As first experiences go, there was no lack of effort as I attempted to hitch from Santander to Warsaw in three days.
As I left home on
Saturday afternoon with my board with the words ‘Bilbao/San Sebastian’
blatantly inscribed on it, little did I know what was in store for me.
Using the website
hitchwiki.com, which has plenty of useful suggestions, I headed for a gas
station on the way out of my current hometown, Santander, in the direction of
the Basque country.
How could I best
describe the feeling after the three hours that followed? Forlorn. Dejected.
You get the gist of it. I didn’t move one centimetre. In fact, there were ants
that had made more progress than I had. And it wasn’t for the lack of trying. I made
all sorts of comical gestures as the traffic raced by - imitating flashing
lights, pulling faces and a variety of other childish manoeuvres.
After three hours
of no success I made my way to the bus station, with a sense of failure, to get a bus
to the border, and then try and hitch from there.
I got to the
border town of Irun at around midnight and was picked up within an hour for my
first official hitchhiking experience. A young lad, about 22, was my driver
and, though I speak no French, it soon became apparent he wanted me to drive.
Why? I have no idea but maybe you can work it out. I said I didn’t have my
license with me and therefore it may be a bit risky to do so. He kept saying
‘Policia’ to me but I have no idea what he meant by that. Was he suspecting me
for being a police officer? Did he want me to drive so he couldn’t get caught
for something? Or did he somehow know that ‘Message in a bottle’ was number one
on the day I was born?
Whatever it was, I
was gripped to my seat throughout the 20km journey he took me on to Biarritz due
to the scary nature of his driving.
Anyway, we got
there in one piece and he dropped me off at the train station and I went in
search of my next driver.
No comments:
Post a Comment