Back... home?

So we're there! Finally in Poland, we managed to survive the trip! Yuppie! :) Granada is probably not a place for us, we couldn't get there neither two years ago nor this year... We spent a whole day trying to hitchhike there, but without any positive result... Finally we decided to take a bus to Cordoba, maybe it's good to leave something for next trips, I hope the third time we'll get there, but for sure we won't try hitch-hiking... ;)

It's funny, but when we were going to Portugal, we developed an idea about some kind of destiny... You know, if we hadn't waited for so long in Aix-en-Provence, we wouldn't have met all the nice drivers, who took us to Carcassonne, to Foix and then to San Sebastian... Maybe we wouldn't have been hosted by Basques and then we wouldn't have met our great Brazilian and Portuguese drivers! We were so lucky all the time that it seemed to be a kind of system, definitely not a coincidence....

The way back seemed just the opposite ;) We imagined a perfect driver - an owner of a chain of Indian restaurants traveling through Europe to check the quality of food and staying for 1-2 days in Sevilla, Granada, Barcelona, Paris, Wroclaw and Copenhagen...And of course inviting us to all those places, especially to his flat in Copenhagen where we could live for 4 months :)) nice, huh?

Unfortunately after waiting for a long long time on the Spanish roads, we realised that our driver has a Porsche and he can't take us with him... :( So we waited and waited all the time hoping that somebody nice would stop and take us somewhere... After two days of waiting in Cordoba (which is btw probably a very nice place if only the heat doesn't make you stay in the shade for the whole day preventing you from any sightseeing...), we took a bus to Bailen. Not for the place itself but because it's where the routes from Cordoba and Granada cross.

The next day one old Spanish soldier took us to a very big gas station around, so that we can find a car going North. It's hard to describe our state of mind at this time, maybe it's enough to say that we didn't really notice the 9 hours that passed while we waited at the entrance of the station... In Sevilla and Cordoba we really believed that somebody would stop "right now" and take us far away, but in Bailen we were nearly getting close to nirvana, we were relaxed and didn't really care where we were... When we were sitting there, we read a Polish ecological magazine that we got from a friend when we were leaving Ecotopia - and there we read an article about hitchhiking - you know, that it's an ecological way of travelling, making friends, getting to know people and places....

Well, yeah, it usually works, at least outside Spain. Here, one of the most important things you learn is patience... And dealing with stereotypes that you start creating.... It's difficult not to do that, if almost only foreigners are helpful here... And especially if you compare the experiences from Portugal, where people speak 2-3 languages, they are friendly and eager to help, with exactly opposite experiences in Spain (excluding Basque Country which was a very positive surprise)... And at the same time we're the people who are against stereotyping and believe in dialogue between cultures... So we had a lot of things to think about both at the station and finally in the truck that took us out of there. Our saviours were two Welsh truck drivers, who decided to make a test - if we speak English, they'll take us :) We did, so we had a chance to talk with two middle-aged Welsh guys, one of them being a Gypsy, which was also interesting, the other speaking with such an accent, that we had problems to understand it... Anyway, they were really really nice and helpful and they took us all the way to the station close to Burgos, the same, were we met the Brasilian guy 3 weeks earlier.

From there, a nice though not very talkative Polish driver took us all the way to the Dutch-German border, stopping for a night in France and Belgium. Talking with him and other drivers that we met on the stations, we found out that our country has been completely turned upside down in just 2 months... The government doesn't really exist, everything has changed... Wow, they didn't waste their time...

So we were at the border, in Venlo, almost home, but it was Saturday and our driver had to make a break till Monday. Staying there for the whole weekend didn't seem good, we were so close... Fortunately we convinced a Polish couple driving in a caravan to take us home. It was a really nice experience and they gave us so much tea and coffee that we almost pissed our pants on the motorway... After some time we felt like friends and the girl told us the story of her life, it was really heart-breaking, but I don't think I can write it here...

They took us to a gas station in Poland just over the border and they had to go to sleep. We didn't know what to do, but we saw that there were a lot of cars stopping there all the time so we asked people if they can take us to Wroclaw or Poznan. One guy agreed but unfortunately it turned out that he was just passing Poznan and he left us on the motorway close to the city. It was 6 a.m. and we didn't know what to do, so we walked 7 km trying to get anywhere. Finally a guy from the motorway service stopped to tell us that we can't walk on the motorway and he was so nice that he took us to the next bus station and told us how to get to the centre. There we took a train and around 11 a.m. we were in Wroclaw....

We spent the last week meeting friends and visiting all our three homes - Piotrek's family home in Wroclaw, University Campus in Gdansk (where we don't have any room now but being in the same local shop and the same library as before really felt like home...) and now we're in my hometown in Ustka...

Still the travel is not finished, cause on Sunday we're going to Copenhagen for our 4-month studies... We hope we can find a new home there, but as far as now we don't have any place to stay there...

One guy contacted us and for three days we were so happy that we were going to have a nice and affordable room in the centre of Copenhagen, but yesterday it turned out that the flat doesn't exist and he just wanted us to send him money... We didn't do it and that's the only positive thing in the whole situation, but now we're a bit depressed and can't really enjoy being at home...........

Sevilla

We're already in sevilla, we came here yesterday... The city is beautiful, but we can't realy focus on it, as it's sooo hot and finally also I have diarrhea :((( We'll try to get to Granada today, we'll see if we're lucky.... Heniek has already left to Poland, so we have to find how to get back :((

Ecotopia

So, our holidays are almost finished! :(( We're still at Ecotopia, in Aljezur, but tomorrow we'll probably leave and try to get to Sevilla. Then if we're lucky we'll be on Friday in Madrid. Initially we planned to stay in Portugal till Sunday, that is, when the camp finishes, but yesterday we decided to leave. Not because of the camp, cause it's great, but we contacted Heniek, a driver, who took us from Madrid to Poland two years ago, and luckily, he's right now again in the Spanish capital! We don't want to miss this opportunity, as he may take us home very quickly, so we'll try to find him before he leaves. We'll see if we manage...

Anyway, the camp has been a really great place to relax, make friends and learn a lot. Even watching how the community resolves conflicts made me understand a lot. There have been a lot of workshops - some more and some less interesting, however the most serious enemy was actually the sun, which made us both soooo lazy, that we didn't really attend many of the workshops :(( Now I understand why people from here are known for "manana!". Even going to the seaside (around 7-8 km) was difficult, and we always told ourselves we would do it tomorrow... Finally we went there today, as there was no possibility of saying "tomorrow!" :)))

The ocean here is incredibly cold, you can freeze in it, but the view, the plants and rocks are just marvelous! When we get back home, I'll try to upload some pictures from there... Maybe we'll even be in Wroclaw in one week... That would be great cause it's quite a log way actually... Then we'll try to "round the trip up", write to the people we've met an so on... If the way back takes to much time, it might not be possible, as on the first of September we should already be in Denmark :)) Yuppie! We're going to study there for 4 months, it's gonna be great!

So today is our last evening here and the last dinner, I can't wait, cause the food here is Soooo delicious! Unfortunately it's also full of beans and cabbage so half of the camp has problems with gases and the other half with diarrhea ;))) Anyway, I'm sure we'll miss it and we'll long till the next ecotopia, which is going to be in Turkey!!!

Spain and Portugal :))

So we're already at Ecotopia!! Hurray! the first part of our journey (that is, getting there) is finished - and we were very lucky in the end. In San Sebastian when we were walking in the evening with our luggage (after spending some time at the beach, listening to Spanish blues and relaxing a bit), some girls invited us to their flat. It was great cause we didn't really know where to sleep and thanks to them we could relax on the sofa in the flat with at least 6 other more people - it was a funny experience, especially that we could communicate only with one girl and it was in our poor German ;))

In the morning the weather was much colder then we thought it would be, so we decided not to leave immediately, but enjoy the city for some more time. We had some nice time discovering the old part of it and around 6p.m. we went to the place that we thought would be good for hitchhiking. We had seen it only at the map, so we were a bit disappointed when we actually got there and saw that we could stand only at a pedestrian crossing, but after 10-15 minutes a nice Basque guy took us from there, so we had nothing to complain about :)) The guy took us to a gas station nearby an there we met a Polish truck river who took us to another station close to Burgos. It was already late so we slept there and in the morning woke up quite early only to discover that it was terribly cold! We put all our clothes on us, but we would have really frozen if a Brazilian hadn't taken us from there after some time. He was a very helpful and friendly person he invited us home and we talked for hours on the road, even though he spoke only Portuguese :))) Actually, form time to time it got a bit strange, cause a conversation like this needs a lot of effort and good will, and especially when there was a problem with tires and we had to spend 4 hours waiting for assistance, we got a bit impatient and tired. The driver tried really to speak comprehensibly and he used a lot of body language, so we also learned some Portuguese thanks to him, but we really couldn't understand where he intended to sleep and so on. So we ended up watching Portuguease soap operas at night in a gas station and then sleeping in his car, before he took us home in the morning and made made a really delicious brunch for us. In the afternoon we took a train to Lisboa (Ah! We were already in Portugal, around 50 km from the capital) and spend another sightseeing night there ;) The place is just marvellous, one oof the best places we've seen! Anyway, in the morning we took a boat to the other side of the river, but we made a mistake and went to a place very far away from any gas station, even there we were lucky, cause another guy took us from there directly to Aljezur!!!!! (we convinced him that its a nice place and it really is!) Have to finish now, anyway its great!



THe next day