We spent more than a month in Zagreb, Croatia, getting ready for our teleportation to Mexico. We started learning Spanish over the internet. We downloaded some audio lessons, checked videos in Youtube and used two websites, Duolingo and LiveMocha to get started. We also prepared some games to take with: Bang!, Dixit and Kitadels (a Hello Kitty version of Citadels where Lea always beats my ass).
A couple of weeks ago we finally hit the road, stopped in Padova, Italy, to meet a friend and then hitched in one go to Barcelona, Spain. Well, we did stop on an Italian gas station to catch some shut-eye (and to take a free shower!) and on a French gas station in order to dumpster dive some twenty kilos of sandwiches.
Spain has a bad reputation among hitchhikers but for us it has been easy so far, in large part due to the helpful Romanian expats. The first one of them was called Gabi (or Xavi as the locals would call him). “Give me a sandwich and I’ll drive you to Barcelona,” he said. Apparently he wasn’t kidding: Gabi literally went off his way and drove 300 km extra just to take us to our destination.
And what a destination it was! Our friends had arranged us to stay in a cool community house with like-minded anarchistic hippie-travelers, one of whom was a fellow writer and an absolutely beautiful soul Albert. At the age of 22 he has toured most of the world, also traveling without money, and written two books while doing so. “Everything here is yours as much as it’s mine,” he said when he welcomed us to their home. Needless to say, we felt like home.
Valencia
We made our nest on the balcony (while the locals piled up on the living room floor to keep each other warm) and ended up staying a week in Barcelona. We were prowling the streets, hiking in parks, lazing in the flat, studying more Spanish, socializing and, of course, cooking and dumpster-diving food for everyone. Dumpster-diving in Barcelona is unlike anywhere else. At the closing hour the shop keepers bring out the bio waste in special small containers that are always recognizable and just sitting there unlocked on the street. Consequently dumpster diving is a very common activity in Barcelona. If you want to get something you need to be there early (it’s not uncommon to see people waiting for the trash to come out). We truly enjoyed the peculiar feeling that comes from the fact that even if you didn’t go to the bin every night you can rest assured someone else will.
Omnomnom in Valencia
Now we have been in Valencia for a couple of days, meeting an old friend and expecting more friends to arrive tomorrow. I am wearing cool new pants that I got from a free shop and nice summer shoes that I found from the street. Lea is learning how to play an ocarina – an instrument that only the geeks recognize and that was given to her as a gift. We are slurping 100% freegan strawberry-banana-orange smoothies and soon we are about to go play board games with a friend who we’ve never met before. Life is good for moneyless bums.
Edit (May 3, 2013): Our hitchhiker-friends are just fantastic. One of them, Roos from Belgium, saw us all the way to Madrid just because she wanted to spend a few days with us before we leave.
Roos and table-dived wine.
Table-diving red wine with her made me stop my four-month no-alcohol streak. It was a blessing. I did not get drunk – did not want to. Rather I just tasted it a few times and acknowledged the fact that I like neither the taste (it was not exactly the most expensive Chardonnay – which I probably would have enjoyed) nor the drowsy feeling that followed. Yet, now I know that I can drink if I want and it´s not such a big deal.
Roos is like a sister to us and we tried our best to kidnap her again – like we did last year in Albania – but now her will was strong and she stayed in Europe. However, with friends like this, you can rest assured that she will find us on one road or another.
NowGasm 