Hey, hey. It’s been a while now. A lot of stuff happened, but nothing that should have really prevented me from blogging. Anyway, that’s all for the mea culpa.

I remember receiving an email from someone who asked when I was going to blog again. Sadly, I lost it and I believe I never answered. I guess I’m writing this partly for you.

I came back from Norway something like the end of July last year. If you know me, you know I have a shitty memory. I can’t remember the names of people I’ve spent time with. I can’t remember the birthdates of people I love. People forgive this, saying that a lot of stuff happens in my life, but maybe I’m just uncaring. Or it’s neurologic. Whichever the reason is, I tend to remember only the most random things in a very detailed manner, so when it comes to making a timeline of what happened after I left Norway, — ugh…

Norway part 2

1. Leaving Norway and the people who hosted. Thank you again, I had a wonderful time.
2. Hitchhiking down to Europe in five days with no break. Remarkably, I had very little incentive to stop on my way. I wanted to go to the Hitchgathering and home for a while. This was enough to make me let go of my original goal of going back through Finland, Sweden and maybe even Russia. The latter is sadly less conceivable now because of the current events.

One thing to note about Northern Norway in summer, is that it feels very safe because of the sun shining from 0200 to 0155. Since there is only one road (E6) with a 90 kmh speed limit, you can hitchhike from almost anywhere and there is traffic even during the late hours. All this means that my hitchhiking hours were very much out of the ordinary, with my day often starting at 1100 and ending at 0100 in the morning.

A ferry on the main road in Norway. Ferries in Norway are very nice and completely hitchhikable.

Coming back to Southern Norway—there is no Western or Eastern Norway, since the country is pretty much one big strip—was a sort-of surprise. There was night! Starting at Trondheim is the highway again. The part between Trondheim (or Trondhjem as one person told me—you’d be surprised by the number of dialects in Norway) and Oslo was pretty slow the first time. I was therefore a bit scared. But pickup was quick this time as I got dropped in a village with a complaisant speed limit full of people crossing through on their way to Oslo. I remember now the man who picked me up was a teacher living in a town south of the capital (Friedricksomething). It was a long way to go, around seven hours, and I can only note that it was the only time I spoke with my driver for the whole ride. One long, interesting conversation.

I’m getting lost here a bit again.

A very big yet empty truck stop before the Norway-Sweden border. I ended up black riding the bus through the border all the way to a small Swedish seaside town.

I slept at the port of this ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingør. Tip: When hitchhiking between Norway and Germany, hitchhike the ferries and ask in the ferries if people are going further. I crossed Denmark twice, but surprisingly never laid a single foot on danish soil.

Hitchgathering 2022

1. Now, I don’t remember if I went to visit the people hosting the HG2021 before or after Norway, but I believe after. I’m too lazy to check dates. So, I stayed in Geneva for a week and then hitchhiked to a Lieu-dit called La Framondié where I discovered a wonderful nature and discussed a lot with the people there to organize the gathering.

EDIT: I visited the place before going to Norway… I won’t edit the text, but I found some pictures to brighten a bit this block of text. I’ll upload some pictures of the trip to Norway in another article.

The tarn river

On the way back from La Framondié, I got picked up by a family of three living in their caravan. They were not going the right way, but looked so interesting that I got in with them. They were working in a circus and had a three or so years old daughter. Interestingly, they said that, opposite to their friends, they were not going to stop traveling because they had a kid. They had DIYed a crêpes-making-icecream-selling-trailer that they planned to go to Croatia with during the summer to make money to buy a bigger caravan. I liked this couple because they were surprisingly patient and strong-willed in living their life the way they wanted. They had built their home in the cheapest area of France almost entirely themselves. That’s something I’ll never have the strength to.

The circus in question

1. The gathering happened a few weeks later. It was, while a wisdom-giving social experiment, a complete mess in my opinion. I blame it on the COVID. Yeah, fuck COVID. Everything was set up to have a nice gathering with workshops and all, but on the first few days someone felt sick and was tested positive for the now-famous sickness. This was before the restrictions lift, and it instantly divided our community in groups.

I was very proud, though. Even if it was the most tiring gathering I ever had, everyone was trying the hardest they could to have community debates and an inclusive process for everybody to talk about what measures we should implement. Retrospectively, I’m sad about the point-of-view I had during the discussions, but I know it was, both for me and some other people I spoke to at the end, a source of enlightenment about exclusion and the impossibility of including people in discussions about exclusion. While we might have lost some humanity (whatever that means) at the gathering, we had an incredibly alerting experience on the direction our society can take under some conditions. The end of the gathering had everyone too tired of debating and was a much calmer and enjoyable time.

Getting an “ateba” made by friends at La Framondié

1. I left some stuff at La Framondié, I should get it back.

Uh.

Post-gathering

1. After the gathering, the various now-friends groups split up in different directions.

It’s crazy how I have trouble putting everything together in a straight line.

• My favourite Lithuanians (non-derogatory-term) bought a Brit’ car for 500 EUR and decided to drive back to their home country—I can note they lived more in London than in the latter.
• I hitchhiked with a French girl from the gathering to visit the squat of the most incredibly crazy group of travelers-punk-whatever I met (the Nakamas—yes, One Piece).
• Meanwhile, some friends hitchhiked and hiked near Andorra to stay in a mountain hut. I planned on joining them later.

Staying at the squat in Barcelona, I met some people who left a really strong mark on me. I also got to enjoy a lifestyle I already knew, but which I was never able to try fully. If I can point out one thing of public interest to me and my readers, is that all the people at this place were the livest and the freest spirits I’ve ever met in my life. I can’t insist more on this. Furthermost, there was always someone playing music somewhere and that’s really nice.

Please don’t talk. It’s dangerous.

1. After one week there, I hitchhiked to Andorra. The French girl had already left to meet some friends in Barcelona. I hitchhiked in a day, and it was a bit short because I stopped to visit the capital, although I wanted to do the walk to one mountain hut on the way so I could sleep.

I made an interesting encounter on the way to Andorra. Not a single Andorran plate was picking me up (these rich bastards, was I thinking) when this elder woman with two boys picked me up. She was a traveller too, she told me. Turns out she was a travelling writer who sailed across the world before settling in Andorra after seeing an ad for real estate there in a newspaper in whichever eastern asian country she was thirty years ago. She now has written a book about the history of Andorra and its secrets. (Side note, to become an Andorra citizen, you need to read three history and politics books about the country on which you will be tested before citizenship.)

Tax-free Andorra is worth it if you’re either a smoker or a drunk person.

Andorra la Vella sits quite high in the mountains. It’s, in fact, the highest capital of Europe.

Landscapes in the Pyrenees are to me, Swiss person, much prettier than the Alps. I got to the hut, started a fire and went to sleep.

The second part of this straight was the toughest because I had a 6 hours hike across the mountains from Andorra. There is not much to talk about it though. Hiking paths are similar in Andorra and Switzerland and very well-marked, but once I crossed the border to the French side, I lost myself at least six times. A very interesting experience as there was not a single person in the perimeter. I was very happy to have my smartphone and powerbank charged this day.

A bright day in Andorra!

The border crossing is magnificent and makes you understand how mountains shape borders. The clouds were stuck on one side of the peak.

*The fog in France is definitely a reason I got lost so many times.”

A pretty hunter’s cabin in the Pyrenees.

I then joined the others just at the exact time they were leaving the cabin. You can decide if it’s luck or not. What this meant though, is that I would have to walk back one hour the same way I came from. I was happy to be back with the others. They had decided to walk a bit and sleep in another hut on the way back to civilization. On the way to this cabin, we met a big herd of cows guided by a shepherd. The path wasn’t thick and we didn’t really try to go around them, which got them scared. So they ran. Down. The shepherd was completely mad. I was happy the other didn’t understand French because he let out some nasty words. I felt very sorry for him, because he said he lost around a week of work getting these cows up in the pastures. Sheperd must be a really hard job. At the same time, he’s going to sell these cows to their death, so that was making me feel better.

We stayed for a few days at a friend’s friend house before I hitchhiked westward with two-three friends toward Arcachon and the ocean.

Not a lot happened there. We tried dumpster-diving a Déc*thlon dumpster and found a brand-new tent covered with shit. We walked three hours in the complete dark and some friends tried paragliding with M.—I did it with him the summer before. I hitchhiked a bit with them eastwards before doing the last bit alone the same day. Arriving at around 0500 in Geneva.

Oh. I recorded some nice interviews and music along the whole way. These will come out later this month.