Holidays on the road - Part II

Today I got a nice e-mail from Glenn, one of the "CS roadtrip crew" from Amsterdam to Italy. It happened less than 3 weeks ago but it seems such a long time ago. He recorded a beautiful video of our trip... it's so cool to look back and remember, and this was only 2 out of 17 days trip!




Kraków, Warsaw and Berlin...
I arrived Friday night in Kraków, curious and prepared to stay at Bartek's flat, together with 16 other couchsurfers. The weekend was just amazing, really great experience, very different from other CS experiences I had had so far. The best part was that the group there was made of very interesting people, who were partying together, visiting Kraków and surroundings together, cooking together, and of course, sleeping together...

I have many reflections about couchsurfing, and I'll soon dedicate an exclusive blog post to write about this way of living, this mindset...

After the weekend in Kraków, I hitchhiked easily to Warsaw, even at below zero temperature, where I met with couchsurfers and also my 21-year old brother, Gabriel. He has been traveling around, finishing up his 1,5 year in Barcelona (lucky eh!), before going back to Brazil. After New-Years, I realized that over the last 10 years, I spent new-years eve in 7 different countries!!! (Brazil, Canada, Romania, Lithuania, Denmark, China and now, Poland). I must confess, there is NO PLACE IN THE WORLD better than Brazil for new-years eve. That's my first resolution of 2009: be in Brazil for next reveillon!

I love Poland and this time I had a different experience, meeting more local people and exploring my "local" places. Plan B is my favorite hang-out place in Warsaw, together with Cafe Kulturalna!

After being so successful hitchhiking from Krakow, I expected a challenging but doable ride to Berlin (about 600km). Besides the days being extremely short in the winter (gets dark at 4pm), I underestimated the weather and I was definitely unprepared for it. As I started, I managed pretty ok (only 30min waiting) to leave Warsaw when the wind started. Bloody freezing wind, at -8C, it was getting harder. I managed another ride and I was about 2/5 of my journey when the day became darker and the snow started falling. Quickly the snow became heavy snow and I was unable to stay on the road. I came to a gas station where I had some protection from the wind, but I only found local traffic. Bad, bad, bad. 3pm and it was dark. At 3.30pm I gave up. At 4pm I got a ride (my "consolation" award) to the nearest train station, and I continued to Berlin by train. Lost this time, but lesson learnt! (until next time... ;-))

Marco "Loko" Bezerra was waiting for me in Berlin. We know each other since we're 12, studying at the Military School in Porto Alegre until the age of 17. Great teenagehood times, great fun. We haven't seen each other for 5,5 years, since I moved to São Paulo. Now he lives in Berlin with his wife and works for a major advertising agency. Great stuff he is doing. It was actually very easy to connect with him and share some stories, not only from old times, but how we see things today, how we changed but kept some things in common, such as our concern about our country the desire to come back and create a positive impact. As Marco said, "it's not enough to clean our own shit anymore. We have to clean the shit of 10 other people if we want to leave a place for our kids". I also met some kaospilots in Berlin, visited The Hub and walked around Berlin, completely white after a good night of snow, the temperature was also quite cold, -10C.

On the way to Denmark, by bus, the temperature slowly going up, the sun disappearing and no signs of snow in Aarhus, The temperature has been always above zero!!

Now I'm back, finally settled after a few days of rest, school restarted and I already met everybody... time to plan my final project and my final semester at the Kaospilots...

In total, I did about 4,000km on car, train, bus, hitchhiking and flying, and spent an average of 25 euro per day (too many "parties" although almost no alcohol).