Day 10

So, as you, my dear readers (0 at the moment), may have noticed, I stopped writing everyday. That is because everyday is not interesting, even when traveling. The last few days I spent in Budapest, at my dear friend. I came down with the flu, so I mostly stayed inside.
I bought a guitar! Nothing special, but a guitar, nonetheless
Yesterday I started traveling the way I intended. I took the bus to the outskirts of budapest, made some turns and ended up on a hobo trail which ended at an abandoned tent surrounded by human feces. After chopping my way through some thick bushes that left my arms all ripped up, I tried to find a good spot to hitchhike from, which was harder than expected, because of various reasons. One of the reasons being that it's illegal in most countries to walk on the side of a highway, which makes it alot harder, since it's the place you want to hitch a ride from. I ended up taking the train to Sekesgehefer, or something. From there I felt obligated to hitch a ride. After some struggling, I was out on the highway.
Lots of people gave funny looks and some honked their horns and some gave me thumbs up and others used the other finger. After a while a young fellow picked me up and gave me a ride for about 20km. I must have had really good karma that day, because I got picked up after about 20 meters of walking from where the previous guy dropped me off. This guy was amazing, he offered me a nice sandwich and grapes and even another sandwich for breakfast! He had a really sweet black Labrador, too! He let me off at a gas station and drove off towards the mountain at the lake Balaton.

That's when things got real. I asked the truck drivers where they were heading but none of them seemed to go my way. I asked basically everyone I came across to give me a ride but none complied. I sat at the station sipping on my tea waiting for something to happen, hoping for someone to smell my desperation and save me from my own stupidity. Eventually I realized that life is what you make of it, so I bought a little bottle of whiskey and went outside under the streetlight to play some tunes on my new guitar. After a while I grew tired and drunk and decided that it was time to hit the hay. I found a nice gutter behind the gas station, and crawled up behind a bush and tried to get some sleep. It was really moist and the ground was a little muddy, but it was okay, until I woke up to the pouring rain. I started walking towards the nearest bridge when suddenly a cop car came out of nowhere and asked me where I was going. I told him that I was going under the bridge to take cover from the rain. He looked at me confused and drove away. I crawled up under the bridge and listened to the rain whipping down and the cars speeding by.

I woke up in the morning to the feel of raindrops on my forehead; it was now raining sideways. I dragged myself to better cover and fell asleep again. After a few more hours of shivering in the cold I decided it was time for some breakfast. I ate some grapes and shoved the dry sandwich down my throat and started walking down the highway.

I walked, and walked, and walked. I walked for hours, stopping every now and then to hold my thumb in the air. It was warm and nice and sweaty. There was this bird that I came across that stuck in my mind. It was a falcon of some sort and I think it was injured, because every time I came close, it flew a few meters forward in the ditch, touching the ground with its wings. After a few times of flying away, the bird had had enough. It just stood still, no matter how close I got. I literally could have touched it if I wanted to. Obviously, I didn't, because I'm really scared of birds, so I circled around it and kept walking. Eventually I ended up in a little village called Hollád, where you could here roosters crow and dogs barking. I waited for a bus to take me to the nearest train station, only to find out that the next bus departed after two days.
I was really thirsty, and the only person I could see was an old man pulling weeds from the ground. I approached him and pointed at my empty water bottle. He nodded with a smile, put down his shovel, and REALLY slowly started walking, towards his house, waving me to come along.
After we got to his house, and I had my bottle refilled, I continued towards the train station. I managed to hitch a ride to the train station, where the lady selling tickets gave me a really hard time. Eventually I managed to get to Nagykanisza, a shitty town, near the border of Croatia. I went to the gas station to see if any trucks where there, without any result. I walked back and forth, getting more desperate and tired. I decided to walk to the highway and hitch a ride, knowing that another night under the bridge might await me.
After a long walk I got to the highway. There didn't seem to be anyone going in my direction, but just before I lost hope, a little blue audi pulled over. I almost started crying.
The driver asked me where I was going, and I just said "wherever YOU are". She was a hungarian-italian girl that seemed batshit crazy, but honestly, I loved her with all my heart. She drove like a maniac, and I would have been scared, but I was just glad to be on my way out of Hungary. She smoked cigarettes non-stop, and talked about cars and money, and about her husband that was a cocaine dealer. After two hours of nodding and laughing to her, without understanding half, we arrived at Ljubljana. I tried to offer her some gas money, but being an absolute sweetheart, she refused to take my money. I found a hostel, took a well deserved shower, and went to bed.