Europe is not such a big city afterall…

I’ve left buddy Nemere in Heroes Market (a place in Budapest dedicated to popular Heroes TV series) and then started crossing Budapest on foot, towards Vienna exit. Luckily, on my way I got the chance to cut some corners by getting on the old Budapest subway (Dabi said it’s the second in Europe ever built). Got off at one side of the Donau river and got on the other over Erzsébet Hid (bridge), from which I made my way to a gas station somewhere in the Budapest periphery. I got picked up by David Molnar, a funky DJ, that graduated the University of Fine Arts from Budapest. He was headed to Györ, where he was gonna stay for 9 days, at a music festival. Which I regret I couldn’t “attend”. It’s suppose to be the place for a lot of constructive alcoholic activity and joy. However, getting wasted isn’t quite the best idea so early in my trip.I got to the furthest end of Györ, where I almost got soaked, when rain started pouring like there was no tomorrow. And I would be long heading back by now and my nice Mac waiting in front of Computer Heaven Gates (Bill), if it weren’t for my brother‘s rain-thinggie, which I picked in the last minute when I left Cluj.

A nice gentleman that spoke no known language picked me from a bus station outside Györ and took me to what I thought would be 1 km away from the former Austro-Hungarian border. Turns out “tiz” is 10 in Hungarian. So there I was, on the auto-bahn, at 6 in the evening, breaking my own “reach any city before 3 a.m.” rule.

And that’s when I realized: hitchhiking is much like sports…

About 2 hours into my training, after about 50 Romanian cars passed me without a blink, Petre The Truck Driver, from Maramureș, picked me up. Considering it was still raining, I gave up Vienna and gonna keep Petre company heading for Bruxelles, where we might arrive by the 25th (it was 26th by that time and I was actually beginning to miss pointing stuff to cars), maybe in the night. He is taking couches to the UK, where, I gotta admit, is pretty tempting to head, because I can visit Păstaie’s mom (Păstaie being an ex-girlfriend and her mother being a great ex-future mother-in-law) and another friend studying there. From there I could “do” Europe heading from West to East, so towards Romania, in case anything happens along the way. It would be easier than zig-zagging Europe to West and then back.

[By the end of the ride with the truck, I settled for Bruxelles and I’ll call Petre next week to see the situation with the ferry and crossing to the U.K. independently.]

Biggest accomplishment of this whole thing is that my mom and dad started learning how to send short text message on phones. However, now they can’t stop.Durring my ride in the truck I’ve learned a lot of interesting stuff I’m never gonna use, like that there’s no truck that can have a consumption of less than 25-27l/100km, with zero charge. And if you start charging it, you add half a liter of consumption per every tone you put on the truck. So there’s no way that mother-fucker bragging on the station next to Linz could bring the consumption down to 30/100 with 20 t carriage. No way! … Or at least that’s what Petre said. He himself went as low as 32-35 with only 6 t aboard.

Petre knows the roads. He only uses a GPS device because he’s usually alone in the cabin and this way he can argue with someone. But he does believe that hackers and “those whise-guys” that spend their lives online should use at least a small amount of their time to update maps. Petre used to work in church restauration somewhere around the village my dad was born and grew up in – Hida. Hida is a kind of universal center of civilization. Everywhere I’ve been I found someone from there. Petre was just telling me what a good disco they had back there. About when he used to fill his truck with people and head to the party, drunk-wasted. When police stopped him for his license and registration, he liked to reply that he doesn’t carry those around that late at night and in such conditions…

Alrighty then. We stopped in a truck-park some dozens of km out of Regensburg and slept from 4 a.m. to about 12:00 in the afternoon, when we had a little truck lunch prepared. We are now back on our way to Bruxelles, around which truck circulation will be shut down for the day on Sunday. Petre says he wants to reach Calais, France, where he needs to take the ferry to the UK. I’m considering whether or not to go along with him (as opposite to stopping in Bruxelles). I guess I’ll decide that sometime today.

I think I’m gonna start making notes of what I miss along the way everyday, because it’s beginning to shape into a pretty interesting list. So, last night I missed Călin’s guitar singing and Raluca’s ass (both from work; but in different fantasies; I don’t know, it must be the truck). And one of the biggest surprises of this trip is that I haven’t lost my pen yet. Usually I lose it from one line to another.

***

Arpi be my best buddy from work. He sent this.

[hát, ce monitor ne-am tras, dragă…]

I am now with Diana and her husband, at their place near Bruxelles. Diana is an old AEGEE member from Cluj-Napoca and she met Nicola in the board of the organization. I’ll be checking out the Capital tomorrow and most likely conquer The Netherlands afterwards, in Utrech first (with Mihaela Tunaru, who offered to host me after reading about my trip) and on my way back South, maybe Breda, visiting my ex philosophy teacher, that works there. In constructions is my best bet.

***

[Later edit] I’ve arrived in Utrecht, in The Netherlands, at my hosts Mihaela and Lucian. I’ve also got another contact opportunity from a reader, Mihai (besides probably visiting my ex philosophy teacher, like I said). Dutch people are celebrating their Queen, so it should be pretty fun these days. Someone told me that people dress in orange and get wasted. So that’s pretty aristocratic. I’m in for that.

I’ll be publishing the new article and some pics and footage in the morning or the afternoon, depending on when I wake up, it’s the middle of the night here and I’m so tired I could sleep a horse, as my brother used to say. It’s been a full day from Belgium to here.