While Hitching from Krakow to Zilina, I got stuck in Cieszyn for the night. While sitting at a truck stop, thinking about life, and figuring out where I was going to sleep, I noticed a car pulling in. It was dark, around 10 pm. A lady got out of the car, and as I approached her I realized that she looked as if she had just been crying. She had a strange stagger to her walk, as if she had just been through something traumatic.
By this point, I had already walked up to her, and asked her if she was heading toward Zilina, she told me, in a surprisingly composed voice that she was, but would not be able to give me a ride. I tried explaing to her my situation, how I was stranded, and no cars were passing through the highway, I was supposed to be in Zilina 3 hours before, but No one would pick me up! She went in to the convince shop. And as she exited she asked me if I had asked any of the truckers. I had, but all of them were in for the night, minus a few who either were going in a different direction, or wanted money for the ride. She then told me "I am sorry, I have two children, they are very small... I mean, if you were a women, with children, maybe I would" I responded "So you don't feel safe?". She seemed very sorry, I think she wanted to pick me up. She just could not trust humanity.
This encounter crushed me. It made me think. What has humanity come to? That we can not even trust each other anymore. In a way I understand why this women did not feel safe picking up a hitchhiker in the middle of the night at some truck stop. I mean, she has no clue who I am, or what my intentions are. But I hate how all the evils in the world, that other people cause, affects everyone else, and causes fear between two people. I wish we could all trust each other...
Comments
Thanks a lot for sharing
Thanks a lot for sharing this...
sometime
I got pick up by a woman one time as I was going back home around midnight it was really dark and I finally see when I get out of the car to little baby in the back of the car, still is was a really nice ride and someone who didn't seem worried at all and easy to speak with.
sometime it's happen and there always someone to pick you up in the end
sorry
For a scared single woman, showing your passport isn't going to make her feel more reassured at all. Papers don't mean shit, and thank goodness they don't. But it sounds bad for you, out there, and that also gets me thinking... you know those times when you're waiting for a ride can be some of the most interesting ever, if you take it easy.
Recently, when I was hitchhiking to Graz, I purposely "took the night off" asking for lifts, to simply wait, relaxed, inside a petrol station with a small café. I drew for a few hours, wrote in my journal, danced around, went to the bathroom, filled up my water bottle, read my Turkish book, and so on... In the morning, the trucks started rolling again, and took me and Wouter along with them.
But that night was great for me... because I felt so much at home on the road again at night. There have been times in the past where I've felt trapped at night, waiting inside a small corridor in a long-lost petrol station somewhere in Europe, on some random highway, knowing no cars or trucks will pass me and pick me up... and then I'd come to the realization that not all hope is lost, that there is always someone, someway, and somehow, this came to feel like "home" for me.
I remember one night on the way to Sevilla, meeting a gas station attendant who was so calm, serene, and peaceful from the inside & shining out: he had spent years studying Eastern medicine, yoga, Chinese massage, and so on... What a character to meet at some random small-town nighttime petrol station truck stop in nowehereville, Spain! The way he lifted my spirit so easily, just with his presence, his simple words of reassurance; it's small moments like these that I cling to. I remember other nights, at petrol stations in France: the nasty looks I got from single women, who were dressed FAR LESS conservatively than I, wrinkled skin from too many cigarettes, washed up like wet paper bags, they stared at me, and I didn't budge or blink, simply returned the gaze.
My eyes grow heavy sometimes, and I worry about the dark circles that form underneath them. I worry that my body is aging too quickly for its years; that I will soon look older than I am. Then, I realize that age is irrelevant and just as transient as time, place, space... And at those very moments, someone sees my sign, my baggage, my stance, and my empty stare, and returns the glance with a smile: I get a lift.
Of course, several of these lifts have turned out bad: dirty, lonely old (or even young) men with nothing better to do than try to solicit me for sexual favors... Heard a million times over, attempts to weaken my spirit, to harden my smile, to make me feel like less... Mais, ça marche pas! There have been too many happy times to make me feel bad; there are too many ups to get me down. There are too many good drivers to let just a few ruin it for me, in the end. In the end, hitchhiking still works.
good luck man
you have my sympathies, hope u make it
Tell me this story has a
Tell me this story has a happy ending. Did you make it out okay (and not long after?) or does the truck stop have wi-fi?
No davide is still waiting
No davide is still waiting there :) he just phoned. ;)
Tell me this story has a
Tell me this story has a happy ending. Did you make it out okay (and not long after?) or does the truck stop have wi-fi?
No, I am still here. Yes the
No, I am still here. Yes the place does have wi-fi. I am kind of hungry, I have not eaten in two days, but at least I can surf the web...
How well did she speak
How well did she speak English?
I always try to avoid questions like "do you feel safe?".
You could have tried making her smile by saying "I might not be a women but I'm still a little boy" :)
Another possibility is to offer to show your papers, possibly in front of a security camera. At times I've been asked to show my passport or ID before I was let into people's cars.