1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  I had three hundred Euros in my pocket and a couple of months left until the next exam session. There wasn’t a single word that could describe the excitement I felt. I was going on the road, no return date, to visit a girl I hadn’t stopped thinking about since I met her. And I had met her fifty-four days before that.

  Not that I was counting.

  Two hundred and fifty kilometres, 3 rides and 5 hours later I was in Vienna. I survived my first travelling encounter with the police. Near Graz they stopped me, but instead of giving me a ticket for walking along the highway, they simply gave me a lift to the next gas station, and an apple and a sandwich. Nice people, even though they were cops.

  “How come, of all the cities in the world, you’ve ended up in Vienna?” I asked Zuli, my CS host, as we were sipping a beer in a famous bar in Vienna. The price was also famous – 3.60 Euros. When I paid for a round I started looking closer at the money I was spending. One beer was, in fact, one per cent of my budget. Two beers, two per cent. I could afford a trip around Europe, as long as my budget didn’t go over one hundred beers in that bar.

  I had a new unit of measurement.

  “One day I took a map of Europe, closed my eyes and said to myself, wherever my finger lands, I’ll go there,” she said, with her eyes closed, pointing to an imaginary map. “My finger landed on Austria, where I’ve been living for a couple of years now. I’m studying and working. It’s nice.”

  I didn’t know by what I was enchanted more: by her story, her way of telling it, or her. Most probably, by everything.

  From the very beginning, the story was more than unbelievable. The very fact that a person could let herself go to a coincidence, destiny, call it as you will, and start a new life, in another part of the world, with no one around, not knowing the language, arriving there for the first time. How much courage does it take to do it? How much faith?

  Above all, Zuli was probably the sweetest creature I’d ever met. She had dark and Latin American complexion, long dark hair, brown eyes hidden under slightly hooded eyelids with an honest, shy and seductive smile. She was so beautiful that only after the second round of beer, when I went to the bathroom and faced that well-known half-drunk expression in the mirror above the sink, I had to remind myself why I had come to Vienna.

  “This morning you headed for Berlin, to meet a blonde Australian girl,” I said irritated, regarding the happy man in the mirror, “you fool.”

  “So what?” the reflexion answered.

  “So what?” I was pissed. “You’ve mixed up your life, left everything behind and gone to see her. And on your first day, that is on your first night, you’re out with a gorgeous girl and all you’re thinking about is how nice it would be to kiss her soft lips. Where would that lead?”

  “I have no idea and I don’t care,” he carried on, “I’m tired of thinking too much about the future, making theories, plans... I mean, you have no idea what will happen in Berlin. I hope you realize that. If not...”

  “If not what?” – I asked.

  “You know the reaction of a heart when expectations aren’t realized,” he reminded me, “so, enjoy the moment, don’t expect anything, be honest and try your best not to hurt anyone.”

  “What do you know?” I turned around and returned to the table.

  We had another Weißer Spritzer and went to her apartment where, like a true CouchSurfer, I fell asleep on the couch, innocently and with the blond Australian girl in my thoughts.

  Day 277.

  I spent three nights in Prague and two in Dresden, and finally, on my sixth day of travelling I arrived in Berlin. The final destination.

  On my way to Berlin I had one of my most memorable hitchhiking experiences. In Dresden I met with Josh, a friend I’d met in Prague and had hosted a few months before in Zagreb. We met in the centre and headed for a gas station to start hitchhiking.

  We walked carelessly by the road looking for a good place to start hitchhiking. Suddenly, we heard the squeal of tires and a VW Golf pulled over next to us. Two dubious guys got out, wearing jeans and sweatshirts, with caps on their head. Both of them had pierced noses and eye-brows. They started walking towards us, with their arms wide open.

  “Free hugs?” one of them asked, stepping closer.

  And then it hit me. I burst into laughter. There was still a FREE HUGS sign on my backpack from Prague, the guys saw it, had a spontaneous reaction and got out of the car to have a hug.

  “Where are you headed?” the other one asked, after a real man hug.

  “Berlin,” we said, still smiling. We knew what was coming next.

  “So are we!” our new friends exclaimed, “get in.”

  Oh, the universe.

  As we were approaching Berlin, my heart started growing restless.

  “Nächster Halt[24]: Eberswalder,” the woman on the PA system announced.

  I walked out of the U-bahn, turned right and found what I was looking for: Schonhauser Allee, number 146.

  The address Chloe had given me.

  I climbed up the stairs; there were so many of them. Third floor, no elevator. My palms were sweaty, I felt butterflies in my stomach, heart beating heavily like never before, and my legs never felt heavier. It seemed like an eternity before I came to her door and pressed the bell.

  I heard steps from within.

  I took a deep breath.

  The door opened and a guy stood in front of me.

  I exhaled.

  “Hi,” I greeted him feeling a bit disappointed, “is Chloe maybe here?”

  “Chloe?” he was confused, “I don’t know any Chloe.”

  “Chloe?” a new face appeared behind the door, “she went outside with some other guys to buy groceries, she should be back soon. Come in, you can wait for her inside.”

  I entered an apartment that was, basically, a squat. At least ten people lived there, there were all kinds of instructions and rules stuck on the walls, the groceries in the fridge were marked in different colours, depending on whose was what, there was a list of house chores, and so on. I realized that my old apartment didn’t come even close to a squat, there were no rules, the tenants knew each other and the fridge was always empty.

  My guide offered me a tea. He was explaining to me how things functioned in the apartment when I heard steps coming from the outside, the rattle of keys and the sound of someone unlocking the door.

  Impolitely I turned around just as my guide was in the middle of his monologue and looked at the kitchen door. I heard a dialogue in German, which I didn’t understand. Footsteps. And then, through the open door, I saw loose blonde hair. And she saw me. Time stopped, just like my heart.

  The little blonde girl pointed her finger to me and yelled, “you!”

  We approached each other and hugged.

  “I totally forgot you were coming today,” was the first thing she said after a long and warm hug. Her voice was exactly the same as I remembered it: innocent, child-like and playful. Still, there was something different about her eyes.

  “I totally forgot you were coming today,” she repeated, interrupting our eye contact and leaving my arms to the mercy of gravity. She noticed I’d heard her even the first time, but I wasn’t listening. I studied the tone of her voice and the warmth of her eyes. Or maybe even the coolness as I finally understood what she’d just told me. Suddenly, my entire body went cold.

  She totally forgot the fact that I was coming. While I had spent months waiting for that moment.

  No, she couldn’t have forgotten. We’d exchanged an e-mail the day before saying that we’d be seeing each other the following night. She was a smart girl so I knew she wouldn’t forget that easily. No, there was something else involved. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  “Get yourself ready,” my reflection in the mirror, which I managed to catch, winked at me, “and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I was ready. It was extremely difficult observing her losing herself in the words she exchanged with me; observi
ng her do different chores around the place, laughing forcedly at her roommates’ jokes. My presence made her nervous. But not nervous in the same way she made me. She didn’t want to be next to me. She didn’t enjoy my presence. She wasn’t completely present.

  And I didn’t know why.

  “Shall we take a walk?” I asked when I realized that we wouldn’t be able to have a normal conversation in the noisy crowded apartment.

  “Sure,” she accepted and turned to the others. “We are taking a walk, does anyone want to join us?”

  Her roommates became quieter and refused politely. It seemed that they knew, just as I did, that they had nothing to do with us. She was the only one not to understand it.

  “I’m glad no one wanted to join us,” I said as we were out on the street, “I’ve come to Berlin to spend some time with you, to talk to you, not with your roommates.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Still, I see I’m the only one wanting to talk,” I stood in the middle of the street and took her by hand.

  “Look. There is only one thing I need from you. Only one. Honesty. Quick, painful, whatever. I think I’ve deserved it, even if we disregard the fact I’ve travelled half of Europe only to see you.”

  She lowered her eyes, let go of my hand and continued walking.

  “I’ve told my best friend about you,” she said after a while, “I’ve told him about Tomislav whom I met in Zagreb and whom I liked very much. Thomas Love, he commented. It made sense. I liked the way he called you that. Thomas Love. It sounded almost identical to your real name. And it fits perfectly into our story and the things you’d made me feel.”

  “But?” I asked her. You could always sense when a but was coming.

  “But,” she stopped, “we’re not on the same page in life. I’ll be soon going home, after a few years of travelling. I’m fully concentrated on that. And I really wouldn’t like to start something that will be over soon.”

  “How do you know it will be over?” I was slowly realizing that the ship had started to sink and that there was nothing I could do about it.

  “I just know,” she continued. “I really like you. I find you attractive. I like you being next to me. And you’ll always be ‘mine’. Still, at this moment, I cannot give you what you want from me. The thing that you’ve come here for. The thing you think you deserve. I’m not ready for it.”

  “Why are you thinking about it so much?” I was angry. “All that matters is this moment and what we have now. How can we know what the tomorrow will bring? Can’t we simply enjoy each other while it lasts, while we’re here?”

  “I can’t.” She looked at the ground. “Try to understand me. I’ve been through similar situations in the past and they never turned out well. The only thing that remained were the scars.”

  “But this isn’t the past, we’re in present.” I wasn’t giving up.

  “Why would you even want to be with me?” she gave me a sad but firm look, “you don’t know me.”

  I looked her straight in those eyes, trying to reach as deep I could. I couldn’t possibly know what she was fighting with. All that I knew was that she was trying really hard to push me away from her.

  “Because I love you, Chloe,” I managed to mutter.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t love you,” she told me briskly, quickly and firmly. No hesitation.

  That was the moment. The ship had sunk. Silently, no sound from a single crew member, no attempts to save themselves.

  It was as if it had never even sailed.

  I kissed her and gave her a strong hug. Her body was cold and lifeless. Her eyes were empty. Just like the eyes of those two gorgeous girls she’d noticed that day on the street in Zagreb. The spark I could see in her eyes during those days was gone.

  Day 962.

  “So, Tanja, what are we going to do?” I started an unavoidable conversation during our last dinner together, the conversation we’d been successfully avoiding. After two months of tenderness, endless conversations, walks in the rain, endless laughs and huge amounts of ice-cream, I was leaving London and going to Zagreb to start my trip around the world.

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she began, obviously well prepared. “No matter how much I wanted to go with you, I owe it to London and to myself to stay here and see how things will work out. If I leave before even giving it a try, I will always ask myself that one question - what if. And you wouldn’t want a girl like that as a company on your trip around the world.”

  “Still, if you stay, you’ll always be asking yourself how it would be if you had gone with me,” I added.

  “You’re right,” she said, “and that’s why I’ll be visiting you every now and then. Just to check are you doing OK.”

  I laughed, even though I didn’t feel like laughing.

  “And on your five hundredth day of travelling, in the middle of your journey, I’ll leave my job, London, everything...and join you,” she said happily, trying to cheer me up.

  “I don’t know if I could do that,” I said quietly, “you know the reason why I’m starting this journey. I want to try out something new, leave my old surroundings, I want to discover my passion, my interests, my attitudes. Discover myself. And I’m not really sure that I’ll able to do it if I leave something behind. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to survive waiting possibly for a year, or a year and a half.”

  She wasn’t happy anymore.

  “Freedom,” I said after a while, “that’s what I’m looking for. If I go, and leave a girl in London behind me, a girl who will be thinking about me, to whom I’ll have to write and who I’ll have to call telling her how nice it would be if she could be with me, I won’t be free as I’m hoping to be. I will also need a free heart, or a person who holds my heart right next to me. We’ve talked about long-distance relationships and we’ve agreed that they never work out.”

  “But we’ve never talked about us!” she exclaimed. “How could we have known that we would become the thing we have become? I thought we were stronger than this. Who cares about the kilometres that will separate us?”

  “I do,” I said, almost inaudibly.

  “What do you want?” she asked, with a voice in which I could sense infinite sadness. “Do you want us to break up?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” I quickly said.

  Although I knew.

  I wanted to leave London as a free man. I wanted to leave Croatia, move east, as a free man. I wanted to wander around the world on my own, free. I didn’t want to leave people behind me who would be waiting for my return, who would want me to call them wherever I went, who would be worried about me wherever I went.

  My family was more than enough.

  And I couldn’t tell her what I wanted. Her, a person who was probably the best, the sweetest and the happiest I’d ever known in my whole life. I couldn’t make her feel so sad, I couldn’t hurt her.

  I couldn’t, although I sensed that I would have to do it.

  “We’ll see how it will work out,” I tried to give her the most sincere smile I could at that moment. Still, I was a coward.

  She didn’t know it. She didn’t see it. She wouldn’t let herself see it. Or I didn’t try hard enough for her to see it.

  Day 1000.

  Hey little one,

  It seems that you won’t be visiting me in Zagreb. But it’s okay. I don’t hold any grudges against you.

  In less than 24 hours I’ll be starting my long awaited Journey. On the same day, just two years after I was off to Berlin to visit you. In the end, that turned out to be my first big journey.

  Now I’m here, just about to head off. And it all makes sense now. It feels right.

  All I wanted to say to you is – thank you. Thank you for being you and for everything you’ve done for me. And if it happens that I never see you again, you know everything. Or at least you should know.

  Be happy, Chloe.

  I closed my laptop and put it in my backpack, along wit
h the things I’d need during the following one thousand days of Life on the Road. A tent, an inflatable mattress and a sleeping bag. A few pieces of summer clothing. A raincoat. My laptop, mobile phone, camera, all kinds of chargers, batteries, external hard drives. A toiletry bag. First aid kit. A torch and a Swiss knife. My stuffed sheep.

  I put my guitar over one shoulder and left home. I took another look at my backyard, my balcony, Mom’s most scented rose in the garden. I got onto a train and went downtown. I had some things to do before I left.

  “Mister Perko,” a nice lady invited me to approach the counter at the Indian embassy, “the consul would like to have a word with you.”

  “No problem,” I replied and followed her into an airy and spacey office where a man with a smile on his face was waiting for me, a man who had the power to make my life a misery.

  “Sit down, please,” he asked me, pointing to the comfortable armchair, “I’ve noticed that in your application for a tourist visa you didn’t attach a return plane ticket.”

  “That’s right,” I replied casually, with a smile on my face, “my plan is to get to India by land.”

  “By land?” he was surprised, “do you know that you will have to pass through some very dangerous areas?”

  “I’m well aware of that,” I was self-assured, or at least I sounded as though I was, “I already have visas for Pakistan and Iran in my passport.”

  “Hmmm,” he checked the fresh stamps in my passport. “What do you do, mister Perko?”

  “I have a degree in economics,” I replied proudly, “more precisely, in tourism. And basically, my journey can be seen as a practical part of my studies, having listened to the theory for so many years.”