Hitchhiking across Europe

CSC_9182

Paris-Malaga hitchhiking 3,5 days.

I decided to hitchhike from Paris to Gibraltar. Thanks to very good description on hitchwiki website I figured out how to get out from Paris. But there were two challenges. The first one was not encouraging weather. It was raining and was really cold. I seriously lost my adaptation to low temperatures in Asia. Second challenge was a fact that I started my hitchhike on Saturday afternoon and as I got known later tracks can not drive in France on Sundays.

With two short French lifts, interrupted by two hours waiting time in small rain, I reached the dream hitchhiking place. Gates, where one needed to pay for the motorway. In this place all cars need to stop and it was under roof. I was only 40 km from Paris, but I put a sign Spain. Few lorry drivers showed me that they have to stop and sleep. And suddenly old, semi-combi car stooped and the British driver told me that he is going to Spain, to Barcelona. So of-course I joined him. After 200 km we had a small adventure and we got a flat tire on the motorway. In the car there were no tools to change a wheal, so we waited for half an hour for repair car, who towed us away to the workshop. Luckily the car had a good international insurance, which covered everything, otherwise this would be quite expensive adventure for my driver. The car was a semi-caravan, so in the night we put up additional sleeping place by moving the ... roof up. It was great! Very comfortable car for sleeping. In the morning we started and early afternoon we crossed the boarder of Spain, where I decided to stop and to search for another lift.

CSC_9179

My lorry lift.

On the parking there were many big lorries and there were also quite a few polish lorries. I started to chat with the drivers and apparently one of them, Krzysiek, was going to south Spain to Murcia. And he planned to start two o'clock in the night. So I joined him. I had a short nap in the evening before we departed and I slept a bit on the way. Krzysiek made a short break for the nap, but he did not manage to reach his destination in 9 hours - this is the time that the lorry drivers are allowed to drive per day, so around eleven he pulled aside. He shared with me some delicious polish sausage "Kielbasa polska" and then he went to sleep and I started hitchhiking.

We stopped on the parking next to motorway. Unfortunately in this place there were apparently two motorways, one paid one and the other free. We were on the payed one, where not too many cars were driving and I could only stop the ones that were starting from the patrol station or restaurant. There were only a few cars driving every hour and  the only once that stopped was police cars to make sure that I would not go to the motorway to hitchhike. After 7 hours I was still in the same spot, it was getting dark and because of the wind, I was freezing. Luckily Krzysiek track was all the time on this same spot, so I came back and spent the second night in the truck and very early in the morning we continue driving with Krzysiek for next 100 km giving me a lift to much bigger petrol station. From there I was picked up by the first passing car and during this ride for the first time I had to practice my Spanish. I got few other short lifts but then around 12 I got completely stacked again in the other motorway exit, where there was on average 1 car for every 20 minutes going in my direction... After 4 hours of waiting I was about to try to catch a lift in opposite direction only to get out from this bad spot, but in the last moment a British guy stopped and gave me lift for 15 kilometers to a dream place where the main road was not motorway any more so I could hitchhike on the main road. This was easy and I catch a van to Malaga. So the road from Paris to Malaga (through Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria) took me 3,5 days and I did not have to pay a penny for it. From Malaga I finally took two and a half hours bus to Gibraltar.