New site!

It slipped my mind that I've swapped over to wordpress recently, so if you've been checking this site I do apologize for not announcing it. You can catch me over at the new site from now onwards.

https://putlifeonhold.wordpress.com/

Yikes, they've got...bikes?

I've been out of touch for a while, not because nothing has happened but because I've barely had reception and I've been rather busy. The past couple of days I've been helping around a lovely little farm north of Inverness, run by an older couple, in exchange for a roof and some food. We've cleaned out a trailer full of cow dung, spent some time on a project of mine and just had a lovely time talking and getting to know each other. It's been a fantastic few days and I sincerely hope to visit again. Now, for the big reveal.

A few days ago in Aviemore, Jacco picked up an old bicycle for £20. We fixed it up and got it running but were stuck with one bike and two riders. For us, £20 is about two to three week's food, and good food by our standards. Predictably, buyer's remorse popped up its head and we went to set up camp feeling depressed and angry at our foolish waste of what little funds we had. It struck me that we were down because we had planned around something we couldn't quite control or managed, and when it fell through it took us down with it. I had a can of condensed milk, finished my book and realized we were being silly. So I set about formulating a plan we could easily follow and control - hitchhike to Inverness, and either fix up a bike there or hitchhike onwards.

So, dismayed but not defeated and somewhat optimistic, we stored our 'new' bike at the youth hostel, promised to come back for it, and hitchhiked to Inverness. There, Lady Luck smiled on us and we found a battered but repairable frame at the junkyard. The next day, we got a back wheel and tires for £5 and set about fixing it up. It worked, sort of.

The back wheel was not aligned properly, the back brake couldn't connect, the chain slipped constantly, the gears didn't work - but it could go forward, which was good enough for us. Now, we had to get our other bike to where we were, and were faced with the issue of one tent between two people in a rainy country. After a few hours of looking for work and then a bed just north of the city (its really a town but was given the title of city - but really, its barely even a town), I came across a lovely couple willing to give me a bed until Jacco returned with his bike from Aviemore, in exchange for some help around  the farm and house.

My bike still needed fixing, so they, along eith their nephew, helped me fix the saddle, realign the wheel, attach the back brake and set the gears up so the front three heavy ones work. Now, my mountain bike is running somewhat decently, and I know how to fix the rear gears the next time I'm at a workshop. It wobbles and squeals but it runs.

I had my first strawberry. More on that later.

Here I am, several days later, with food in my belly and having showered, with a working bike and possible work later on. The plan: cycle to Loch Ness and find the mythical creature. Also possibly cycle up to Skye. After that, I'll probably settle somewhere. Possibly. Maybe.

Last but not least, the blog will be moving to a new address soon, I'm setting up a proper site for it to allow me to post things in a more efficient way and share experiences on the go instead of having to go through the entire editing process manually on a smartphone. Don't worry, I'll let you know exactly when and where it will be.

A most wonderful day

Advanced hitchhiking techniques, as displayed by my esteemed colleague. It's not relevant but amusing.

After five lovely days of sunshine in the UK, the rain finally caught up with us sometime in the night. We were dry and warm, so we closed up the tent and went back to sleep. Come morning, we realized that not only were the ends of our sleeping bags soaked so were  most of our stuff, including our backpacks. The tent works perfectly in dry and wet weather, we simply didn't prepare it properly. It was still raining when we set off to hike for the day, so we decided to warm up a bit inside a buffet restaurant.

When we were a bit drier and not as soaked, we headed out into the rain again to make breakfast under an umbrella (making your own food in a restaurant is considered bad sport).

An Irish woman shared our little respite from the rain, and we struck up conversation. She was really impressed with our journey, and when we told her about traveling with no money, she promptly bought us breakfast and coffee. Both were bottomless, so we stuffed ourselves with a lot of eggs, bacon and sausages. The spot we were hiking from was terrible, so we set out to find a place to dry a bit on the way to the next roundabout. In a church, after chatting with a few people, we were discreetly handed £10 by a Brittish gentleman with Dutch grandkids, and told to get some warm grub.

Two hours later we got our first ride of the day, at 3pm. A lovely couple drove us closer to Scotland, showed us a castle were scenes from Harry Potter was filmed, photos of other castles, then drove out of their way to drop us off in Berwick. We parted ways, they gave us free McDonald's coffee vouchers and £10 each to buy some food.

Instead of hiking onwards to Edinburgh, we went to a nearby farm and asked to sleep the night in their barn. They offered their events venue to us instead, gave us a couple of beers and dried our socks for us.

Our only obligation was to join them for an early morning walk on the beach. And what a beach...

We walked around Berwick's fortifications, which are nearly 600 years old, had coffee with the parents of the farmers, walked with them halfway to where our backpacks were stored and listened to their stories of the town.

We made a "we have cookies" sign, messed around for a bit trying to get a ride and then caught one to Edinburgh. From soaked, miserable and grumpy to dry, well fed and in high spirits in 24 hours.

The grinning idiot on the side of the road

Five weeks ago I packed my backpack, left my family's house in Rotterdam and started hitchhiking. I had less than €10 in my bank account, and for over a month have lived off the kindness of complete strangers and friends. I have traveled nearly 8000km over central Europe, slept in bushes and forts, hitchhiked across the channel to the United Kingdom and walked along the French highway drunk and in the rain.

I've traveled the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, France, Spain and am currently in the United Kingdom. I've been to the cathedral in Cologne, seen Prague's old town and castle, spent a weekend playing tourist in Vienna, walked along the river ring of Bordeaux, took a Captain Morgan picture at the Eiffel Tower and slept in a fort in Dover. I've visited beautiful, relatively unknown places like St. Lunaire, traveled and stayed in several smaller and bigger cities and swam in crystal clear lakes.

I've seen (well, listened to) Mumford & Sons live in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, slept in a park in Prague with bunnies, reached 270km/h on the German Autobahn, sped out of Vienna in a convertable Mercedes with Dire Straits playing loud enough to wake up Australia, met up with people I only knew online, walked more in one day than I have in a year and learned about everything from the fall of the iron curtain to the economic downfall of Greece. I've had lifts with hippies, heads of banks, auditors, sound engineers, stay at home moms and veterinarians.

I've done all of this, spending less than €100, over thirty seven days.

A couple of days ago, my hiking partner and I arrived in Reading on my 80th lift. Eighty people were willing to stop for a complete stranger standing next to the road holding out his thumb and smiling from ear to ear like a complete lunatic, and then give him a ride somewhere. Sometimes I used a sign for a specific destination, sometimes a sign that read 20km, sometimes I just used my thumb. I have jumped trains, metros, trams and buses but have sticked to hitchhiking as my method of transportation. I ate what I could scrounge, afford or was offered (which for me is a big deal), slept where I found space or was offered a bed, and traveled wherever I wanted to.

A German frat house my friend in Wurzburg organized for me to spend a night at.

I am completely broke, unemployed, homeless and happy. It's a strange concept to explain to people, so stay a while and listen to the adventures of a shy guy that never left his room turning into the grinning idiot on the side of the road.

I've always been quiet and introverted - ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you what I'm writing here. I did not go downstairs if there were strangers in the house, I never introduced myself to new people and I have had the same core three friends since I was six years old. I've always been unwilling and uninterested in leaving the safety and calm of my room. In short, I was a complete shut in that wanted nothing to do with the world. A combination of fear, loathing and disinterest kept me from ever experiencing something new, something exciting.

Since I was very young, I have been exceptionally picky about food. It's not the taste that's important, but the texture. Anything that wasn't fairly smooth was a no-go for me - I didn't (and still don't) eat any vegetables, nor most fruit. I ate pasta with meat and ketchup - nothing but those three together. I used to have a separate section of the food my parents made that only I would eat, due to not eating anything that had anything in it aside from the main ingredient.

So how on earth did I end up hitchhiking? And what does that mean anyways? Two days before I headed out, I came across a blog by a guy named Jamie. He traveled over 23 000km in Europe for six months by hitchhiking, and inspired me to do it. To read some of the amazing things he's done, head over to Great Big Scary World.

If you're not familiar with the concept of hitchhiking, allow me to quickly explain. You stand next to a road, hold out your thumb in the universal signal of someone looking for a lift, and wait for someone to pick you up. There are tricks to getting rides faster, there are more efficient spots, but at the end of the day it all comes down to random numbers and luck. Hitchhiking is not a science, nor is it an art - I have been picked up literally on the highway in traffic that speeds by at 140km/h, and unable to catch a ride at a perfect spot. It really comes down to the people traveling along the road you're hitching on.

When I started, I had no idea what I was doing. I chose a random spot, stuck out my thumb and asked people who stopped if they we're going in the direction of Belgium. Three days and five rides later I was in western Germany, so its been a learning process. Since then I've gotten the hang of it (sort of) and managed to go in the direction I was aiming for at least.

We managed to hitchhike a ferry from Dunkirk, France, to Dover, the United Kingdom.

On average, I meet five new people every day - sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours. I spend so much time talking that I have to rest my voice every few days and drink a crazy amount of water to not lose it (around 3L a day). Most people mishear my name (Roald) as Rob, and assume it's short for Robert. After about a day, I decided to just go with it and go by Rob. I've been doing this with work for a while anyways. I like my name, but its very inconvenient.

How did I manage to do this? I left the front door and just started. It's as simple as that - there's nothing more to it, honestly. One morning I woke up feeling the same way I have been for years, worrying about the same issues and thinking of the same solutions. I was tired of it and wanted to change something dramatically, so that's exactly what I did.

Why hitchhiking? I was afraid of people; not so much in the sense of afraid of what they could do to me, but afraid of being judged and found wanting. I was tired of this fear of how the world perceived me to be, tired of being afraid of meeting strangers, tired of feeling awkward at social events because nobody wanted to talk to me (not that I wanted to talk to them either). I was also rather broke, wanted to see Europe and had no desire for starting a career.

If you're broke, where do you sleep? What do you eat? To answer the first; anywhere. I have a sleeping bag and roll, when I am done hitchhiking for the day (for whatever reason), I find a nice secluded spot and sleep there. I've slept inside a bush in Germany, underneath a tree in Bordeaux, France, in a field next to a lake in Austria, in train stations and in a fort in Dover, in the United Kingdom. This is called free-camping. Technically, its illegal in most places in Europe. I've never been asked to move nor gotten in trouble for doing so. I follow something my grandparents taught me - leave nothing but your footprints, take nothing with you but pictures and memories.

Sleeping a few hundred meters from a lake in Austria. I was wished a good night and a good morning by three different people walking past my camping spot.

I always hated and avoided camping, but for the majority of my trip so far I've slept outside underneath the stars. It's been absolutely fantastic and I've never felt so free as I do now.

To answer the second; anything I can afford, am offered or can scrounge. Whenever I can afford to do so, I buy bread and chocolate spread - I can go a long way on these two. If people offer me food, any kind of food, I take it. I've had fast food, home-cooked traditional meals and all sorts of interesting stuff so far. My motto is; never say no and try everything twice. It's been a strange and wonderful journey.

Food shopping and repacking in France. We got some weird looks.

On average, people are incredibly wasteful. If you have a look inside a few dumpsters or trashcans in the morning you'll often find enough edible food to last you the rest of the day. It sounds disgusting, right? It really isn't if you know how to do it. Jamie described it perfectly:

"...think of it like this: if you were at your friends house and they had too many yoghurts that were about to pass their expiry dates and they said, “Hey do you want these yoghurts? They are still in date, but I’m not going to be able to eat them all before they are out of date…” I am sure that you would probably take them without hesitation. Essentially when skipping for food, it is a similar procedure."

You can skip for food in different ways - checking bins before they are cleared, asking for leftovers from the previous day at bakeries or catching half-finished meals at restaurants.

My hitchhiking partner and I took a few hours in a McDonald's in Reading and tested how much food we could get from people who didn't finish their meals. In the space of two hours, we have found and eaten:

2x 500ml Coke
2x Chicken wrap
3x BigMac
Iced water
Raspberry juice
3x Fries
Chicken burger
Caramel Latte

This was all from unfinished meals. We had lunch and dinner for two simply by eating leftovers. Again, it sounds disgusting. Again, what's the difference between finishing a mate's burger and a stranger's burger? The only real danger is in diving a bin - be careful of opened packets and meat. Bread is the easiest thing to find and eat safely. I'm not an expert on this yet, but you can find a lot of information about it online with a quick google search.

I don't recognize myself anymore. I have changed so much in the last month, in so many different ways, that I'm not quite sure who I am anymore. It's not a bad thing - it's all positive change. I am quite curious what my family and friends will think of me when we meet again.

Arriving in London - err, I mean Paris.

To end off this rather long piece, I'll be writing about specific parts of my adventure from now on. All of the stories I've briefly mentioned, all of those I haven't, and everything to come. I have about two weeks of travel left, up to Scotland, before I will settle down a bit. I'm not tired of traveling, of meeting incredible people and seeing incredible places. Rather, my body and mind needs a bit of a break until I can manage another trip of this magnitude. I'll be staying in the UK after I'm done - I have no idea what I'll be doing but I've gotten this far. "Real life" should be a walk in the park compared to my journey, right. Right?

I leave you with a quote from Nelson Mandela, or Madiba as we fondly known him:

"There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

Happy traveling,
Rob 

Friends?

 

Almost a week ago I hiked back into France. I wasn't very excited to do so as my previous run had been awful. On top of that I had only just arrived in Spain and was eager to find a beach to surf. Nevertheless, off I went in the direction of Lyon to meet up with another hitchhiker. Along the way, I found a few friends.

 

Paul, from France - hiked between Pau and Montpellier

 

Ferdinand (I think), from Norway - met on the road at Sete.

 

 

A couple from Poland - hiked between Montpellier and Lyon.

 

 

A couple from the Czech Republic - met at the Dunkirk crossing.

 

 

My current partner in crime!

Still waiting on the group photo we took together outside Paris. One week, more than ten other hitchhikers.

There and back again

I've spent the last few days resting in Spain at a friend's house. Giving my body a break was a good thing, I feel refreshed, energetic and ready to hit the road. The only problem is I'm not actually moving further into Spain. I'm headed back into France, and not voluntarily.

For the winter, I'm planning to work a ski season at a resort or hotel. I wasn't aware of it until now, but an overwhelming majority of positions available requires a United Kingdom National Insurance number and bank account. On top of that, a few also require UK residency. Getting these isn't too much of an issue, I simply have to be somewhere in the UK until I'm issued my NI number and then sort my bank account. Residency isn't as simple, but we'll cross that bridge when (if) we get there.

There are two upsides to this detour. Firstly, it means I can get an extended visa for Australia, which would allow me to stay longer after my visa expires. Secondly, it means I get to see my best friend again. There's also the upside of being around English speakers for a while. (Australia? Wait, what? More on that later!)

I have no idea where I'll be staying until all of this is sorted, I'm asking around and I've got a place to crash for a while but since I have no idea how long all of this will take, I might have to work and rent a room until the season starts. Honestly, I'm sort of ok with it - being on the road this much is taxing and having a stable place for a while would be nice.

Tomorrow morning, I leave for France once more. My route will take me through Toulouse, Orleans and Paris, onto either Calais or Dunkirk for the crossing. A very scenic route, but I'm not going to sit down and explore a whole lot. Most of it will be spent highway and city hopping. This is a bit of a second chance for France, hopefully my journey is more pleasant than the one I just finished.

I haven't hitchhiked any ferries yet so I'm pretty excited to try it. After that, its into the UK and back into civilization. Or something like that.

The Three Musketeers

Originally, this post was to be titled "Let's all get rich and buy villas in the south of France." When I started writing it in my notebook, I was not having a good time. Since then, a few amazing rides and a day at the lake has changed my perspective quite a bit. Some of my original comments still hold water, so I'll start there.

 Didn't an invasion start here at some point?

France is a country that is incredible to travel if you have the funds to explore it. The trains and train stations are in excellent conditions, the tourist attractions are simply spectacular and the hotels very comfortable. It offers some of the nicest spots to have a holiday, with stunning countryside to drive through and equally stunning destinations. This is my summary of France for those of you who wish to have a holiday in the country: pay for your stay and you will absolutely love it, especially cities like Bordeaux.

I didn't take too many pictures in Bordeaux, but it was stunning.

Before I jump into the next part, allow me to say that I have found a small slice of paradise on the coast, in a small village called St. Lunaire. I did not take many pictures, this little wonderful place will remain my own. If you wish to see it, visit it personally. It is worth the trip.

No flash photography please.

If you're not someone that enjoys traditional holidays, if you're someone that, like me, demands something more from life, then France is a tricky country. I had a fairly negative experience overall in the first five days and ended it off on a very high note. I only saw a small part of France and I did not give it all the time it deserves, so keep in mind my experiences were limited.

I started outside of Calais and decided to have a mini adventure in searching for surfable beaches. The search began in Pontorson, after a long and tiring ride with a slightly racist man. My coast hopping was not to be, sadly, as French farmers on strike closed off all the major highways and left the entire country in a massive traffic jam. Not only did this make my journey painfully slow, it meant more tourists driving along the non-tourist roads so getting a lift was near impossible. The beaches I did manage to reach were not ideal either.

Sadly most beaches I found looked something like this.

So surfing was not to be and I decided to experience a bit more of the people and the countryside. It turns out that, once you leave the main road (as I am wont to do), France is not that special. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high, but I expected more from the country than unkept roads, overgrown fields and dirty villages. Non-tourist destinations are, for lack of a better descriptions, unkept and ugly. I speculate that it has to do with the very lazy attitude I had encountered so far in France.

Don't get me wrong - some places are magnificent, from culture to architecture to landscapes. However, once you move out of the tourist sphere it becomes clear where France spends its money - on tourist attractions.

Instead of focusing on the country, I turned my attention to the people. In every place I had traveled in so far, my preconceptions were blown out of this universe. Germany had some of the nicest and friendlist people I have ever met, Austria turned out to be paradise, and the Czech Republic was just surreal. France, however, was nearly spot on. I had been warned by numerous drivers, hosts and friends that the French are a strange bunch; snobby, snide and cold. For the most part, this was my experience of them. Additionally, many of them lacked basic maners and understanding of what they're doing - more drivers threw their trash out of the window of the moving car than into a trash container, and the same goes for outside the car - which made me very upset.

I want to point out here that a large percentage of the French population does speak English, they simply refuse to do so. I have had several encounters where people openly refused to speak English to me, while either before or after conversing fluently in it. The most memorable was asking a guy for directions, to which he angrily shoed me away in French. When he deemed I was out of earshot, he turns to his friend and says; "F**** tourists, so annoying."

Socially, it is an entirely different culture from the rest of Europe. While every country has its own perks, flaws and unique flavors, everywhere I traveled (aside from the Czech Republic) had a very open and welcoming society. France cut me off the moment it realized I had no money. I quickly went from an interested traveler to a piece of trash in the eyes of people I encountered. I won't lie here, I did get very upset after three consecutive racist lifts talking purely about the biological inferiority of non-caucasian races and after being straight up ignored when I explained what I was doing.

These guys were very bad for business.

By Friday, as I was sitting in Bordeaux, I had had enough. I already had to city hop three times and asked horrible drivers to drop me off at the next stop for a made up reason, I was tired of being treated like slime. I had learned some French in an effort to connect to the people, but I was being ridiculed for my horrible French and turned away for speaking English. I had one spectacular ride and a bunch of horrible ones that overshadowed the lovely time I spent in an old lady's car. My best ride had been with an English guy I asked directions from next to the road. I noped the hell out of there and got on my way as quickly as I could.

What happened next completely changed my attitude. As I was attempting to catch a ride from Bordeaux down to Bayonne, the closest town to Spain on the highway, the farmers blocked off the highway and traffic stood still for almost an hour. Being a stubborn South African, I decided to walk down the highway and find some place that cars were moving and catch a ride there. Nearly thirty minutes of walking later, I had covered more distance than any of the cars and had a few chats with Dutch and English tourists while they cooked on the highway. As the cars started moving, I was hailed by a few French girls in a van. A minute or two later, as traffic flowed again, they picked me up.

They were headed to a nearby town to go to the beach and I was more than willing to go along. We stopped at their house first to have some coffee and bread, I had a nap in the hammock while they sorted their stuff, and then we went to a lake instead of the seaside. It was magical. The one girl played the ukelele and sang, the rest of us hummed and drank beer, after a swim in a fantastic lake.

Some musketeers on their way home.

The water was about 1m deep for a good while before getting deeper, allowing you to perfectly determine the temperature you wanted.

A few rides later I was picked up by an old lady and drove along with her on her detours. In Bayonne, she offered me dinner and I accepted. Afterwards, as it turned out it was already dark, she offered me a room, which I also gladly accepted.

Shelves and shelves full of the stuff. It was like heaven. Except I can't read French.

In this room, her daughter's, I found an awesome bass guitar, several manga volumes, books and anime's that I very much enjoyed. It was like being in a room the female version of me would have. A shower, a good night's rest and breakfast later, I was on my way to Spain. I left France on a very happy note, singing along loud and off-key to tropical music. Thanks to d'Artagnan (the old lady who offered me dinner and a room) and the three musketeers (the French girls who took me for an afternoon at the lake), I loved the last two days in France.

Sometimes the good seeks you out. Sometimes, you have to dig for it. Whichever the case, you'll find amazing people and places everywhere you go if you're open to it.