20.07.

In the same day we passed almost whole France. French people are really polite and they really always want to help. What’s more is easy to hitchhike in France, the only thing is that we don’t speak French, and French people generally don’t speak English (there are some exceptions of course)…so unfortunately we couldn’t have conversation which is one of the most important factor in hitchhiking.

The sun was already setting  and we were 150 km to Irun. One car left us in some big petrol station and we started to find another car, we were thinking that maybe the same day we would be in Spain.  Suddenly one woman came to us and asked if we need a lift! It was second situation like that the same day! Ana was French and she was in the way back to home in Dux with his daughter from holiday. It was really nice to talk with she and her teenage daughter. We were quite close to Dux when the thunderstorm cameL But of course two women didn’t let us without any help:  they invited us to their house. We made some pasta, drunk some French wine and took a shower which was a miracle especially for meJ It’s so amazing meet people like Ana! !

After this four days in Amsterdam , our direction was Spain and the city near to the border with France – Irún.  We got to one petrol station which was recommended by hitchwiki. The nice thing in Holland is that they have special spots for hitchhikers, completely legal and comfortable. The petrol station wasn’t the place like that but I think that’s worth to mention:-) At the same second when we came to gas station some guy asked us if we need a lift…Holland is definitely good place for hitchhikers! The name of our next “driver” was Andre and he is a photographer, by the way, really good one. He has  even taken some photos of Hollywood starsJ You can take a look!! I really recommended it!

http://www.andrebakker.com/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=4:faces-in-stone&Itemid=60

Amsterdam

16.07.2013

Finally, we got to Amsterdam. There the friend of us was making some Erasmus traineeship so he gave us a place to sleep and nice company.  We spent  there four days. The nicest part was just walking  in the center and admire all old architecture, old canals and of course Rosse Buurt. It’s funny to see how Amsterdam is different from all cities in Europe. I refer here to legalization of marihuana, prostitution or monument of homosexual etc. There it seems  to be so natural that you think about all of those things when you get out from that city not when you are there. The only thing is that Amsterdam is full of foreigners so it’s another international capital in Europe.

15.07/16.07

As I mentioned we were invited to Martin’s and Reina’s house. Martin was a painter (he can paint the walls and paintings as well) so the house was really colorful, full of painting, photos etc. Reina is fashion designer but she designs more clothes for theaters . They have got four sons. One of them write really nice poems and he read some of them for us, next one has got incredibly good level of English so he has won a lot of competitions in English, then another boy is a pianist and the little one is only 8 so we don’t know anything about his talent so far;-) The father of Reina used to invite hitchhikers to their house so she keep this tradition. We talked with them almost all night, about everything.  Luke talked about his travel, Martin about situation in Holland (one funny thing  which he says was about living in Holland: in his opinion it’s really comfortable living in rich country because he can find a lot of things even near to dumpsters, almost all furniture he found on the street). WE also talked about Polish in Poland because you can hear a lot of different opinions about us;-) They also prepared meal for all of us which wasn’t so easy with six boys in that group. It was really nice to meet with them and thanks to facebook we still keep some contactJ

We spend one hour more in the same gas station. Me and Sebastian decided to ask people for a lift, Luke decided to stay with cartoon. We spent maybe one hour more asking people when one Dutch family rescued us:-) There on the way to home from Gdansk so their car was full of Polish bear, Coca cola which is much more cheap in Poland then in Holland as well. Their car was an old van  where everybody could seat very comfortable: kids (two boys, one of them was family’s friend) had mattress in the back, their dog could even run, we had a lot of place even with our backpacks. They made extremely good first impression. We started to talk as always and when we pulled out we saw Luke standing with his cartoon. We said to Reina ad Martin (our drivers) that Luke  had came back from China to Europe and they decided immediately to turn back and take him as well. Martin and Reina were going to the city around 100 km to Amsterdam. It was quite late when they took us from the gas station so they invited us to their house which was incredibly amazing place but I will write a little more about this in my next post :-)