don’t have one can set one up);

  Know that this isn’t a regular journey, but an adventure in which we’ll be hitchhiking, couchsurfing, and doing other unpredictable things. Everyone is responsible for themselves;

  Have a passport that is valid for at least half a year;

  Have some money for food or any other emergency, and a mobile phone with enough credit on it;

  Treat the people who you’ll be travelling, driving and staying with respectfully;

  Be honest and fair – this is a race, but there won’t be a prize; our aim is cooperation, not competition.

  The route hasn’t been 100% defined yet, but it should be: Belgrade – Skopje – Thessaloniki – Xanthi – Istanbul – Sofia – Zagreb.

  The estimated duration of the journey is three weeks. As far as the hitchhiking is concerned we’ll be divided in male-female pairs. You can find yourselves a partner before we start the race, but if you don’t have one, we’ll find one for you by random choice.

  RULES OF THE GAME

  Maybe the word ‘rules’ isn’t the best choice, but here I’m giving you a few suggestions of how the whole thing should be on the road:

  I will repeat once again: you have to treat other hitchhikers, drivers and hosts nicely. I don’t doubt that you will. If any problem arises, we’ll sit down together and discuss someone’s inappropriate behaviour. I won’t be a judge, we’ll always make all the decisions together.

  The aim of the race is to arrive in the city as soon as possible; HOWEVER, it’s advisable to experience something during each stage of the race. In every city participants will be awarded points, and at the finish line we’ll announce the winner, who will get – nothing.

  As far as cheating is concerned, not only is it allowed, it is very advisable! So, do whatever it is in your power to arrive at your destination. If you happen to have a friend who will follow you in a car and drive you from one city to the other, go for it. You’ll get the most points, but also nicknames like ‘pussy’, ‘crook’ and other similar names to that. The point of the whole thing is to have fun, without something bad happening to anyone. This is your journey; no one will tell you how to travel.

  You have to be fair when counting the points. Each person will measure their own time getting from one city to the next and the things they experienced on their way there. No one will ask for proof, we’ll take your word for it.

  You will get points if:

  - you’re the fastest group, +5 points, every group that arrives after you gets a point less;

  - you have the funniest/craziest story to tell, +3 points;

  - you end up in a village, spend the night beside the road and never even get to the destination, +5 points;

  - share a breakfast/lunch/dinner with your driver, +2 points;

  - you have the most interesting souvenir from the journey, +1 point;

  - take the best photo on the journey, +1 point;

  - help your driver repair the car, +2 points;

  - spend the night with the person who gave you a ride (no sex), +4 points;

  - spend the night with the person who gave you a ride (sex included), +3 points;

  - a Ferrari or a Porsche, or something like that pulls over, +3 points;

  - if the driver lets you drive the car, +2 points (+5 if the car is a Ferrari or a Porsche);

  - if the driver gives you a ride directly to the house of your host, +2 points.

  If someone rapes you, murders you, or if you’re left without a kidney during the race, you’ll be the automatic winner!

  We will take the points away from you if you:

  - use public transport (bus, train or taxi), -5 points (you can only use public transportation when you leave a city and look for a place to hitchhike);

  - pay for accommodation (hostel, hotel, private accommodation), -3 points;

  - don’t fasten your seat belt, -20 points;

  - discuss politics, religion or football with drivers/hosts, -3 points;

  - walk along the highway, -3 points;

  - drink or smoke weed with your driver, -2 points (but, who cares?);

  - leave your partner while hitchhiking, -15 points and a kick in the ass from the other participants.

  We’ll count the points each time we arrive in a city. Our plan is to organize meetings with the hosts the first night we arrive in a certain city, where we’ll have a drink and talk about the day that’ll be behind us.

  Once you’re on the road, you’ll be given the address and a phone number of your CS host, whom you’ll contact when you’re close in order to make all the necessary agreements. You’ll most likely go with them to their apartment, leave your things, take a shower and join the others at the gathering.

  At the end of the journey, the person spending the smallest amount of money will be awarded 50 points. The second will get 40 points, the next one 30, and so on... The winner will be the person with the most points! That person can brag to their friends and neighbours over a drink. Good luck!

  I closed the laptop and shut my eyes. This could be one awesome journey.

  Day 623.

  “Are you online?” a chat box popped up.

  The reaction of my body to her presence, even though she was many, many miles away from me, didn’t stop surprising me. My heart started beating heavily, a smile appeared on my face, my brain was instantly trying to figure out why she was writing to me.

  “Yes,” I replied briefly. Of course I wanted to shower her with questions to find out why she hadn’t been writing to me, why she was writing now, whether she was thinking about me... However, I restrained myself.

  “In a few months I’ll be in India!” she wrote.

  “Great!” I typed following the rhythm of my heart, “a friend has just invited me to her wedding in Bangladesh.”

  “Perhaps I could join you.”

  I sat back and fixed my eyes to the screen. Was she aware of the effect her words had on me? Why couldn’t I understand her words as a pure, random, innocent joke? Why was I instantly considering the possibility of going to India straight from Istanbul?

  “In a few weeks I’ll be heading for Istanbul, along with other people,” I decided to ignore her last words.

  “Sounds like quite an adventure!” she replied.

  “Still, if I win the lottery, I’ll see you at a wedding in a couple of months,” I couldn’t resist writing.

  “Just let me know and I’ll be there.”

  “Copycat.”

  Day 646.

  Hey T.

  I think I have big news for you. We’ll have to meet for a drink ASAP to talk about something. I may have found you a sponsor.

  Call me.

  Iva

  Iva was a girl I’d met in the juice bar where I had been working, and who had heard about my adventures from a friend.

  “Look…” she started our friend-business partners meeting the following morning, over a freshly squeezed carrot, apple and pear juice, “I work for a PR agency and it crossed my mind that I could suggest you to a client who might be interested in what you’re doing.”

  “Yeees?” I cocked my ears, “which client, if I may know?”

  “Of course,” she smiled, “but not a word to anyone, at least for now. It’s MasterCard.”

  “Wow!” I smiled back to her, “not bad.”

  “Nothing is for certain now, but I think we stand a chance,” she continued, “it’s up to us to suggest a project to them that they won’t be able to refuse.”

  “Hmmm,” I started thinking, and after a few seconds I had it. “How does Bangladesh sound to you?”

  “Bangladesh?” she was surprised, “what will you do in Bangladesh?”

  “A girl who stayed at my place a year ago, is getting married in Bangladesh,” I expl
ained. “The wedding will last for five days and there will be a couple of thousand guests. The colours, the feast and stuff like that. Besides, do you know anyone who’s been to Bangladesh? Sponsors might really like it, because if I managed to use their credit card there, at the other end of the world, then people would conclude it could be used anywhere.”

  “You’re right,” she said, “what do you think, how much money would you need?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” I replied, “I usually spend a small amount of money on my travels, but here, we’re talking about a journey to another part of the world.”

  “Okay, okay, let’s write it all down,” she put away her juice and started writing. “A plane ticket, some pocket money, travel insurance; what else do you need?”

  “Well...” I gave it a minute to think about it, “maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a good camera and a small laptop to take notes, edit photos and stuff like that.”

  “I’ll see about it,” she underlined what she had written down. “Do you have a blog where you publish your stories?”

  “For now, I only have a Facebook page,” I said, “but I could start writing a blog.”

  “Great. The more channels through which you can reach the public the merrier for the sponsors.”

  “Of course,” I nodded, “and if I get a camera and a laptop, I could create my own YouTube channel and upload short videos.”

  “Great. Oh, another thing,” she smiled, “I studied your Facebook page last night and saw that cute little sheep of yours - Maria Juana.”

  “Ah,” I said dreamily, remembering my little sheep.

  “Yeah, I found her cute, too,” she said, “but you do realize that MasterCard is a serious company and that you should avoid writing about things that her name reminds me of?”

  “Of course,” I repeated, although I didn’t like the idea of compromising. Still, as I remembered my debt I decided to keep my mouth shut.

  “Great.” She finished her juice. “I’ll let you know when I put it all on paper and present it to our clients.”

  “Thank you very much.” I hugged her and walked her out of the bar. “I think I’ve just come up with an idea for the name of the project.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.” I was proud. “What do you think of No cash in Bangladesh?”

  “Awesome!” she yelled and left.

  If that worked... I didn’t even want to think about it. I would’ve got myself a big sponsor and, maybe even more important, I would be only a few hundred kilometres away from India.

  Day 668.

  Hey T.

  I have excellent news! I’m just back from the meeting with the clients from MasterCard. And they love the idea! They said YES, fifteen minutes ago. Call me and come back ASAP so we can plan the whole Bangladesh thing!

  Iva

  I got the news while we were in Skopje, our second hitchhiking stop on our way to Istanbul. It was, in fact, a sad day.

  All fifteen participants were in the same house, with three hosts, and we’d just had the winner of our race. The rule of someone getting raped, killed or losing a kidney came into effect.

  Tanja, the craziest participant in the race, who brought her dog Nina and her parrot Čiči, was climbing down the stairs when she started crying.

  “Čiči,” she sobbed holding a small lifeless creature in her hands.

  Everyone stopped talking. Each and every one of us, like a true family, gave her a hug and a few words of consolation.

  “That was the happiest parrot in the world,” someone said.

  “Definitely the first parrot-hitchhiker,” another person said.

  “It’ll be remembered as the winner of the first hitchhiking race in this area”

  We managed to put a smile on her face. She was glad we were there for her.

  And seeing everybody gathered around, I felt warmth in my heart. I saw a group of people brought together by the Road and the fact that they were travelling together. A group of people who hadn’t known each other before we started the journey, but who were now, a couple of days later, behaving like friends. As a true family.

  I had already sensed that at our first stop, in Belgrade.

  In Zagreb, the night before we left, we met for a drink and split ourselves into random male-female pairs. I handed out sheets with contact numbers of the hosts in the cities we’d be passing through and with the rules of hitchhiking.

  There were three foreigners in the group and people from all over Croatia. Only half of us had already had some experience with CS and only three people had some experience hitchhiking outside Croatia. The youngest participant, Sanjin, was only nineteen and this was his first time he had crossed a border or used a passport.

  He was the one who, after arriving in Belgrade, told me something after which I already knew that our journey would be extremely successful.

  “Dude, somewhere around Slavonski Brod, Dalibor and I were picked up by two beautiful girls from Zagreb and during the whole ride the folk music didn’t stop playing in the car,” he was talking in the cute island dialect, by his haircut and his pierced nose you could tell that he was into punk subculture, “and, yet, it didn’t bother me, which was weird because usually I can’t stand things like folk music.”

  I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “However, in the end, we did screw them up,” he smiled deviously, “when we were crossing the border we told them that we had loads of drugs with us so they should pretend that they didn’t know anything. Ha ha, you should see how pale they suddenly were.”

  Sanjin wasn’t the only one who already had an interesting story after the first four hundred kilometres. Tanja, along with Nina and Čiči, got a ride in a Bentley worth a quarter of a million of dollars, Joanna and Evan ended up eating burek with their drivers, while Nina (not the dog) and I ran into a driver who had been a bodyguard for the Serbian president during the war.

  Ingrid and Igor, after a rough start, arrived at the first stop after a 14-hour delay. We ran to hug them as soon as we saw them, thrilled to see them; especially I, who kept thinking that something might have happened to them.

  I now better understood my mother’s feelings from when I was on the road.

  The remaining three couples arrived in Belgrade with normal stories. Ana (a serious business woman who had told her mom that she would travel by bus and who is in Kirgizstan at the moment of writing this book, in the middle of a hitchhiking adventure from Zagreb to Bora Bora) and Jasmin, as well as Pamela and Mario, needed only one lift to get to Belgrade, while Marina and Alex’s drivers liked the two of them so much that they left them in front of the house of their host in Belgrade.

  Our CS friends prepared us an excellent welcome meeting the first night. We were placed at four different addresses, and our hosts organized a party at a great restaurant in our honour, and made sure that during the following few days we were on all possible lists for free entrance to Belgrade clubs.

  It showed that the warnings we’d been given before going to Serbia were just empty words. Everyone we encountered treated us like royals: our drivers, hosts, people we stopped on the road asking for directions, and the waiters who served us delicious food and drinks. There was no talk of the horrors of the war, differences or grudges, only about new friendships and the similarities between us, even though there was a border separating us.

  After being brought closer through our stay in Skopje - sharing one bathroom and the floors of the kitchen and living room when it was time to sleep - everything went smoothly. We did a bit of sightseeing: Macedonian, Greek, Turkish cities, on our own or in the company of our hosts. We tasted the local specialties, both food and drink, played and sang with the street artists, shared hugs, wrote messages of peace and love with colourful chalk in the main squares, and accidentally ended up in a theatre when we wanted to find shelter from the rain. We drove in a hearse, with different smugglers, with Albanian mobsters and many drivers shared food and drink, somet
imes even money, with us.

  Each participant in the race experienced it in a different way, but no one regretted being part of it. They were thrilled to have discovered a new way of travelling, hitchhiking and couchsurfing, and their hosts too, people who welcomed them as long lost friends.

  I was the only one who appeared to be somewhere else, with my thoughts on my upcoming Bangladesh adventure.

  Day 699.

  “I’m coming to Bangladesh!” I sent her an e-mail as soon as the contract with MasterCard was singed and the plane ticket bought. “Are you still interested in keeping me company at the wedding?”

  “I don’t think it’ll be possible; according to my visa for India I can only enter the country once.”

  That was a cold shower.

  “Well, maybe I could make a short stop in India?” I suggested. “What are the chances of us meeting there?”

  “Don’t come to India only because of me.” She kept on ripping me apart. “But, if you happen to be in India at the same time as me, the chances for us meeting are very high – 99.9%.”

  I knew it wouldn’t happen. That 0.1 % was saying quite a lot.

  Day 794.

  “A hitchhiking race?” Daniela repeated, “so, who was the fastest to make it to the finish line, who won?

  Everybody kept on asking me the same thing, as if it really mattered, as if it mattered to make it to the finish line. What mattered was what happened on our way to the finish line.

  Still, it was my fault, too. No one had forced me to call the journey a race. It’s natural for people to expect a race to have a winner, although being a winner isn’t anything that special. Winners are alone in their success, surrounded by losers, and they’re looking for someone who can understand them, someone with whom they can share their success, their joy, their excitement.