Hitching home from Helsinki? Sure, why not – having been around far too many people for whom it’s a lifestyle, and bursted out more than my share of CO2 into the skies over the past few years, it was about time to make amends and feel the culture of my friends. I’ve done a fair bit of reckless wandering about (at least compared to my boys and girls next door up north) but somehow hitchhiking as a form of transportation had mostly slipped my radar so far.
You see, I wasn’t exactly built for it. Some have said I’m just making excuses. But there’s something to be said of a culture where smalltalk is a skill so neglected that businessmen have to take courses on it, before venturing elsewhere to make their deals. And of a land where space and darkness, as the predominant defaults, distance people from each other. And of some personal qualities I’ve striven to overcome over the years. Hitting the road with your wits and your mouth as your only currency forward was definitely not in the cards for my kind. I was not light-hearted to take on this journey, not even after the many stories shared by friends over dinners the past year, and had it not been for serendipitously perfect matching of time, intended destinations and generous tutoring offer by one of them, I would not have.
We are the first in line a line of hitchhikers starting to queue up by the roadside, past the bus stop our friend-host & Estonian hitching goddess has dropped us on in Tartu, Estonia on her way to mushroom-picking weekend with friends. I hop on the front seat, “the seat of fear”* as they say up north, ready to start my pan-European trail, the “Hitchhiking for Dummies” course. With innate awkwardness, I start reaching out of my comfort zone, talking to this random stranger kind enough to pick us up.
Where are you going? Why are you going there? Have you hitchhiked before? How is it to hitchhike in this country? Where do you go for holidays? Do you have children? What do you do? Simple enough (for anyone else?) to come up with the questions and threads of conversation to amiably pass our road-time together, to pay back in company the risk, effort, obligation they stopped for us for. But for me, an uphill battle, for once being forced to reach out, let in, day in and day out these people – for otherwise the road ends right there. Tell our stories again and again, until my partner’s ones are worn out in my ears, and vice versa I suppose – but it’s all new to the driver so better share anyway.
At times, it’s almost a relief to only have a few words in common, in broken German and traces of half a dozen other languages shared between us. Relief to be lost in translation so thoughts don’t need to be transferred, and you have your little head-space while gazing out the window.
And so it goes. Roads, standing by, waiting, apologetic hand signals, smiling, not smiling, tent, this country is closed for beers, why stop here when lift goes there, last of summer sun, nature provides by the roadside, peanuts and apples and too much chocolate, sleeping inside is for sissies, gas stations are a lifeline, blisters in the morning rain, detours for a better spot, free lunch, hosted by stranger friends of friend, hippie houses north and west, the Dutch jeep, Tom Thumb, and finally a mate-sipping guardian angel for the road home.
