We’re hitchhiking from Poland to India. On our way we get to meet a lot of beautiful and positive drivers who shares a tiny part of their lives with us.
In this video, we meet Sega, a Romanian who is currently writing a book about his journey to India.. He took us from Brasov to Bucharest.
Thank you again Sega!
No matter if you like hitchhiking or not, there are other ways of authentic meetings, while finding a place to stay the night at the same time! Hostels are nice, but the people you’ll meet are usually backpackers with as little knowledge about the place as yourself. This is why Couchsurfing rocks!
The CS network is worldwide and extremely popular. Signing up is free but donations are always welcome to keep the organization going. The community also serves locals , and in many cities meetings are held every week.
There are other exchange networks similar to CS (for example BeWelcome, Hospitality Club), though CS is currently the biggest one in the world.
Renting a room never gives the same experience as staying with people in their home.What you give in exchange is for most people something more valuable than money. You share yourself with them! Your hosts are not depending on you to make their living, they have chosen to meet you because they want to. They will still go to work, make dinner, go out, see their friends etc, even with you sleeping on their couch.
We’ve had great meetings with our hosts in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania and are looking forward to host travelers ourselves when we’ll have a place to invite them to! (We just can’t fit more people in the tent at the moment :) ).
In Poland our host Jarema brought us to one restaurant, one pub, and one teahouse – all of them places that we’d never found without him. But most importantly: We would probably not have found such a open minded person if it wasn’t for CS!
In Slovakia, Martina brought us to a wine festival that we had never even heard of. Through her we met plenty of people in our own age living in Bratislava.
In Hungary we got a private guide tour through the capital with Joacim, who showed us his favorite places in one night.
In Romania, Andra taught us how to make pottery, told us plenty of things about Romanian history and modern culture, and Razvan showed us how to become better photographers. No hotel receptionist ever did anything like this, no matter how service minded and friendly they have been.
We have been invited to stay with complete strangers as well, and it has been a pleasure. But we cannot walk around hoping for them to pop up around the corner asking us to come to their place. Through CouchSufring we can contact people in advance, read about them, see their references and find out if it is a good and interesting match for us.
CouchSurfing gives an authentic travel experience!
Read more about authentic traveling:
Being a hitchhiker in nature stunning Romania is fantastic, though there is competition! We’ve sometimes been ten people or more at the same spot, from young teenagers to 80 year old ladies looking for a ride. And we have to admit, we’ve not always been as quick as our elders!
Music sample between Lugoj and Deva (perfect soundtrack to the text):
One of our drivers, Mr Daniel from Jehova’s Witnesses, confirmed the reasons why hitchhiking is so common in Romania. Since the petrol prices have gone up dramatically, it’s really expensive to drive here and hitchhikers sometimes shares the cost by paying the driver for the ride. We are very impressed by the hitchhiking system!
The first two nights we spent in the second largest city Timisoara, near the Serbian border. Here we begun with a funny experience showing a bit of Romanian corruption, as we came across a bus conductor after being told by the driver that we could pass without buying tickets.
Hallelujah, the bargain has begun! :)
We recharged ourselves a bit in this beautiful city full of Romanian character and nice cafés with good opening hours.
Then, it was time for Transylvania! We had plenty of interesting conversations along our way since we could rarely speak English to our drivers. Luckily the Romanian language is Latin related and similar to Italian and Spanish which made it easier for us to pick up.
Passing a village on our way to Brasov.
Present on it’s way to one of our donators!
Our three night in the amazing city of Brasov was happily spent in a great hostel – camping would have been a disaster since we woke up with SNOW outside the window! This was surprising to us even though it was freezing. We kind of thought going south would make it warmer…!
Brasov feels very dramatic, located between the high mountain peaks of the Charpatians. No wonder the city has a reputation of being the home of Dracula! The old castles in the area is the most popular tourist attraction, and during winter you can go skiing here.
We happened to find as much as 5 friends from Sweden staying in the city at the same time and had a nice hang out with them.
Lots of credits to the Chicken Dancers who broke a new record though is was freezing in the rain! You guys are strong!
To Bucharest we got driven by Sega, a former director in advertisement who had spent a year in India and the countries around. He is currently working on a novel about this journey and inspired us a lot!
We felt very welcome in Bucharest with our CouchSurfing hosts Andra and Razvan. Andra taught us some pottery, something that she’d been doing since the age of 10. It was amazing and really great fun. She also made us Polenta with a Romanian twist: plenty of eggs, cheese and cream! Mmm! Razvan took time from work though he was very busy at the moment to come see us both nights and also coached us a bit in photography. They are also working on something that we believe will turn out to become a great resource for tourists visiting Romania: AboutRo.com – An online travel guide to Romania!
Thank you so much for a lovely time in your home, friends!
When arriving in the capital city we didn’t really expect much since we’d heard it wasn’t suppose to be very nice, though we found it calm and beautiful with wide open spaces and big boulevards. Eating and drinking is more expensive than elsewhere in Romania, but there are many nice spots for this.
The Romanian streets are full of small bakeries. Almost everyone in Bucharest was eating on a kringle and the smell of freshly baked bread was surrounding us everywhere. The queue to this particular bakery (Cafetaria Georgi) never seemed to end!
We met a broker (a person who deals with stocks) who claimed that the Philippines is very dangerous for white people. He had spent his vacation there, even though he’d heard that “they kill people for 10 bucks”. He had not faced any situations personally but he warned us about it. Anywhere we go, people seem to be afraid of something that is ahead of us.
Romania hasn’t been any more dangerous than any of the previous countries, even though almost every Polish person warned us about this “very poor and desperate” country. Interesting!
Just like somebody said to us:
“Romania is something in between Europe and Asia. The young generation has a European way of thinking while they are still in the old world.”
Mulţumiri foarte mult / Thank you very much
Nico and Cata, who drove us from the border to Timisoara
Alex and Isabela, who got us hooked on Romanian music!
Nico, who filled his car with hitchhikers, including us!
Mr Daniel and Ramona, who taught us more about their lives as members of Jehova’s witnesses
Cici, who drove us a fair bit closer to Brasov!
Pop Florin, who drove us to Brasov, and thanks to his wife who joined us over the phone
Sega, who had spent a year in India and around and really inspired us
Andra and Razvan, who were the greatest host one could hope for, taught us pottery, photography and opened up their home!
Bogdan, who picked us up before we even started looking for a ride and drove us from Bucharest to Giurgiu
Thank you all for showing us Romania!
Do you want the most unique experiences when you travel?
Here’s the key: Stand by the road and stick your thumb out.
Plenty of travelers all over the world are searching for the “authentic moment”. They bring their guidebook when they take off to meet with the origin tribes living in the jungle, with the ideal scenario that no one else ever went there. Though the regular truth is there are no native, unexplored tribes listed in Lonely Planet.
Neither are there many places in the world where you’re far away from electricity or even from the Internet. Still, many people picture this as very exotic and romantic.
Searching for “the authentic” is usually the least authentic experience you’ll ever get!
Hitchhiking has exclusive features that are not comparable with any other sort of transportation. It is not always the most comfortable way, but there are different thing that makes the life of a hitchhiker very rich.
The value of the meetings taking place on the road is special. You feel a big respect for the people that pick you up. You take part of their real daily life. They would have driven down that road no matter if you were there or not, compared to any commercial business built up for tourists.
And, it’s for free.
So what is to prefer: Paying a masai family to show you how they “make traditional fire”, or actually meeting people in their own action?
Hitchhiking – Very authentic!
Read more about authentic traveling:
GPS data visualized
We’ve been on the road for a month now.
Here is this months (September/October 2010) statistics:
Movement
The Chicken Dance
Accommodation
Blog activity
Finances
We believe in full transparency, so you can expect to see a summary like this every month.
We can’t say anything else than that it’s been a huge success so far!
Many people have emailed us just to say that they feel very inspired, and that’s why were doing this.
We’re extremely passionate about this project.
This blog is not fully reader-supported yet (financially), but that’s what we’re working towards.
We believe that this project will be able to support itself in a few months.
Help us get there by donating today!
Thank you for reading, supporting and participating in our adventure.
Your engagement means a lot to us.
Love,
Robin and Amanda.