Travelling no-budget is much harder than low-budget

I left home (CasaNostra, Hamburg, Germany) with 92 cents in my pocket.

My first intention was to go to the bank, squeeze a handful of euros out of my drier and drier bank account, use it to buy a metro ticket to get to the hitchhiking spot to Berlin and meet up with the other kids there. But when I got to the ATM, it didn't let me slide my card in it.
This one was in the dirtiest corner of St Pauli. I figured a drunk fuck had kicked it numb the night before and moved my way to the next ATM, a couple of blocks down the Reeperbahn. It reacted the same way (i.e. it didn't react).

I tried my luck in a couple more until I came to the verdict. My debit card was as dead as Michael Jackson. So I pushed further a little to my bank so that I may scream on them a bit, as it was only 4pm and they should be still open. They were closed. It was Saturday.

The same evening I was supposed to be in Berlin to catch up with the 789 kids. And the day after (Sunday, so), I was leaving Germany for at least two weeks of travelling.
I travel low budget, but 92c weren't going to carry me long.

The destination was Odessa, in Ukraine. I was going there because a bunch of friends and I had decided to organize a little gathering of hitchhikers there. So obviously, I was going hitchhiking...

After having hopped all the ATMs of the area, it was already quite late to start hitchhiking. I had no food but a roll of bread and I needed to get a metro ticket to the hitchhiking spot anyway. It was way out of walking-reach.

After pondering on if I should not cancel the trip altogether, get a job, find a steady girlfriend and set up a savings account, I decided to blackride the train (which is very much against my religion, mind you) and hitchhike anyway. There would be food in some trash can in Berlin for sure.

I did it in two rides. One kite-surfer in a camper van on his way back from the Sun to his beautiful everyday life. He dropped me on a gas station that saw so little traffic that it made me wonder many things.

In the end, the tiniest car pulled over, of which three people came out. Two huge bald-headed, grey-bearded, tatoo-armed Vietnam-veterans-lookalike, and one 16 year-old that wished he looked so tough. They loaded me on and off we went to Berlin.

I was sitting in the back, with my bag on my lap, having to keep company to the kid. He spoke only German and I had a painful time communicating with him. He told me all about the latest hilarious youtube videos. I promissed him I would go and check.

They dropped me at the end of a S-bahn line. I blackrode again...

The meeting spot with the 789 kids was in a park in Neuköln. One of the poor areas of Berlin, where many students, artists and all that scum live.

They had set up a sign so I found them. They were 10. There was no one I knew already from previous travels. Or at least, no one I recognised.

To be honest, I found them pretty annoying. That's probably just me being a bitch, but I couldn't help noticing that all the commonwealth people had formed a little cluster where high-speed english only was allowed and they were talking about thinks that matter only to anglo-saxons. The quote of the day belonging to a canadian chick that said: "couchsurfers and hitchhikers are really cool people". If you don't see anything stupid in that sentence, you should stop reading, the whole story is gonna be very boring to you.

There was at least one cool guy. The one that organised the meeting. A tall and silent german called Ben. He was hosting almost everyone for the night, and also gave me 100€ (that kept me confortable until the end of my trip). The way I would describe him is that he was <i>being</i>, not pretending.

After a while, we all went back to his place. I spent a bit of time online working on something and then, I joined him and the people that lived with him in the kitchen where we chatted until 4am.

Poland: The only borders are between countries. And they suck

I woke up in a crammed bed at 9, quite inexplicably. My intention was to start straight away east. My next stopover on the way to 789 was a massive open air free festival in Poland called Woodstock (you might have heard about it).

The sun was blazing hot on that summer day. My route was going through small roads rather than the usual highway. It was a real treat to be out. I completed the route rather quickly thanks to my second ride that found me the next and last one: We just stopped on a gas station, he signed me to stay in the car, walked away a couple of minutes, and came back to point a guy on the other side of the parking lot: "this man goes to Kostrzyn, you go with him".
So I went with him. He spoke no german and little english. As we crossed the border, in front of the disused border post was a big ad (in german) for a dental clinic, right across the border. This is the first occurrence, but it will come back very often throughout that story:

I hate borders!

So, there are in Poland medical institutes that are solely targeted at german customers that want to get the same job done for half the price. They are not forbidden to polish customers, but they practice prices that make it as efficient as a polish-citizen-repellent fog around it. The german customer that wishes to evade the high prices of his country is welcomed to Poland with a red carpet. The Polish citizen that want to evade the low wages of his country and work in Germany is just not allowed to.
When you cross the border from Austria to Czech republic, you get commercials for sex-services. When you cross from anywhere to Luxembourg, the tobacco/gasoline business is here to welcome you. There are villages that are just a big tobacco-and-gasoline station for foreigners.
I hate borders. And believe me, it is just the begining. I'm headed to Ukraine...

In case I didn't already hate borders enough, my phone signal became unusable as we crossed it for reasons of roaming costs. My online presence ended there as surely as if I had fallen into a parallel dimension.

He dropped me within walking distance of the Woodstock festival. I wrote another story about it, it would be off topic here. Click the link if you want it too.

I left Woodstock the day after in the morning. Sure enough there had been an apocalyptic rainstorm and my socks-and-shoes were what I considered back then to be very wet. Keep reading a couple of chapters to find that thought laughable.
My intention was to ride the shuttle bus back to the main road, and hitch-hike to Warsaw from there. When I got out of the bus, I still had 1km to walk to the hitch spot (where the road was going to Berlin on the west and to Warsaw on the east). Everyone was leaving at the same time, there was a huge queue of cars, I was walking faster than them. It came to my mind that some of them were probably going my way, but it would be a waste of time to ask everyone. I decided to walk on to the spot and hitch there only the traffic going east. But then, I saw a car with an ID plate that started with WW. Which I thought was very likely to be the double W of Warszawa. And there was a free space in it.
I stopped and wondered. Robin would have done it! Come on!
I turned around, walked to their window, knocked on it: "Hi, do you speak english? (yes) Do you go to Warsaw? (yes) Can I come with you? .... (suspense)... YES!
I had been well inspired. When we got to the crossroad I was targetting, it was clogged with hitchhikers. One hitchhiker every two meters for 100m, then one every 10m for 1km, then one every 200m for 10km... The stream was 100km long!

The funny thing is that, last year, I had gone to Woodstock and then returned to Germany (hitchhiking, obviously). And there was nobody! Just me and the road. It seems that all the german people come to Woodstock by train or with their own car, and half the polish people hitchhike.

The car that took me already had three people in it. One boy and two girls. The boy was a heavy metal fan so we related rather well to each other. They stopped at a restaurant to eat, and I have to say it was quite strange for the 4 of us, dirty like after a festival, to enter a posh restaurant. Posh being all relative, but it had decoration and fancy chairs and stuff. For me, that's enough to call it posh.

I ordered the cheapest coffee when they took dishes of food. I was hungry but had no money. And I expected that the girls wouldn't finish their plates. Sure enough, I walked out fed.
We had quite a bit of talking. Used as I was to the 200km/h german highways, I had very much underestimated the travel-time. The guy in particular was good in history and served me a huge portion of polish medieval stuff. He also gave me a rare 2 Zl coin that is indeed really cute and that I still hang on to.
Our driver was really tired. I usually offer to drive a bit, but people are usually more possessive with their vehicle than with their spouse. I was really surprised that she accepted gladly. I took my heavy-metal friend as a copilot and drove 2h while our driver was taking a nap.

And we finally got to Warsaw. They dropped me in front of the door of my friend where I was going to stay. I took the phone number of the heavy metal guy and said good-bye.

The guy I was staying with was a friend that I had met in the <a href"">Berlin beach camp</a> of 2006. My ultimate frisbee master and a good friend otherwise. It was my first time in his place. I had planned to stay two days with him to catch up on the lost time, wash my body-and-clothe, write a little and meet up with the others for the 789 stopover meeting the night after. Same as in Berlin, but in Warsaw.

So let's ignore the part where I catch up with my friends and jump to the 789 meeting in the evening. It was strangely set up to be in the dead-commercial-centre of the city. Where it would be hard to find a shop selling cheap beer, where the police was likely to be a bit jumpy, where the atmosphere is rather shitty. When I arrived there, I met up with Ben, the main geek of 789 (he hosts and administers the website) and Reese, that is a travel-friend from before and that has a part in the upcoming story. Then came a team of Lituanians that really surprised me, as one of them had been my host 3 years ago when I had cycled around the Baltic sea. And she was one of my best hospex memory. Her name is Vita.

Reese was there by accident. He had meant to go to Krakow but the hazards of hitchhiking had brought him here. He had nowhere to sleep but wasn't worrying too much. I owed him a couple of drinks so he was happy to see me. I spent most the evening chatting with him.

We moved to a nice bar that had an underground room big enough to accomodate the 13 of us. Some of the attendants were just sympathisers from Warsaw. One of them decided to host all those that didn't have a place to sleep. Reese left with him. I found myself with the team of lituanians, that were still carrying their backpacks around.
Like me, they wanted to leave the next day and they hadn't seen much of the city. I went with them on a night tour of Warsaw that allowed me to catch up a bit on the three years gap I had with Vita.
It's hard to describe how fun it was. We were just walking around the silent and beautiful city, walking on low walls, climbing trees, singing lithuanian songs, being stupid and it was fun. At 3am, we tried to catch a nightbus back to our respective hosts, which was quite an adventure in itself.

Ukraine: Ultimate border-crossing

Many people that are not pampered 1st world kids will laugh at the title of this chapter. &quot;Ultimate? Try the one between Morocco and Algeria, try Palestine...&quot;. Well, I AM a pampered 1st world kid that doesn't ever leave his Schengen walled garden. And being confronted to a fairly normal border was indeed a traumatizing experience.

So, the next morning, I was out of Michal's place at 10am. I still had 1,80 Zl (without counting my precious rare 2 Zl coin) and I didn't want to change money because I was leaving the country. These national currencies piss me off at the measure of the nonsense they represent. It was a pain to find food for 1,80 Zl! But eventually I did. Then, following the instructions to the hitchhiking spot from hitchwiki.org, I took a metro, then a tram, then a bus.

In the tram, a dark-skinned woman with a sick child in arm, begged around for money. She said stuff in Polish with the most miserable face in the world and her child seemed to have one foot in the grave already. Some people threw a coin in her hand and went off feeling good about it I suppose. When she had completed her track across the wagon, she just hanged around in the back with a more neutral expression. At the following stop, another dark-skinned women with another sick child in arms walked in. They obviously knew each other (possibly from a dark-skinned-woman-with-a-sick-child club) and started telling each other the latest gossip very loud and laughing about them. At the following stop, they both went off and said goodbye to each other before stepping into different trams respectively.

Now, my point is not that the dark-skinned-woman-with-a-sick-child mafia should be a bit more serious about the acting of their employees, but more the parallel between their activities and mine.

Hitchhiking is extremely comparable to begging for money in the streets. You try to instil a feeling of pity in the heart of a target in order to benefit from something he has and you do not. But they still differ in that the euros that the beggar takes from the hand of the compassionate citizen is removed from that citizen's pocket. The hitchhiker on another hand does not cost anything to the driver that picks him up. If not the added fuel consumption that is due to the added weight to the car and possibly another consumption top-up if the driver needs to stop-and-start again in order to pick the hitchhiker up or to drop him. Both amount to centilitres of fuel, or cents of euro. The driver might as well lose his tranquillity, if he enjoys driving alone.

But the driver can very much benefit from it as well. Even if you do not count the fact that it will weight in favour of his admission into paradise on the judgement day (in just the same measure as giving money to beggars will), there are other things. Hitchhikers can keep you awake with conversation, they can read maps for you, they can get your sunglasses out of the glove compartment... they can even drive a bit while you take a nap. As it happened to me on my way to Warsaw.

So, in facts, hitchhiking and begging for money in the streets are activities that fall under two very different categories. While still bearing some ressemblance.

We had decided with the others that it was better to hitchhike separately, but I met Reese by accident in the last bus. I was glad, I thought he would be a great travel partner. Reese has a bit of a distant relationship with reality. He's skimming the surface, he's pretty refreshing to be around.

And we had a really good time so far. Reese has some really good ideas. He takes a picture of all his drivers, which is actually a nice way to break the ice. And he has some little 789 flyers that he was giving to each of them so that they knew what we were doing. We had a really nice ride from Warsaw to Lublin with a guy that told us a lot about the region and the city of Lublin.

It was the harvest season. Men and machines were busying themself all around the countryside. I love this impression of walking a tended planet. Probably my catholic education. We also passed a lot of hitchhikers. It seems that, in Poland, hitchhiking is still considered as a way of getting from A to B. It would be good to figure out what makes the polish population so practicant of hitchhiking and find out how to port it to other cultures.

He dropped us near the city centre of Lublin so we had a look around before starting again, and it is a really beautiful town. Then we had lunch in a park, the weather was perfect, we were enjoying every drop of the freedom we had. And we had a lot.

Hitchhiking out proved a bit tricky. We found an acceptable place to hitch from but walked on in hope that we'd find better. We never did, but we had walked so far that it felt stupid to go back. In the end, we decided for a spot that was quite bad, but the polish people are so nice that we had a ride before we were done writing the sign.

The guy spoke polish only. He was driving very fast and had the CDs of his son on the radio (he was in his 50s). The son was into thrash metal so we were happy. He dropped us 70km from the border where we instantly got a ride with some kids that were on their way to their first skydive. They were really excited about it, and they were a bit early so they took a little detour to drop us right by the border between Poland and Ukraine.

We were a bit anxious about that border. I haven't been outside of Schengen space for quite a while, and I wasn't sure what to expect. We stayed out of view of the border-post and hitched there. Trafic was low. One guy stopped near Reese and said he would take only one of us. Reese looked at me and I told him: "come on, let's stay together". I really hated myself for denying him an opportunity to avoid the hell that we were about to go through. Moreover, I would have gotten away more easily on my own.

It started with a rainstorm. The heaviest rainstorm I have gone through in the recent and middle-term past. We ran for shelter (a cafe 300m from where we were), and by the time we had made it there, we were soaked until our underwear. The inside of the bags... everything! Including my computer that I have never managed to bring back to life after that.
After 30 min of "very heavy" rain, it decreased to "heavy". We went back under.

We tried to walk to the border-post, where we hopped we could cross on foot and start hitch-hiking again on the other side. We were kicked out by a soldier. "No car, no way". I didn't argue with him how little sense that made, we walked away and hitchhiked again. One hour later, Ben and two lithuanian girls were dropped with us. We hitch-hiked in separate places.
You have to figure all that under heavy rain. The night fell.
Another hour later, Vita and Tudka, another lituanian, showed up as well. We split again. After a while, Reese went off to the cafe where we had found shelter to see if the owner wouldn't take us accross in his car for a price. He came back an hour later with no success.
It was 5 hours that we had been waiting in the rain when someone picked us up. He was going to Lviv, our destination. I can tell you we were glad.

The border post is a huge complex of military and administration. What I usually hate about borders, is the concept of borders. But I have to say that the atrocious aesthetics only comforts me in my opinions of them. It took us 1h of queueing, showing papers to uniformed assholes, signing lies on other papers, receiving papers, filling up papers, exchanging papers... the paper-society in its most annoying incarnation.
Sure enough, it stopped raining as soon as we got shelter.

Once our ordeal with the minions of the establishment was over, we started again to our destination.

I haven't commented on the bad quality of polish roads because they are not so bad. They aren't fit for longboarding, but if you're carreful enough, your car does not suffer irremediable damage at cruise speed. In Ukraine, from the border to Lviv, the roads is like millions of potholes glued together with some asphalt. Our driver was maintaining a speed of around 80 km/h at the expense of his shock absorber. I'll come back to that topic tomorrow.

We arrived in Lviv exhausted. Our driver, as all average ukrainians, was the nicest guy in the world and took us straight to the 789-meeting-place. Where nothing was going on. A freaking setup! It was <i>only</i> 1am god-damn-it!

We started wandering the empty streets, Reese and me, sore, wet, with no idea where to go. I sent a sms to some of the others, that drained me 14€ of credit through roaming costs (that are just another nonsensical incarnation of "borders"). One of them replied with an address. At least we were not going to sleep on the wet street.

Well, there were already 8 hitchhikers there, fast asleep. Jeppe, the guy we had written to, showed us the kitchen floor for us to sleep on and went back to his own piece of flooring. We put up all our wet stuff for it to "dry", I layed my soaked sleeping bag on the floor and repressed a scream of disgust while I was getting in it. I hoped that my body heat would dry it overnight.

Why poor countries, that is the question

It worked sort of. Of all the stuff that I had put up to dry, the sleeping bag got the dryest. We woke up at 6:30 the next day. And we introduced ourselves to our hosts and to the rest of the crew. Everyone was going to 789. There was a lot of packing, cooking, eating, bathing activity in a slowly hurried way. We all walked out together, stopped by the phone shop to buy me a local SIM card and to the McDonalds to use the toilets.

In Lviv (as in any soviet-inspired urbanisation), the public transportation network is quite dense. There are little street cars that are as cute as can be and little minibuses that run every few minutes. The minibus we had to take was already half full. And there were 8 of us, with backpacks. At first we thought we'd never fit, but never is not an Ukrainian word it seems.

After we had crammed ourselves in the poor old thing, passed the money from hand to hand to the driver and driven all the way to the outskirts of the city, we were ready to start. It was 10:30. Lucy, our host, was a bit pissed off at the downtime.

We organised some teams. Two unitedstaters started together, Jeppe went with a French girl, Lucy went with her boyfriend and I won a Latvian guy called Martin. He proved to be a benediction because he could speak russian, which is one of the official languages of Ukraine.
In addition to his being a lovely travel companion, that is to say.

Every team was standing 40m appart from each other on the same road. We were the 3rd team to go. The Unitedstaters went first, the franco-danish team then and us. The Ukrainians were last.

Funny enough, they were the first to arrive. But let's not jump to conclusion yet.

Remember my previous comment on the roads' average surface quality? Let's come back to the topic shortly.

I expect that, all other variables being equal, the same car in Ukraine will have 1/3 of the life expectancy it would have in a first world country like Germany. One thing is sure, its life expectancy would be shorter. It follows that, in Germany, the proportion of very old cars should be higher, yeah? If every car lasts longer then there must be a higher proportion of old cars. Now, you must have guessed that, far from being the case, it is very much the contrary. The proportion of old cars is way higher in Ukraine. One explanation would be that the cars made in Russia (that represent the majority of cars in Ukraine) are sooo much stronger than those made in Germany that, even when the roads are fucked up, they still last more than the low quality german cars... Ok, joke's over.
Now please someone point out where my logic fails, as it is contradicted by reality!

Well, the solution is to be found in the globalised economy. When a german person considers his car to be too old, he buys a new one. Very often, the company he buys a new car from claims they will buy the old one back for a few kopecks. Ever wondered what they do with those cars? That's right, they end up in Poland. A polish person will not consider the car to be so old after all.
And, a few years later, when the polish guy thinks the car is too old, he goes and get another german-leftover car. And his old rubish ends up in... (suspense)... Ukraine!
I suppose that when the Ukrainians throw them away, they go to Afghanistan. According to my atlas, Ukraine is an "average income" country.

So, there we were, Martin and me, giving the master finger to a stream of very-old to completely-fucked-up vehicles. One out of 20 would be acceptable for the german market (some of those would actually have a german ID plate). Finally, it was one of them relatively new cars that stopped. Martin explained in Russian where we where headed to. He could take us along for around 80km ; We jumped it after throwing our bags in the trunk.

Because, in poor countries, there are not only poor people. There are also really rich ones. Rich enough to buy iphones and new cars and whatever fruit of the modern globalized economy, even though those imported things are much more expensive in Ukraine than in Poland (than in Germany, whose market they are made for). I'm close to consider that anyone that can afford a new car in Ukraine must be part of some sort of society-ransoming-mafia. But then, I'm not far of thinking the same of everyone that can afford a new car. Whether it be in Ukraine or in Germany...

The patch of road we used was of Polish-like quality. So it was physically possible to break the wall of 100km/h. Which we did. The general rule for speed limits is that you go as far as the road and your car let you. There are some signs with speed-limits figures, but everyone in Ukraine knows that they were put there to improve the looks of the landscape, with lukewarm success ; and to give a good excuse for cops to ask for bribes . I'll come back to that.

And indeed it seemed like every big-enough bush was sheltering a police speed control. But our driver had a anti-radar radar and we were immune to that. He even honked at one of them that was cunningly hidden in an annoyed way. In case I hadn't yet notice the lack of spirit of law, our driver hit the nail a bit deeper by avoiding a traffic jam through a side road that was still under construction and not yet open to traffic. But he knew a gap in the fence and we found ourselves speeding at 170km/h on a brand new, not yet painted, patch of road for a few kilometres.

They dropped us at the crossroad where our respective paths were diverging. We stopped for lunch in a sort of rest area under construction. Thank god, the toilets were finished: the 1,80 Zl food wasn't too friendly to my stomach. And I'll take advantage of that (the construction work) to digress a bit on the fact that a very high percentage of Ukraine is under construction. Roads in particular. It gives a very messy impression, but is pretty good news for the coming generation. Of course, the growth of Ukraine, starting from rather low, is rather high. But there is another variable. In 2012, Ukraine might host the European Football Cup. For that, they need decent roads and infrastructures which are more or less missing. So at the moment I was visiting, the whole country was in a construction frenzy.

We got a ride from a Lada driver next. I was a bit worried that I might cross the whole country without getting a ride in a Lada. Jesus heard my silent prayer and sent a really cheerful Lada driver towards us. And while Martin was telling him all about 789, I discreetly reviewed the various parts of the car that were accessible to me.
It is common knowledge in France that Lada russian-build cars are the worst cars ever made by man. Many clues though pointed in the opposite direction: Russian science of mechanics is on average very advanced compared to any other country. In particular when it comes to military items. I need not introduce the word "kalashnikov", but I might need to let the reader know that the russian jet fighters are of a much better mechanical quality than their counterpart of any other country. In addition to what I'll add that the russian are building the most efficient space launcher in the world at the moment. There are no reason why the car industry would not benefit from the momentum.

Another clue would be that of all the fucked up very old cars that I saw on the fucked up very old roads, the proportion of russian models was way higher than in the more recent models. This point though can very well be explained through the whims of the market.

Well, the car that took us looked extremely tiny from outside but, once we got in, it was just as spacious as any car. The equipment inside was simple but functional. It is pretty clear to me that the Lada engineers have only contempt for aesthetics and won't waste time with cosmetic plastics. The engine felt sound but a bit underpowered, but then most western built are overpowered in my opinion so I probably have a bias. As long as a car can reach cruise speed of 130km/h in a slight slope, no additional power is required. The seats were comfortable enough... Ok, I started with very bad preconceptions but I was rather impressed by the general quality of it. I don't wonder anymore how their owners can make them last so long.

We were dropped not too long after but on a much better spot. As everytime we got dropped somewhere, I changed my socks for a dryer-but-still-wet pair in hopes it would suck the water out of my shoes and I put all my wet stuff up to dry on some branches. Which was all my clothe except what I was wearing. I hadn't had the courage to try to switch on my computer and I was trying not to think about it.

We took turns hitchhiking. One car stopped with Jeppe and Sarah in. They had no space for us but gave us news of Matt and Reese (the unitedstaters). Apparently they were quite far behind. We told them that Lucy and her boyfriend were already headed to Kyiv, and they left. Due to outrageous roaming costs, most of our distant communication was grounded and we were left with stone-age mouth-to-ear data transmission. I hate roaming fees, but as they are simply a consequence of borders, I'll stick to hating borders a bit further.

Our following ride took us quite some work to get, even though the spot was excellent: Right after a big crossroad, past a sizable town, uphill going with more than enough space to pull over. But eventually someone took us. A guy in his 50s that had completely redone the coating of the seats with red velvet. The whole inside of the car was redecorated according to a deep red / dark pink theme that taste was very disputable. He spoke only russian so, once again I just sat and waited.
The guy was following the general custom and drove as fast as the road and the car permitted. But he was lacking the anti-radar radar so he had to rely on his wit to outsmart the hidden speed-control patrols. The Nth patrol finally got him. He was pulled over by an angry cop. He walked out of the car, bargained a bit with him "Come on, I had to rush to go visit my dying mom" VS "I'm just doing my job, and I have a family to feed". They settled on a compromise: a 200 Hr bribe. At the time of the trip, it amounted to 18€.

And that's the way things work. The road offence statistics in Ukraine probably show that nobody ever breaks the speed limits, because no speeding ticket is ever written. The matter is settled between the cop and his victim, the state sees none of it. Nor does the communtity. People seem to take it for granted. Speed limits are there to give excuses to cops to get tips. Cops don't get a good salary because the state is broke, so they have to get tips from the people. The state doesn't get any of it and can't pay the police a good salary. The people are used to it, the cops are fine with it, the minister of interior is probably busy getting his own tips from law-breaking corporations, corruption takes root. The head of state can't tell on him because then, the minister of interior would tell on her. And she didn't get to her head-of-state position by abiding to the law. Anyway, if that'd happen, there are probably ways to settle the matter with the ministry of justice...

He dropped us at a crossroad that was quite a good spot. We had a meal there, while my wet clothe was spread on some bush for further drying. My feet had really scary wrinkles from so many days of wet shoes. I never travel with sandals because I think it makes me look like a hippie or a tourist, but I might reconsider in my future trips.

As we were finishing, Jeppe and Sarah (the french girl) turned up. We probably had taken them over with our velvet-seat guy. They went a bit down the road, and we hitchhiked at the corner.
It took really long. Sure enough they went off before us. We changed spot, near a little road bistro. There were a couple of dogs there that made a point to run and bark on every passing car. They were so dedicated to it that I was surprised that had made it to their curent age.

Nobody pulled over. Nobody even slowed down. When finally, a sort of big van stopped. It was a commercial bus. They asked us 30 Hr (2,80€ at the time) each to Kiyv (150km) away. We were tired, it wasn't fun anymore. We took it.

There was a TV in the bus that was playing Das Boot with the speech in German tuned down (but you could still hear it) and with the voice of a guy explaining in Russian what was going on overlayed. Entering Kiev, we saw Jeppe and Sarah walking on the sidewalk. We were decidedly keeping on bumping into them. We didn't even have time to sign them.

The bus dropped us at the main train station. With Martin, we found a metro map and while we were looking at it, the police caught us.

The thing is, we were talking together in English. Police people heard that, and little dollar signs startet flickering in their eyes. "Tourists! Money! Let's search them for drugs or terrorist devices! If we find some we'll get lots of tips to let them go, if we don't we'll just search them until they tip us something"

They brought us to their hideout and told us to empty our pockets, reviewing every item. Then, they started emptying our bags, reviewing every item. It took forever. Martin was talking to them a bit. They figured out we were pennyless hitchhikers. When it became clear that we weren't going to bribe them to speed it up, they let us go.

That delay allowed Jeppe and Sarah to catch up with us. We arrived within seconds of each other to the meetup point. Where we were told that the last metro was the next one so, we were splitting. Luckily Lucy had arranged hosts for everyone. 8 of us were going to a certain Anton.

Getting to Anton's was a 1h trip. All the way down a metro line, then two busses. He came to pick us up at the bus stop, took us to the night shop for drinks and to his home.

His home is a big nice appartment, good enough for a small family, belonging to a huge building of residential family-homes, belonging to a huge block of family-home-buildings, belonging to a gigantic neighborhood of family-home-building-blocks. Soviet-style.

We stayed up quite late drinking some amazing Ukrainian beer. Anton was pretty great for a host. All of us managed to get a much needed shower. He told us his familly was off in the countryside during the hot months. I don't remember how many children he had, but it's worth noticing he was married with children. Because he was in his early twenties.

In the bus that brought us to him, we had sympathised with a 19 years old kid that was all proud of showing us his brand new wedding ring. I can't seem to fit that with the fact that Ukraine's birth rate is the lowest in Europe, which I can't seem to fit ad well with the fact that Ukrainian girls' level of hotness render all accepted indexes worthless. I haven't managed to figure this one out. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

I was lucky (or quick) enough to sleep on a couch. Most slept on the floor. The day after was 789. The 7th of august 2009. Our arrival in Odessa. If everything went well...

Getting to the hitchhiking spot was a matter of getting on the right bus. Unfortunately, there is no known bus map of Kiev. You have to just know it. Fortunately, Anton knew it. A direct bus starting from not far. Not far behing just 2 km. Kiev distances.

In the bus, we made the teams. I wanted to hitch with Matt, the other unitedstater. And since he spoke no Russian, there wasn't too much arguing. After the bus dropped us, we let the other go first and took the time to get some breakfast, hoping that the other teams would be gone by the time we finished.

Somehow, big cities affect their citizens in a way that makes them unwilling to take hitchhikers. None of the teams had left, so we had to walk quite far to find a good spot that wasn't occupied. And it wasn't a very good spot. There was a gas station nearby but it saw very little traffic so we stuck to the road, thumbs out.

Matt is not a very adult person. He keeps on coming up with really childish stuff, and that's one of the reasons I like him so much. I agreed with him that just standing there with our thumb out wasn't getting us much attention. We started what will probably soon become a very popular fashion accross the nomad spere: Hitch-dancing. Matt had a particularly cute hand-stand hitching posture.

But in the end, it's good old fashionned human contact that got us our first ride: A car stopped at the gas station, Matt stayed hitch-dancing on the road and I rushed to get a chance to meet the driver. I first thought I was out of luck seeing it was a lone middle-aged woman, but it turned out I was in immense luck.

The woman took us a bit less than half the way. She spoke English a little and she was the sweetest person on Earth. We started probing into the fundamental differences between Ukraine and France, Germany or the USA and addressing the question: "Why are there poor countries and ritch countries". We talked about the history of the region and about family. She wanted us to meet her 21 year old daughter that lived in Kiev.

And we reached the point where our respective ways were parting. She stopped on a gas station for us and gave us plenty of food for the way. Even though we had food already. As a farewell gift. We had to eat some of it on the spot, which is fortunate since we were hungry. I think we'll both remember this woman for long.

That gas station was not a very good spot actually. In ukraine, there is nothing forbidden for people with no money (the police having no interest in them) so we went ahead and hitchhiked right on the highway. We had to walk quite some time before finding a good spot. Cars were driving fast, not the best place.

We waited long enough for another pair of hitchhikers to come and share our spot. It was two Ukrainian kids that had never heard about 789 and we had no way to let them know. By then I knew as much Russian as they knew English.

They were loud "check me out I'm so cool" teenagers. They started hitching our spot like if they got here first. Matt and I were a bit taken aback by that and made way. The spot was unpracticable for two groups and we were wondering whether we should wait for them to get a ride or move on to the next spot. At the same time, they seemed very welcoming to us.

Culture clash. I got to understand it later. In Ukraine, Oldies make way to youngies. In Ukraine, when the drunk youth is singing songs in the street and waking up the old timers, it is the old timers that shut up. In western Europe, the 3rd age have taken control of things so much that people there find it normal that the drunk kids are not allowed to sing drunkard songs on the way from one bar to the next. This is nonsense in Ukraine.

So the kids didn't seem to give a shit, but in a friendly way. We decided to go look for another spot, but as soon as we started moving, they came running after us babbling something in Russian to make us stay. I was starting to feel really annoyed when a car stopped and took us 4.

It was a sort of van-car with 9 seats in it. The kids didn't seem to know the driver, but they certainly felt at home. The driver was so nice he was stopping at every bus stop (every 10 km on the highway) to offer a seat to people waiting for the bus. Surprisingly they all declined.

Movie stars don't ride the bus. even if it's quicker than calling for a taxi. Actually, they wouldn't even call for a taxi, they call the limo service. Taxi service is good for averagely rich people. And the bus is for poor people. The kind of communism they had in Ukraine obviously did not eradicate the concept of class, and people keep to their own. Getting free rides is extremely low-class.

The fact that the two kids were talking to the driver allowed Matt and I to have some time together. Which was very inspiring to me but too specific to be worth transcripting.

The driver was parting ways with us 20 km before Odessa. He took a highway exit and dropped us there. No gas station, no rest area, we had to hitchhike the highway.

It was just a bit unconvenient, The police was unlikely to fuck with us, as we didn't look like we had money to spend on them. But the cars were driving past fast, and I was already figuring to myself that 20 km walk takes only 3h30 to fast walkers. But a stopping van put an end to my pondering.

There were two guys in the front seats that started asking pointed questions in Russian. We were at loss : "Odessa ? Autostop ? Pajalsta ?" They wanted us to pay, we turned them down and they said the Russian equivalent of "fuck it, hop in".

I don't really like to ride with someone that doesn't want to ride with me. If it takes money to make him agree, that must mean that without it, he'd rather not take me. But after having figured out, through hand language and bits of Russian / English, that we had come all the way from our respective homes that way, he became interested. And meanwhile, we were entering the city.

Odessa instantly reminded me of Saint Denis, the main town of Reunion Island, from where I'm from. Colorful but without harmony, hammered by the sun, filtered only by the dust. A delectable frenzy of cars and bus, blended with the slow pedestrian traffic. The driver of the van interupted my daydream to explain us how to get to the meeting : "at the red-light, take a left, get in the trolley-bus nr3 to Shevshenko Parka. I give you 2Hr, because it's 1Hr for a ticket". He was giving money to us!

We protested a little, he insisted, we took it and left, and were a bit puzzled. All men are equal, but some are more equal than the others. Surely those 2 Hr did not represent a big sum to our drivers, but it represented comparatively much less to us. And though I was in the worst state of pennilessness, I knew that whatever subhuman job I was going to eventually find would make me a lot ritcher than him. Even the bare-minimum-allowance from government support in France or Germany would probably dwarf his 20-years-of-experience salary.

But we took it because it might have offended him if we had declined.

The bus dropped us near our final destination, more than 2,000 km from whare I had started, in time for the meeting. That goes out to those that would think hitchhiking is not a reliable mean of transportation.

It was a very hot day, we grabbed some cold beer on the way, thinking the people there would appreciate the gesture.