Porto - Salamanca Mon March 26
Woke up from freezing again. I had turned on the heater, but not put it between me and the window. Packed my stuff and went out. The tourist information next to the train station wasn´t open so I just went down in the shining metro and went to the South-Eastern-most station. Following the highway signs I came by a cafe and had one of those evil little caffeine bombs and some bread for breakfast and then I found an inner-city stretch of highway.
There was no good onramp but next to the highway there was plenty of space for cars to stop. In fact it looked like the perfect hitchhiking spot; not legal to stop, but perfectly safe. It was 10 am and cloudy when I put the thumb in the air. A police car came and naïvely I waved my thumb at it to make it obvious that I had no idea it could be forbidden to hitchhike on the highway. The police car passed me without stopping, but just when I started to feel accepted by society the car said something with its loudspeakers. It was in Portuguese so I didn´t understand it so to be on the safe said I stayed. After 206 cars I made a cardboard sign saying "Aveiro", a city near where the highway to Spain takes off from the Lisboa road. Another police car came by but this one didn´t complain.
After another 200 cars it was 11 am and I gave up. I walked upstreams to stand on a busstop where many cars were going towards the highway. I ate some bread and drank some water and then raised my cardboard sign at 11:35. After 1000 cars it was 12:20 and I figured I needed to get further away from the city center and took the city bus to "Vilar de Andorhino". I really enjoyed the busride but forgot why. From the endstation I followed the highway signs to the onramp. It was not a good place; I could either stand upstreams - where cars where still going in all directions - or I could go down to where the Southern cars took off from the rest - where they could hardly see me since it was after a curve. I went for the second option. Luckily I had no cow with me today. It´s forbidden to bring a cow when hitchhiking in Portugal.
The sun was shining as I raised my thumb at 13:00. After 28 cars I tried with the sign again. After another 48 cars a small truck stopped. The driver was middle-aged and had already lost most of his teeth. He had the face of a poor person, yet an incredible English came out of it. Perhaps it´s because they watch TV with subtitles in Portugal, like in all countries with brains bigger than budget. He claimed that Aveiro was totally wrong for going to Spain and we had a little discussion about that and other things.
He dropped me off where the highway to Spain starts. It wasn´t ok to hitchhike there, so I started walking. A crazy-walk as I call it, simply walking as fast as possible along the highway without any idea about for how long it will be. I hate those walks sometimes and sometimes love them. The Portuguese nature did everything it could to make me love it, with lots of flowers, mountains, rivers, valleys and a strong smell of spicy summer.
After 45 minutes I came to where a major road crossed the highway and stood for a while with my good old "SPAIN"-sign on the first onramp. It was a 270 degree curve so after 8 minutes and 12 cars I crossed the crossing road and found the 90 degree onramp. This one had much fewer cars so it was a trade-off between quantity and quality. I chose quality and after 17 minutes and 7 cars I was proven right; a truck stopped and picked up me up.
He brought me to a gas station halfways to the border. I was screaming hungry and terrified by the prospect of letting me be raped by the usual gas station prices. But this was the most humane gas station in Europe; I got a bag full of small breads for 1 €.
It started raining and I stood at the gas station exit with my umbrella in left hand and SPAIN-sign in right hand. It only took 27 minutes and 15 cars for a car to stop. It was a man who communicated with me in French. He was going to a Communist meeting in Villa Formos (which is right by the border). He asked if I wanted to join and it seemed interesting of course but I wanted to get to Madrid and thought I wouldn´t understand much anyway. He was talking a lot with a high-pitched, hysteric voice. Well, he more screamed than talked. I don´t know what it was about but it appearantly involved "Communista! Communista! "
The rain was now pouring down on his car and the noise from the water on the windshield mixed with his stressful agitation and I fell asleep repeatedly and woke up now and then drooling and passed out again. Near the border he drove around looking for something. Then we crossed and were in Spain. I thanked him and stepped out and it is time to summarize hitchhiking in Portugal:
Cars waved at: 1516
Rides offered: 3
%: 0,2
Time waited: 192 min
Rides offered: 3
Avg waiting time: 64 min
There was no good onramp but next to the highway there was plenty of space for cars to stop. In fact it looked like the perfect hitchhiking spot; not legal to stop, but perfectly safe. It was 10 am and cloudy when I put the thumb in the air. A police car came and naïvely I waved my thumb at it to make it obvious that I had no idea it could be forbidden to hitchhike on the highway. The police car passed me without stopping, but just when I started to feel accepted by society the car said something with its loudspeakers. It was in Portuguese so I didn´t understand it so to be on the safe said I stayed. After 206 cars I made a cardboard sign saying "Aveiro", a city near where the highway to Spain takes off from the Lisboa road. Another police car came by but this one didn´t complain.
After another 200 cars it was 11 am and I gave up. I walked upstreams to stand on a busstop where many cars were going towards the highway. I ate some bread and drank some water and then raised my cardboard sign at 11:35. After 1000 cars it was 12:20 and I figured I needed to get further away from the city center and took the city bus to "Vilar de Andorhino". I really enjoyed the busride but forgot why. From the endstation I followed the highway signs to the onramp. It was not a good place; I could either stand upstreams - where cars where still going in all directions - or I could go down to where the Southern cars took off from the rest - where they could hardly see me since it was after a curve. I went for the second option. Luckily I had no cow with me today. It´s forbidden to bring a cow when hitchhiking in Portugal.
The sun was shining as I raised my thumb at 13:00. After 28 cars I tried with the sign again. After another 48 cars a small truck stopped. The driver was middle-aged and had already lost most of his teeth. He had the face of a poor person, yet an incredible English came out of it. Perhaps it´s because they watch TV with subtitles in Portugal, like in all countries with brains bigger than budget. He claimed that Aveiro was totally wrong for going to Spain and we had a little discussion about that and other things.
He dropped me off where the highway to Spain starts. It wasn´t ok to hitchhike there, so I started walking. A crazy-walk as I call it, simply walking as fast as possible along the highway without any idea about for how long it will be. I hate those walks sometimes and sometimes love them. The Portuguese nature did everything it could to make me love it, with lots of flowers, mountains, rivers, valleys and a strong smell of spicy summer.
After 45 minutes I came to where a major road crossed the highway and stood for a while with my good old "SPAIN"-sign on the first onramp. It was a 270 degree curve so after 8 minutes and 12 cars I crossed the crossing road and found the 90 degree onramp. This one had much fewer cars so it was a trade-off between quantity and quality. I chose quality and after 17 minutes and 7 cars I was proven right; a truck stopped and picked up me up.
He brought me to a gas station halfways to the border. I was screaming hungry and terrified by the prospect of letting me be raped by the usual gas station prices. But this was the most humane gas station in Europe; I got a bag full of small breads for 1 €.
It started raining and I stood at the gas station exit with my umbrella in left hand and SPAIN-sign in right hand. It only took 27 minutes and 15 cars for a car to stop. It was a man who communicated with me in French. He was going to a Communist meeting in Villa Formos (which is right by the border). He asked if I wanted to join and it seemed interesting of course but I wanted to get to Madrid and thought I wouldn´t understand much anyway. He was talking a lot with a high-pitched, hysteric voice. Well, he more screamed than talked. I don´t know what it was about but it appearantly involved "Communista! Communista! "
The rain was now pouring down on his car and the noise from the water on the windshield mixed with his stressful agitation and I fell asleep repeatedly and woke up now and then drooling and passed out again. Near the border he drove around looking for something. Then we crossed and were in Spain. I thanked him and stepped out and it is time to summarize hitchhiking in Portugal:
Cars waved at: 1516
Rides offered: 3
%: 0,2
Time waited: 192 min
Rides offered: 3
Avg waiting time: 64 min
Single male drivers = 3/3 = 100%
Trucks = 2/3 = 67%
The rain was like a wall all around me and fell on me like a roof. I fled into a big kind of restaurant that was there. A one-arm man watched Spanish TV. The bartenders in their red vests were looking at me with unconcealed smiles. A man with a big backpack showing up at a place like this where everyone is arriving by car is a strange thing. Perhaps even dangerous. What he is up to? I bought a coffee and thereby became a customer. I don´t know if it was Tiego´s talk that was commanding my tounge or if the coffee here a bare 100 meters from the border was really bitter and sour like it had been reheated in the microwave after standing on the kitchen table since breakfast.
It was already 6 pm and it was raining too much to hitchhike. I decided to get a ride back to the city and stay in a hotel and wait for an early morning with sunshine and relaxed happy drivers with good visibility. I went out and ran to the gaspumps, freezing like a dog, afraid that the falling ocean would break my umbrella, get inside my backpack and destroy my digikamera and make me too wet to be accepted in cars. The Portuguese Communista was still there. I asked if he could take me back across the border to the city. He got all upset for some reason. I stood outside his car, peering in through the window - probably with a pathetic and confused look on my face. He held his hands on his wheel and sat staring straight ahead into the cloudburst and thought for a long while with an annoyed an increasingly determined facial expression.
He was so full of solidarity and of trust and understanding between peoples of all the world and he was such a staunch friend and member of the struggling classes and he really wanted to share his humble car with a Social Democratic comrade from far away. But something was definitly going on with this Swedish hitchhiker. He wanted to go to Spain and now he was in Spain. And now he wants to go back to Portugal since it´s raining in Spain. But it´s raining in Portugal too, stupid. I´ve gotta go to my national Communista meeting now. He drove away without turning his head.
And I was happy he did so. The second truck driver I asked was going to France via Salamanca and I could join him after he had washed his car; "lavaro! lavaro!". Interesting to wash your truck on a day when it´s getting washed by a ton of water a minute for free. I´m not ironic, it really was interesting to watch the truck getting washed. The driver also enjoyed it a lot. It was like it was his soul that got purer and purer the more those long cylindric brushes were rotating up and down the walls and windows and between the cabin and the trailer.
He didn´t talk much. Nothing at all in fact. Except for that he had excactly one cigarett per 60 minutes to spare his stomach. It was a Renault truck and required some agility to climb into, but in return it made for an excellent view. We went through Spain during sunset. After some hours Salamanca showed up. He let me off at the edge of the city since he was just passing it and not in the mood for precision-bombing it with Swedes. It was all dark and empty but I found a woman and asked ger if she was driving towards the city center and she walked me to a busstop. Ah! Finally in the safe and comfortable hug of subsidized public city transport. The bus was 1 euro and I rode it all the way to the litten-up historic city centre and then a few minutes more to get away from the most inflated prices.
The first hotel was 35 €, the second 42. The third 25, the fourth 25 as well as the fifth. But the next one was only 22 and the seventh hotel wanted nothing more than 20 € to let me inside. The toilet was in the hallway, the window led to an inneryard with nothing on it, the TV had three channels with everything dubbed to Spanish (that´s why communication here is so tricky for us no-Spanophonics) and a remote control that was available upon request. The bed cover was penetrated by cigarette marks. It was a perfect room.
I went out for a long night-walk and sat for half an hour in a bar with a mirror in which I could stare on my own face. Sometimes I glanced at the man on my right side. Then I went back to the hotel and ate some of my bargain-bread in my bed while watching a TV-program with people dancing and being commented by a jury of seemingly charismatic and popular people. I saved one bread for breakfast. It always takes me such a long time to get going in the mornings, and I thought that perhaps a piece of bread would kickstart me tomorrow to get me clean and packed on the highway before 9 am. Who knows, it might be worth trying, so don´t eat it now, save it for tomorrow.
He didn´t talk much. Nothing at all in fact. Except for that he had excactly one cigarett per 60 minutes to spare his stomach. It was a Renault truck and required some agility to climb into, but in return it made for an excellent view. We went through Spain during sunset. After some hours Salamanca showed up. He let me off at the edge of the city since he was just passing it and not in the mood for precision-bombing it with Swedes. It was all dark and empty but I found a woman and asked ger if she was driving towards the city center and she walked me to a busstop. Ah! Finally in the safe and comfortable hug of subsidized public city transport. The bus was 1 euro and I rode it all the way to the litten-up historic city centre and then a few minutes more to get away from the most inflated prices.
The first hotel was 35 €, the second 42. The third 25, the fourth 25 as well as the fifth. But the next one was only 22 and the seventh hotel wanted nothing more than 20 € to let me inside. The toilet was in the hallway, the window led to an inneryard with nothing on it, the TV had three channels with everything dubbed to Spanish (that´s why communication here is so tricky for us no-Spanophonics) and a remote control that was available upon request. The bed cover was penetrated by cigarette marks. It was a perfect room.
I went out for a long night-walk and sat for half an hour in a bar with a mirror in which I could stare on my own face. Sometimes I glanced at the man on my right side. Then I went back to the hotel and ate some of my bargain-bread in my bed while watching a TV-program with people dancing and being commented by a jury of seemingly charismatic and popular people. I saved one bread for breakfast. It always takes me such a long time to get going in the mornings, and I thought that perhaps a piece of bread would kickstart me tomorrow to get me clean and packed on the highway before 9 am. Who knows, it might be worth trying, so don´t eat it now, save it for tomorrow.
posted by bh @ 3:37 PM
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