1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  I knew straight away that I was home, in a different world with a different set of rules.

  The following months were extremely difficult. I fell into the routine of life in Zagreb, even worse than before I started travelling. After having lived on my own for three years I was back at my parents’ place, so I couldn’t host CSers and I was forced to study to pass the last exams I had left.

  Nothing made sense to me. After my intense experiences around Europe, Zagreb was somehow small and boring, while the studying for my boring exams nearly drove me crazy. I was trying to find a chance to escape, but there didn’t seem to be one.

  I was trapped, I kept thinking about my last adventure, which I perceived as an indicator of how a life should be every day: high intensity, different events, new acquaintances, different places.

  Months were passing by. Nothing extraordinary happened except that I passed a few exams and I was getting closer to finishing an important chapter in my life: I was only one exam away from getting my degree, the marketing exam. My head was still swarming with the ideas of running away abroad and finding a job to repay my debt.

  The problem was that I had a Croatian passport, which didn’t facilitate the process of finding a job in any country; on the contrary, it only made it more difficult. I could go to Australia, to the USA or to Scandinavia as a tourist and work illegally there.

  “Come and live with me in Paris, I’ll find you a job,” Melissa sent me a message one day; she was also in debt for God-knows-what reasons, but she was paying them off slowly. God knew how.

  “I have a few friends who could get you inside, you’d have everything you need and you could make even more money than me.”

  Jammed up by the depression and lack of ideas about what to do next and how to repay my huge debt, I gave that option a serious thought. I really thought about going to Paris, living with her and doing the same job she was doing – being a gigolo.

  For many nights, before I fell asleep, I considered the moral aspect of the whole story. How would I feel later? How would I treat old and wrinkled clients? Does the end really justify the means even in situations like that one?

  Or maybe I should simply rob a bank? That would be much easier to accept because I didn’t see an alternative way.

  Day 794.

  “What is your daily budget when you travel?” Daniela asked me.

  “Less than ten dollars a day.”

  “What can you afford with the budget like that?”

  “Well, everything I need. I get around by hitchhiking, I stay at other CouchSurfers’, I buy food in supermarkets, I cook with my hosts...”

  I wanted to say to her that it wasn’t always easy. From the perspective of other people, it must appear quite an adventure, the biggest adventure in the world, constant excitement, happiness, joy.

  However, the truth was that you had to survive all those moments of loneliness, cold and hunger. You can find yourself in different challenging situations when you start wondering whether your actions were right and when you want to change your current situation for a warmer, cosier one...one where there are more people and your stomach is fuller. Travellers aren’t vaccinated against melancholy, sadness or nostalgia.

  In moments like those, the positive factor was, no matter how strange it may sound, the lack of choice. Friends, the warmth of a home, food: everything is far away. It is unreachable. So there is nothing you can do, you have to pull yourself together and survive. Once you survive, you add a few points of pride, adaptability, experience to your life’s account, which might come in handy.

  “Were you ever broke?”

  “Yes, it happens every now and then. In the south of Spain, on my second longest journey, I ended up in a hippy village north of Gibraltar...”

  Day 528.

  “Listen, son, I haven’t got anything else to say to you, just take care of yourself,” my Mom told me as she was walking me to the main train station from where I would get the train for Venice, “and don’t forget to call us every day.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” I gave her a strong hug, “trust me, one day all of this will make much more sense.”

  The love of my parents was immense and I knew it. Still, they didn’t understand me. It wasn’t a new thing, they haven’t been able to understand me since a couple of years before when I was beginning my third year at university, and I’d told them that I was moving out.

  “If you leave, don’t come back ever again,” that was one of my Dad’s threats when I announced my intentions. Mom, as usual, kept on staring sadly at the floor.

  “You have your own room, you can get to the centre in twenty minutes if you go by train, the car is always at your disposal, but you always want more,” my father said.

  “What do you want from me? You left home right after you finished high school.” I was fighting back. “And you moved to Zagreb, five hundred kilometres from home and your folks.”

  “You little bastard, I left my home ‘cause I had to,” he carried on quite upset, “every month I had to send money to my mother so she could feed my five brothers and sisters. Your mother and I’ve been working our asses off for our whole lives, we’ve never been to a nice restaurant or gone out to have a drink with our friends so we could afford stuff for school and clothes for your brother and you. And this is how you repay us.”

  He was right, but stubborn, persistent and proud as I was, I didn’t care. Just like I didn’t care about when they warned me to be careful with the stock market business and the money people were lending me. I was convinced that I knew best.

  And I always wanted to prove it.

  Finally I did move out, but I was so cunning that they didn’t even realize it for a whole year. I rented an apartment with a roommate, we split the rent and the bills. I told him that he was free to live there and all I wanted was free access to the place whenever I wanted to.

  Every other night I would make up a different excuse for my not sleeping at home. I had to stay at the university late, I had to study with my friends, I missed the train...anything just so I could stay at our rented apartment and do whatever I wanted to do as often as possible.

  After a year, or maybe even sooner, they saw right through me, after which they talked to me in a civilised way and then I moved out for real. I lived with my roommate for two years, and my parents paid me a visit only once. They stayed for ten minutes.

  “If only we knew who made you like that,” was their favourite phrase back in those days.

  “If only we knew who made you like that,” – that is their favourite phrase even today, when I was leaving for the opposite end of the continent.

  I knew that my actions hurt them. I knew that they’d invested their whole life in making the lives of my brother and I better than theirs was. I knew that they were always there for me and that always, really always, I could count on my parents’ love. I knew they’d even had too much patience with me and that they’d been putting up with my stubbornness since I was a kid. I knew that they couldn’t understand my lifestyle, which was completely different from what they were used to, and that they were in constant fear for me whenever I was travelling, hitchhiking, sleeping at strangers’ houses and apartments.

  However, all things taken into consideration I knew that I couldn’t give up on my Journey because it was, after all, MY journey. I knew that I’d always learnt from my own mistakes, that others were often right when they warned me of something, but I also knew that I’d never regretted any of those lessons. I cherished those moments the same as any other moment because I knew that they made me complete. And I was always ready to go against everyone, not knowing what was waiting for me and not caring about it.

  There is only one way to find out what is waiting for you around the corner: go and take a look.

  I felt sorry for my parents. If I’d been able to, I would’ve chosen someone else for them as a son, someone who would listen to them since the son they had only created problems, no matter how hard he
wanted to make them proud.

  “Do you like Venice?” Sarah asked me few moments after we met.

  Sarah was a girl whom I’d come across on the CouchSurfing site, but as I didn’t plan to spend the night in Venice I only took her to have a drink and take a stroll down the streets of the most romantic city in the world, where she lived and studied. My flight from Milan to Seville was scheduled for the following day. It was sponsored by my brother Filip who, by buying me the plane ticket, managed to prevent me from hitchhiking across half of Europe in order to arrive to Spain.

  “Well, frankly, not really,” I was being honest, “I’ve already been here twice and it’s always over-crowded with tourists. And it stinks.”

  That made her laugh. She changed the subject and showed me around the city. We talked, we laughed, we hung out as if we’d known each other for years, instead of only an hour. I was genuinely happy: there was a new adventure in front of me and the tedious everyday life of Zagreb was behind me. Talking to Sarah I realized that I was full of energy, that everything was more colourful, that I started noticing all those details which I’d been neglecting and that a smile never left my face.

  We passed next to the busy Rialto bridge, and soon we were in narrow streets without a single tourist. I instantly felt as if I were in another city, much more beautiful, calmer and more relaxed. I no longer felt that I was in a city with a million tourists, but in a city where people actually live, work, go to school, fall in love, have a beer on a park bench. Venice was glowing.

  And the main reason for its glow was walking right next to me.

  I remembered Sofia and my conclusion that every city was as beautiful as the people who live there, the people you meet and with whom you spend some time. Venice was wonderful now.

  Sarah took me to a place where they made her favourite sandwiches, showed me the side of Venice you usually don’t have the opportunity to see. We laid back on a wooden pier and observed the immense blue surface above us, trying to interpret the meaning of the forms the clouds took. Finally, we ended up in a park.

  “I had no idea that there were parks in Venice,” I exclaimed ecstatically, “this city really starts to get under my skin.”

  She smiled bashfully, gave me a kiss on a cheek and informed me that she had to leave me for an hour because she had some lessons at the university.

  I sat on the soft green grass, right next to a patch of clover.

  “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I found a four-leaf...” I thought and spotted one instantly. I picked it up and saved it so I could give it to Sarah.

  I made myself cosy on the grass and, with a giant smile on my face, realized that life was full of small signs, if people only cared to notice them. And look for them. I took out a new small notebook to write down some of my thoughts about the day when I noticed a sticker on the cover of the notebook, a sticker I had almost completely forgotten about. Nina had given it to me as a going-away present. There was an illustrated sheep on the sticker and – a four-leaf clover.

  I laughed, reached into my backpack and took out a small stuffed sheep. Another gift from Nina.

  “I know it’s not your birthday, but I had to buy it for you,” she said to me as she was handing me the stuffed sheep “it reminded me of you.”

  “Really?” I looked at the small stuffed creature, which had a satisfied look on its face and half-open eyes as if it’d been smoking something of good quality. “In what way?”

  “By the horoscope, by the expression of its face and by its lifestyle,” she replied.

  “Its lifestyle?” I understood the first two associations.

  “Well, yes,” she continued self-assuredly, “it’s a sheep, but it’s not limited by its herd. She went away from her shepherd and the sheepdog and now, with a smile on her face, she’s travelling the world and doing what she pleases. Just like you.”

  “Shouldn’t I be a black sheep then?” I liked the story very much.

  “No way,” she was sharp, “black sheep try so hard to be different from everyone else that they end up being completely absorbed and burdened by it. Being different and having an alternative lifestyle becomes their ultimate goal, they stop thinking about what is right for them and what isn’t. You’re not like that. Sometimes you act like the majority, sometimes like the minority. That’s why the sheep is white. You are no different to others by your appearance, but you are by what is inside you. And that could serve you one day, as camouflage.”

  “I see,” I gave her a grateful look. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she responded in the same way. “Take care of it. It will take care of you, too.”

  I had my stuffed sheep and the four-leaf clover I’d just found. And I was writing in a notebook with a sticker with a sheep and a four-leaf clover on it. I didn’t try to find a deeper meaning in it all, it just seemed to me as a very good sign for the first day of my new trip.

  Day 546.

  It had been two weeks and I wasn’t very satisfied with what I’d been through. I’d been to Seville, Huelva, Punta Umbria and Quarteira, a small town in the south of Portugal. I’d contacted a couple of CouchSurfers, met them, met their friends, the friends of their friends, stayed at different places. We spent the days on the sandy beaches, under the palm trees, with tapas and cervezas and Moroccan chocolate. Time went by, it was fun and eventful, but, somehow, I was missing something.

  It bothered me. I hadn’t come to the Iberian peninsular to party and have fun. I could do the same thing at the Croatian seaside. I’d come there to experience something new, learn Spanish, find interesting stories, test myself in unpredictable situations. But I wasn’t doing any of those things.

  That was the reason why, after getting up one morning in a Portuguese village, I decided to change tactics.

  All I knew was the direction – east. I had a couple of people in mind that I wanted to visit, but apart from that I didn’t have anything else planned. I decided to get myself to the Road and let it take me where it thought was best for me. Whatever happened would be fine.

  “There, already on your first day I’ll give you a new experience,” she informed me during the very same day, just as I was cursing it and my decision. I’d been standing under the scorching June sun for five hours and I hadn’t moved more than fifty kilometres. I was hungry and thirsty and far away from any place where I could satisfy my basic physical needs.

  “What, are you talking about dehydration, starvation or something else?” I was mocking it.

  “Pussy,” she responded, in the same manner, “negativity will never bring you anywhere and you know that. A positive attitude, your thumb firmly stuck out and a smile on your face. Let me see you.”

  I listened involuntarily. However, I was in her realm, on the hot asphalt, so I had to show some sort of respect. The same thing I did when I came to someone’s home.

  “You see…” she whispered ten minutes later when the first car pulled over.

  The driver was a middle-aged man with a joint in his mouth. He didn’t understand one word of English, but, feeling rather encouraged by a sudden rush of optimism, I perceived that fact as a good thing: I would get free private lessons in Spanish. Or at least, I could practise the universal language, body language.

  And I was doing it really well. For starters, I took a puff he offered me.

  Helping myself with the basic Spanish I’d learnt from audio lessons I carried with me, I tried to explain to him who I was and what I was doing there. It seemed it was working: he was thrilled so he decided to take me to have a beer and meet some of his friends.

  Even though it meant that I would be losing a couple of hours of precious time, I’d given a promise to the Road and now I had to play the game.

  He drove me around the tourist destinations, sunny beaches, etc., rolled another joint and took me to his amigos for a cerveza. He told everyone my story, and the drinks kept coming one after another. There were some very delicious snails involved. I simply let myself go.<
br />
  “I’m not that impressed.” I sent a thought to miss Road. “It’s been a nice experience, but it’s not really a new one. I’ve been in similar wonderful situations like this one before.”

  “This wasn’t my intention,” she replied calmly, “you have to be patient.”

  I patiently had another beer and got back to the car so my new friend could give me a ride to the border with Spain.

  “Wanna Coke?” I thought he asked.

  “No, thank you,” I replied.

  A few moments after that, he stopped the car in a parking lot, took out his wallet and some white powder which he had in a fold of aluminium foil. He made a line on a credit card using another credit card.

  Ah, that coke.

  “You’re good,” I told the Road after I got out of the car right next to the non-existent border. I was waiting for the next car with my eyes wide open. “But this isn’t my first experience like this either. Do you remember who you sent me the first time I hitchhiked?”

  “That wasn’t my intention either” she replied. “You have to be patient.”

  “Whatever you say.” I was calm. “Still, could you, please, hurry up? It’s getting dark.”

  “He he he” I thought I could hear her, somewhere in the distance.

  I managed to stop a couple of cars, but they could only give me a ride for a few kilometres, and I didn’t experience anything new. I was fooled.

  It was getting dark, I was many kilometres away from a town where I knew people whom I could call and arrange to spend the night on their couch. Perhaps one of the drivers who’d picked me up would show mercy on me and ask me to spend the night at their place, or...