Go hitchhiking! – Ewelina Wasacz

Thinking of hitchhiking used to give me the images of smiley, hippie styled people standing off the road effortlessly trying to stop a hippsterish car to get them to their happy destination.  Not anymore.  Instead I see tired, shabby people with undefined face expression desperately trying to get anywhere near their destination point before it gets really dark and dodgy around.  Still, once you’ve tried hitchhiking you fall in love with it and you want to do more and more crazy trips to some amazing places that you would never consider worth visiting.

My hitchhiking trip around Romania, Serbia and Hungary was partly a spine-chilling experience but also full of nice surprises, funny moments and a lot of laughter.
The start of the trip wasn’t as we expected it to be (which is usually the case when you travel) and after 2 hours of trying to stop a car we got on a bus that took us straight to Arad where we spent a night, chilling out with some other volunteers and having very little sleep.  In the morning the six brave volunteers:  Ewelina, Paulina, Goncalo, Julius, Johanna and Christina left the friendly city of Arad to conquer a lovely town near Serbian border – Timişoara.  We had a pleasant walk around the city centre which took far too much time and as a consequence we got to the exit of the city far too late. However with a little bit of luck and courage we got to the border. Then we got stuck at the border and we really thought that we were going to spend a night in the corn fields but a last minute miracle happened and we got a lift almost to Belgrade. Almost means that we had to take a taxi to the city centre which cost us a fortune.  Once we got there, exhausted and hungry we started eating carrots in one of the parks and then all new and energised we danced salsa in the street.  We loved the city though and have heads full of beautiful memories from there. Other adventures we had after we left Belgrade for Hungary include driving  a Mercedes through the Hungarian border at 1 o’clock in the morning, being lost in the middle of nowhere, taking part in flower festival, having a ride in a retro car from 1940’s and playing on a slack line in some else’s garden. We couldn’t complain about lack of fun and adrenaline rushing through our veins, could we? Don’t get lazy dear volunteers, go hitchhiking!

By Ewelina Wasacz