As most of the volunteers, I mostly travel around in Romania by hitchiking. Mostly by 2, but sometimes also alone or by 3 people. I wouldn't say that I have a lot of hitchiking experience, but I have some, been hitchiking in my home country also, but we don't have so long distances as here, in Romania, so my most longer distances by hitchiking have certainly been here.
For girls, of course it is a bit more dangerous to hitchike, but also, a bit more easier, at least that is what we thought when 3 of us decided to come back from another trip discovering beautiful Romania.But obviously it was a bad day for that. Why?
Because almost everything that can happen while hitchiking (not in the car but just next to the road), happened to us.Most of the cars didn't stop at all, there were a lot of lot of cars, it was a nice place to stop, but nobody stopped. There were cars that slowed down...almost stopped, but then drove away, like something had been wrong with us, like we had some kind of sickness.
In our home countries, it is not common to ask money from hitchikers, if you hitchike or take hitchikers to your car, that means, you want to share your experience, meet people, spend your time more interesting, but not to give/ask money for it. But in Romania it is different.
Usually we say to the drivers, that “suntem voluntari, nu avem bani” (we are volunteers, we don't have money), and usually it's ok. But not when you have a bad luck day. The cars that stopped and didn't drive away, asked for money right away and didn't care that we are volunteers, no money, no travel.
Foremore, before that trip, it had been spring in Romania, but then the weather man remembered that it should still be winter and it got cold again, a lot of snow and especially in the upper part where we were. So, after hitchiking for an hour we were totally frozen and after another half an hour when it was already dark, we decided to go to warm ourselves in the nearest shopping center. There I made some calls to find out about the last train, just in case...and then we went back to hitchike...spent another hour with no luck, only some cars, who asked for money, some trucks that stopped but not for us, but just to take a rest and didn't want to pick up any hitchikers. We felt like in another country, where we were aliens and everybody recognized that, only we didn't understand what is wrong with us, why we look so different, or why drivers act so differently from all of our other experiences.
So, we had no other choice than to go back town with the last bus...but we forgot, it was not the luckiest day for us. When we arrived to the bus stop, the last bus had left an hour ago...it was Sunday...and we were somewhere in the very suburb of the city with no idea how to get back to the center. But we asked around....and finally found our way somehow...but the final drop to the bad day bucket was still waiting for us – while we were happily walking back to the city center, because we found the way, somebody through some liquid out of the window of some 12 stored building and all 3 of us got wet. It didn't smell bad, but we had no idea what it was...It was just like a movie experience...how bad luck can you have in one day? To get hit by a random liquid just walking on the street...and all 3 of us together.
In the end, we learned that hitchiking can be really hard, if you have a bad luck day, but luckily, most of our hitchiking days are nothing like this one was.
