About hitchhiking

There is one more, last part of the descriptions of my adventures on the way to the capital, but I decided to postpone it for a while, so as not to bore you so much, and instead write about something else that is also somewhat related to travel. It's about something I read a few days ago. One case that is related to the region in which I live. I found out about it by accident, from a local online media, it was not announced on the news, one wonders why, 😅considering what events are basically all over the news every day.

So it's about hitchhiking.

Do you hitchhike? Or rather, have you ever hitchhiked?

I remember the past when I was a schoolgirl many, many years ago. I studied in a different city than the one where I was born, first I lived in a boarding house, then in a rented room. The best thing then was that I didn't have to live with my parents, but otherwise life there was not good at all.
Still, there were some wacky things that were easier to do that way (without horrible parents around). One of them was to hitchhike to the neighboring town, which is 40 km away.
No specific reason, just like that, having a coffee downtown or something. It was, of course, a kind of trial, it was a matter of pride and boasting afterwards, for you can imagine what might have happened at any moment to a few girls hitchhiking in those very dangerous and uncertain times.

Times, in fact, have always been perilous. As I may have mentioned in recent months, I was preparing to immigrate to a European country about which I constantly read terrible things - attacks, thefts, kidnappings, constant disappearances of people, most things coming from the constant flow of illegal immigrants that flow into this country, and I was preparing for all of this. It is part of our modern times.

A long time ago, I also wrote about the disappearances of people nowadays in Bulgaria, a topic that was once talked about, there was even a nightly show on TV, with the aim of helping to find all these missing people, but now it's just not talked about. Maybe just so people don't get scared, they live in constant stress of how to survive anyway. But if you look at some cases of disappearances of people, especially women, one would think that every single day, crossing the threshold of their house, going to work for example, there is always a possibility that someone will not come home in the evening.

But then, at that time, it was something else in Bulgaria. Then, a few years after the collapse of the communist system, the level of lawlessness and crime was staggering and no one had any rights over their own lives. A girl, for example, goes out to a disco, and it is not clear whether she will be able to survive, especially if she is a little prettier, someone just decides that she is his own, that tonight she will dance for him, be with him, etc...
But let's not go into details about the crime in the past, which still has an impact in the present day, but that is not the topic of the post.

So, it was a big risk to do what we were doing, and as far as I can remember, I only did that once, I put myself through that ordeal only once, probably just to show that I wasn't a coward.
Then we were a few girls, we split into two groups with the arrangement to meet in the center of the city in question. And actually my group was lucky because the man who gave us a ride was normal and had no intentions. But the other group had come across a man who started taking off his clothes while driving and doing indecent things, with the excuse afterwards that he thought they were prostitutes. Then he left them in the middle of the road and they had to wait for another car, etc.
I'm putting this in pretty simple terms, the girls had experienced quite a bit of terror, one would say deservedly so, after taking such a big risk for no real reason.

What I am telling you now, however, seems to be nothing compared to what has happened very recently, although I still believe that the levels of lawlessness and crime in the past were much higher than today.
But, "Which US state did this happen in?," my partner asked me when I read the news to him. A man was driving on a cross-country road, even called a dirt road in the article, when he saw a pedestrian in front of him who waved at him, the man stopped the car and picked him up, but a little later the hitchhiker pulled out a gun and pointed it at the driver.
There was a fight, the gun went off, but it didn't hit the driver, he still managed to save himself and called the police. The hitchhiker is then charged with attempted murder, complicity with a second person, etc.

So, I think it's quite difficult to read that this kind of thing is happening in your neighborhood, very close. Because now I'm going to ask you another question - do you pick up hitchhikers?
Because we used to meet hitchhikers sometimes when we traveled with my partner. And we have never picked up anyone. It happens automatically. You look at the person who waves to you on the street and immediately judge him - could you take him in the car or not. But we never got to the point where we thought we could take someone. There was always something "suspicious". On the other hand, however, in the movies we see how this is done, how some people "help other people", met by chance on the street, and this makes me sometimes feel like a bad person. In general, my life in this country makes me generally feel like a bad person on par with the other bad people who help no one. I feel like I'm one of them, and I don't want to be, but honestly, we haven't met a single person so far that isn't "suspicious". And a person who stops his car just like that in order to help, perhaps without thinking, would have received only one bullet in the head...🤷‍♀️

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|