Day 1 - We're Setting Off!

Date: 26th of June 2015

Route: Cracow – Budapest

Vehicles hitchhiked: 3

Despite our great plans to hit the road earlier, and have a better chance of coming to Budapest before nightfall, we began hitchhiking around 11 a.m. We were standing on a bus stop near Zakopiańska Street, holding our backpacks, a sleeping bag, and a bag full of food reserves (which we had bought earlier in the morning).

After only about half an hour of waiting there, a geology student stopped next to us. He drove us to Pcim, and left us on a slip road leading to a motorway towards Slovakia.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a kind of a dangerous place for cars to stop, so people didn't feel like pulling over there. We spent more than an hour in that place... At some point Maia apparently started to be bored, since she climbed a high barrier next to the road, and stood on it.

Nevertheless, the wait was worth it, because we covered a long distance with a driver who eventually pulled over (a friendly IT student) – he drove us all the way to the Poland-Slovakia border.

When we were standing on a petrol station in Chyżne, where he left us, it dawned on us that it was pretty late, and we still had to cross the whole Slovakia, and then, if we were fortunate enough, hitchhike from Šahy (a town on the Slovakia-Hungary border) directly to Budapest.

Sadly, none of the drivers who were filling tanks agreed to take us... I started losing hope, and getting used to the thought that we would have to sleep that day somewhere in the bushes, next to a road...

One of the drivers who helped us

Suddenly, we heard a man calling us and inviting us to his car. It was a miracle, I couldn't believe in our luck – he was heading directly to Budapest!

I was told later that the man had refused when Maia had asked him to help us before. Most probably, he had been observing us then, while we had been asking other people for a lift without success; then he had consulted the matter with his family, and they had consented to help us in the end.

We travelled in a car with the man and his wife, following the rest of their family who was driving in the other car. The journey was pretty slow, since it was impossible to drive more than 80 kph most of the time.

When we finally reached Budapest, it was around 7 p.m. We walked to a shopping mall, changed 50 PLN to Hungarian forints (HUF), and went by bus to meet with our first couchsurfing host on this trip – Etelka.

On the way to our host's house

When we arrived at the gate of a small cottage house with a big garden, we were greeted by a friendly pointer named Dió (“Walnut” in Hungarian). We felt at home immediately :-)

Nevertheless, we were pretty exhausted, and it was already quite late, so I went to sleep just after chatting for a short while (and drinking a cup of delicious rice milk, prepared by Etelka and her boyfriend). Maia felt stiff after sitting in cars for a long time, so she chose to train a little bit of yoga before joining me.

Before I went to sleep it dawned on me – so we really arrived in Budapest!

It was an amazing day. But it was just the beginning of our adventures...