I made it back to Serbia for the third time on this trip! This time to Subotica. Tomorrow or today I will meet my crazy french guy and go to Romania.
My drivers from Berlin to Bremen on to Praha and here have almost all been halfway madmen, or maybe they are just the ones who really stand out in my memory (yes my memory is this bad).
It took me 8 hours to get from Berlin to Bremen, mostly because I had only lifts with trucks, except the last one from the ausfarht to Bremen city. The first guy just took me one service station further but gave me a lot of orange lemonade for the trip. The next polish guy started cool. But soon he and another truck turned of the autobahn, because of polce controls. Yes indeed dodgy! We ended up driving around this small town, Brandenburg I think, for the most of an hour before we headed the right direction again. My price for this excursion was to see some random Hollywood romcom with the infamous polish voiceover: ONE guz reading the manuscript up over the voices of Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler! Thenext polish truck is a nice guy, but as trucks rarely drive you down the autobahn he put me of 700 m after the ausfarht at a p-place. And then I had to walk in the dark next to the autobahn. Luckily I had my flashlight (with a phone that doesn't work) to see where I was going and making me a bit more visible to the cars on the other side.
From Bremen to Praha it took me 15 hours from walking out Julianes door and through Clabbes. The "highlights" of this trip was an old dutch man who didn't go to Magdeburg as he said but 100 km north in some small village. He put me of literally in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold. I didn't even get to prepare myself for standing there for days and hours before a nice guy picked my up - it took 30 seconds! Then the next character turned up and drove me 80 km too far south - resulting in my longest waiting period in cold and windy Germany. A lot of people stopped, but everybody was going to Berlin and my direction was Dresden which is a bit out of the way. But after three hours of freezing, dancing and singing I forced my way into a car. And accidentaly made him drive the big Dresden detour. He didn't mind it that much, because 50-100 kms on a 1400 tour isn't really a big difference. And the best guy for last of course: An amrican man of Swedish, Scottish and German descent with conspiracy theories about EVERTHING! I never had such a flimsy conversation with a person who actually spoke english. He just changed the subject all the time, from dead friends, his children (rarely), political and economic concpiracys against him, his friends and the world!
From Praha to Subotica a had to main crazys: both putting me of in the middle of the freaking motorway! The first put me of at and intersection where people went slow enogh to stop, but the second guy who stopped and picked me up there, just put me in the middle of nothing! Luckily the motorway was pretty empty (I even went out and kicked a dead bird of the street) so I could walk towards the border in peace. I actually got picked up here, but by the police. The police stopped just as I was leaving the road to go pee. The told me very seriously that I was not supposed to be there and I told them that I knew put my driver was an arsehole. And made them realise that they actually had to take me to the border otherwise I would stay there for a bit longer. They didn't really want to take me but they luckily had no choice - so I got to see police doing actual work and do 180 (the driver really hated having me there)!
I lost my newly bought pepper spray as I made it to the countries where I need it the most. Which takes me to an observation, not yet scientific but nonetheless: for more than two month I have traveled with no (wedding-)ring, and had to say no to a lot of men around. But the last two weeks I have worn a gold ring on my left ringfinger, and the effect is shocking - almost no proposals. They will never disappear but from almost every ride to one in four or less!!
