On the Road
Today it’s the 5th day of our travel but already after 2 days it felt like we are traveling forever because so many things happened. Let’s start from the beginning.
My Dad (Franzy) was giving us a ride to a gasolinstation on the highway which was really kind because hitchhiking out of cities can be tough and we started from Berlin. Unfortunately, the place was not the best spot to hitchhike. Because of that Chantal was going to the highway to get cars stopped which worked faster than we thought. With our drivers the police stopped as well an wanted to see IDs. I was standing further away and were asked later about that and during the search for my passport the Officer asked what our destination will be. When we said it will be China he was laughing and couldn’t believe what he as hearing. In the end I didn’t need to show my passport. Before he finally drove off, he stopped one more time and shouted that we should not get into every car. Cool Officer. The couple who was giving us a ride was really cute. She is from Poland and her (almost) husband from Iran. We talked the whole ride about our travels, life and the environment which was really cool because as you may know that is one aspect why we are doing this journey in the first place. They agreed with us on many aspects. It’s nice to see that there are people who care about our planet and believe in climate change. We were so busy talking that we passed our spot to get out and needed an alternative which was not that easy. In the end of the day we didn’t made it to our final destination and ended up in Warsaw. We found a last minute Couchsurfer who was really cool and Chantal kept talking to him all night long, while I was already sleeping because out of a sudden I didn’t feel well and needed to lay down. A pretty good start for the beginning.
Our second day was frustrating. We didn’t find an ideal spot to hitchhike and finally got a blabla Car to go to Kaunas. Because we have to be in China at a specific time, we kind of stick to a plan, which is why we just didn’t stay one more day. The ride was interesting so in the end it was awesome that hitchhiking didn’t work. Again, we started talking about the planet, animals and sustainability. This time our driver didn’t agree with us on every aspect. For example, he loves eating meat, kept saying that he doesn’t care about the animals and asked us why a pig e.g. exists? Moreover, he said that he can’t change the world. So, we started a big discussion with him, and it seemed like he understood what we were saying and even came up with solutions like higher prices for meat or a maximum production of meat. It was really cool to see that he didn’t just ignore our arguments and overthought his opinion. In addition to that it was interesting to see what he thinks about humankind. How he was talking about us humans, it seemed like we are the best species of all time and everything was made for us. If there were living other species in the universe, they would look at us humans and would be jealous of what we are, how we live and what we made. For us it was kind of crazy to hear that because we often think that other species would laugh at us and say that we are stupid. His idea about the extinction of the dinosaurs was that they were just too boring so the aliens, universe, god whatever you want to call it, killed them. We started explaining to him that we are heading to the 6th mass extinction and it is our fault, we are aware of it and we are also affected. There are no other words than stupidity for that, maybe craziness. So, finally we arrived in Kaunas with a mind full of new perspectives and opinions. We hope that our driver will think about our arguments and maybe gets more insights about that topic so that he can start changing the world. 😉 Also, we got a really cute review from him on blablaCar (see pictures).
All in all, we are happy that this journey keeps all the promises we hoped for. Discussing sustainability and making aware of this topic during our trip is one priority and it is awesome that we can combine all these things with each other. The mindfulness as well keeps playing an important part during our journey. Very often we see that it is important to live Now and not in the past or future. Very often you are confronted with obstacles. Until now we never reached our destination directly. Sometimes we stood in the middle of nowhere and hoped for someone to stop. You need to stay calm, go with the flow and enjoy every moment.
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