Fast update: The first day of the nomad travel, starting from Bucharest and heading to Craiova was not that easy as we thought: our friend Ioana was told by some "special" friend of hers that we could be in trouble if we hitchhike red cars on the highway.
With this challenge we manage to eardrum. You have to use your small finger instead!” Going down a kid stopped in front of us, measured us from head to toes and asked enthusiastic: “are you going to the North Pole”? So with this warm welcoming we were just wandering what could be the special “ingredient” of our couchsurfer from Craiova. Soon enough we were took in a very organized tour of the city, with organized dinner time, and organized sleeping hours, organized breakfast, morning ride to the hitch-hiking point, all just to meet our needs and tight schedule. Fantastic! Starting the day early in the morning made us positive about future rides, and you know what? It worked! ... until the border with Serbia.
hitchhike 75% of the “no red cars”, the missing 25 % were lost due to the fact that some were like dark red, some more into orange, and some bloody mix colors (for example: a black-red car, with seats on the black part, and red truck …makes it a potential candidate right?). Eventually, after a tiring half day, a white car approached us in a gas station and offered us a ride to Slatina. On the way I started to “vegetate” due to my motion sickness and almost sacrificed my stomach when the car stopped. A well needed picnic on the side of river Olt, a friendly dog and a blue shiny sky, made possible a fast recovery, so soon enough we were eager to try our second ride, this time to Craiova. After 3-4 “no money” hitchhiking attempts, a man broke his “contribution” rule and took us with his old Dacia. After we reached Craiova, we’ve noticed some changes in the atmosphere: in the bus a nervous man stopped us buying the ticket saying that we’re nuts, how come don’t we know that today’s Sunday and ticket officers are resting at home, and continued to school an old man wrapping his ear with the “wrong finger” in front of everybody:” listen to me, what you do is mutilation: you are going to break yourIf you would say that the only road from the border that goes to the capital city passing through cities along the way is completely deserted, I would say to you that you have great imagination. Not the case here: 95% of the cars coming from the border with Romania were taking the opposite direction. For the first time in my life I was stuck hitchhiking. We had to camp near the border: hills, forest, the Danube, electric light, and civilization 50 m away; but the stress of being unseen (fearing a fine for illegal camping)
and the morning cold shook our romanticism. The next morning we went to face the Serbian police man that threatened us with the 24 h registration rule, and stupid questions: “Do you have drugs? Do you carry drugs?… ARE YOU SURE???” (Probably he thought that in big mountain backpacks enters more cocaine, wtf?). After a brief conversation we were on track again, with a registration deadline for midnight. Whit no hope at all, being awake since 5 a.m., and no cars on the horizon, eventually superman came to save us: a Romanian going in ITALY for work, a straight ride to Milano. (“Where are you going? …To Rome, we have to reach it before 8th of April…I’m going to Milano, you can reach Italy tonight. Ah, no thanks, we are going to Rome, not Milano") so he let us in less than 3 hours in Belgrade. Not only that, but it seems that the man was the person that my dad was looking for to solve a problem with some pension for working in Italy some time ago. So taking his contact and sending to my father was going to make him less upset for my nomad life style….Or at least make my hitchhiking useful in my family :D