I'm a Cheap Bastard!

There's no denying it. Ever since I arrived in Europe, I can't help comparing prices here to prices in Asia. It's one of the reasons I hitchhiked from Turkey to the Netherlands, and it's the main reason I haven't been drinking so much.

When I was waiting for a ride at a highway rest stop in Germany, I paid three Euros for a liter of water. That's $4.50 for a fucking bottle of generic water. They didn't even bother with the pretense of claiming it was from some sparkling pure spring. Granted, that's an extreme example, but you get the idea. It cost $1 just to use the toilet.

I usually can't stand when people are whinging about money all the time. It's a horrible habit to have when traveling. When someone is complaining about costs and prices and how they save money by doing this, and by not doing that, their focus is not on the present moment of being somewhere new and different, and it annoys the shit out of anyone in earshot.

I never whined too much until I got to Europe. I had enough money to not have to count pennies as long as I was making at least a half-assed effort to travel on the cheap. A nice sit-down meal now and then? The occasional taxi ride? A private room here and there? No problem when meals are four dollars and shared rooms aren't much more.

Those days are long gone. I can't afford to pay $45 for a room every night. Hostels in Amsterdam – fucking bunk beds in mildewy hovels – are up to $50 a night on the weekends. I had to rearrange all of my plans, confusing the hell out of my mother and myself as I tried to find cheap places in different cities on short notice.

Yesterday in Bruges, I kept refusing my mother's suggestion that we buy a little something to share since I had a quarter loaf of bread, some cheese slices, and salami in a bag swinging off my shoulder. I was determined to make a sandwich with what I already bought to save me a few dollars.

I'm becoming a cheapskate downer and it's getting bad.

Amsterdam

I was in Amsterdam for a night about seven years ago. I ate the best steak I've ever had at an Argentinian place I wandered into, watched Germany and Holland tie in the Euro tournament, and wandered into a coffee shop bored, and out high as a kite.

I walked in one direction until I was out of the insanity of the city and sat on a park bench, awake, until the sun came up. I ate breakfast, and took a train back to Berlin.

I was looking forward to actually getting a feel for the city on this trip. I met my brother in a hostel, and we walked around the city. The central area is a true tourist hell-hole, the Khao San Road of Europe, but with astronomically inflated prices.

How do people who aren't filthy rich enjoy places like this? A slice of pizza is about five bucks. A bottle of water is about two, and a beer at a "cheap" bar is about six. Sleeping in a bunk bed in a crowded dorm is like thirty bucks.

I took my brother out for a birthday dinner at an Argentinian steak restaurant, hoping to relive the meal of seven years ago that still makes my mouth water when I recall it. I spent $100 on a pile of meat I could've bought in any grocery store and grilled up in my backyard.

We tried seeing some non-weed/sex attractions. The Anne Frank house had a line that snaked out of the door and around three or four buildings. The Van Gogh museum wasn't much better.

The city redeemed itself the next day! Mainly because we got the hell out of the central area. There is a brewery and pub affixed to an old windmill that had great beer we drank. The neighborhood was quiet and uncrowded. There was space. We ate sandwiches that we made from a local supermarket, and scoped out a little library and record shop.

Then the best part of Amsterdam came early in the morning of our last day. I got to watch live hockey on a real TV, from a real TV channel. We woke up at 2AM to watch hockey in the hostel bar, and the Bruins FUCKING KILLED the Canucks. It was glorious.

Hitching Istanbul to Prague: Day 3

I was up even earlier than I thought since I hadn't factored the time change into my clocks. I don't know where exactly the time changed, but I was up, out of town on the metro and buses, and standing on the side of the highway, something I did because it was small and there was a huge pull-off area, but don't normally recommend, at 7:30AM.

One sure advantage of overland travel is the absence of jet lag.

I was hoping to make it to Budapest, but made it way farther. In about 12 hours, I made it 700KM to Brno, Czech Republic.

I got a ride past Novi Sad instantly when I stepped onto the highway outside of Belgrade. After about 45 minutes of waiting, a kid about my age named Dusan picked me up and brought me all the way to a rest stop just before Budapest. He spoke great English, and we talked about motorcycles, American gas prices, local history. I briefly thought he was lulling me into a sense of comfort just to take off with all my stuff when he took a suspiciously long time in the bathroom at a gas station, and I was waiting inside at a table, but that was unfounded. We continued on our way towards Budapest.

After he dropped me off outside the city, before the roads split into ring roads and through roads, I waited for about 15 minutes until a Romanian trucker picked me up. His name was Dieman, and he understood more English than he spoke. He did speak Spanish well though, and after I tried to use my poor, rusty Spanish skills, he told me just to speak in English, and he'd speak in Spanish. We managed to understand each other. He gave me an energy drink, but I still managed to nod off a bit.

He dropped me off at another rest area, still in Hungary, and after 10 minutes a Turkish trucker picked me up and brought me across the border. He did some paperwork, and I played my guitar on the curb at the border. I was a bit confused since there were no passport checks, but just went with it. Welcome to Europe, I suppose. It's a drastic change from the harrowing visa processes and waiting times in parts of central and eastern Asia.

It was a little past five when I got dropped at another rest stop outside Bratislava. I thought I'd try to get into the Czech Republic, though I knew I could get a bed and relax in the city. Another Romanian driver picked me up. He wasn't sure if he could get me to Prague, due to distance and time regulations on truck drivers, but Brno was a likely place for me.

His name was Daniel and he spoke great English, and drove a brand new tractor without a trailer. He delivered chemicals all over Europe, and was on his way to Germany to pick up yet another truck. I played my guitar again as he dealt with border paperwork, and we talked about driving. He liked his job, and it seemed to me that driving down roads, with plenty of time to think and listen to music might be a nice job. I saw myself driving through the Outback, or south-western America, philosophizing and enjoying the open spaces.

"Everything is nice until you have to do it every day," he reminded me. Very true. I'll hold off on the trucking career for now.

I scampered off the highway, walking on the safe side of the guard rail up the exit ramp and into some suburbs of Brno. It was early evening, and kids with souped up cars overran a parking lot. Someone was doing doughnuts in a shitty compact car, screeching around in a circle, sending foul smelling rubber smoke into the air. Others were standing around their cars, generally loitering and socializing.

It was a hassle to find an ATM and get cash, but there was a tram going right into the city center, and I found a hostel online while I ate dinner. The place was a goth dream: faded red carpets, pale-skinned staff with stringy black hair and heavy boots, dim antique hallways and polished stone stairs and tiled walls. I had a room to myself, drank beer down in the bar, and did some serious Internetting for the first time in three or four days.

I relaxed, knowing that Prague was only a few hours away. I watched GoldenEye in my bed and reminisced about playing Nintendo 64 before fading off to sleep with my ears plugged against the life outside the big open windows.

Hitching Istanbul to Prague: Day 1

I didn't think hitching would start off so miserably and end so wonderfully.

I took some online advice and was standing on the side of the road near a bus station on what some may consider the outskirts of Istanbul, but what is still well within its suffocating sprawl.

Two hours of holding a sign and trying to explain to occasional passersby that I wasn't interested in the bus station right behind me, I nearly was ready to give up. Then some cops stopped as they drove by, and reversed toward me.

The young sidekick studied English linguistics. "Why are you hitchhiking like this?" "You can take a bus." I lied and said that I had a bet with friends. I learned from Doc in Cannery Row that people sometimes don't trust someone doing something just to do it. Everyone likes a story with a bet.

The cops were great and brought me to a smaller, quieter road on the backside of the station that they said would be better. Inside their little van/car hybrid vehicle, there were billy clubs swinging on hooks on the side, and a semi-automatic shoved on a shelf above the sun visors.

I stood there for awhile before I saw a western-European looking kid with a backpack and knew he was here to hitch out too. There could be no other reason for a traveler to be where we were. He followed standard hitching etiquette and moved further down road from me, since I was there first and would get the first ride.

Neither of us got rides after more than an hour, bringing my total waiting time up to around three and a half. We decided to get a bus out of town together. At the bus station outside of Edirne, after briefly not knowing which way was towards Bulgaria, we got a ride as we were hoofing it along the highway on-ramp.

And to clarify, when I say highway for this part of the trip, I mean roads that look like the above photo. That's Ville, the Finnish guy I spent the first day hitching with. A total of four rides took us across the Bulgarian border to the capital, Sofia. Each time we got dropped off, we waited even less time than the previous ride.

First was a Bulgarian in a small Ford who drove coaches in Turkey because the money was better. He was big and had a short, well-trimmed mustache. We picked up his wife in a small town and he changed into a track suit, showed us his motorcycle, and gave us coffee.

Second was a pair of young Bulgarian guys in a spacious station wagon. They smoked cigarettes and we listened to Bulgarian pop music.

Third was with another pair of guys in a jalopy they had to push start after they filled up with gas. I involuntarily nodded off a couple times.

Our last ride was as the dusk was falling, and we weren't sure if we'd make it to Sofia that night. After standing for five minutes on a tiny road outside of Plovdiv that led to the highway to Sofia, a long BMW sedan screeched to a halt in the dirt beside us. A young couple brought us to the outskirts of the city where we had a meal in a gas station that tasted better than any other meal I've ever had in a gas station.

Thank god I was with Ville, who had a LP for eastern Europe. That's how we found the hostel we stayed in, after ditching some sketchy Ruskophone who kept saying he wasn't going to rob or stab us. And thank god Ville was with me when we were hitching because he'd never done it before, and I had a European road atlas and he didn't . Our resources complimented each others well.

The hostel was one of the best I've stayed in. It was cheap, the rooms where clean, spacious, and mostly empty. The graffiti, design, and organization lent it a real comfortable atmosphere, and the basement bar had cheap beer, beautiful women, and live music.

I was to find that being tempted to stay in each place I passed through was to become a theme on this four day hitching jaunt.