summer trip 2013 - part 1/5

my original idea, which i had back in 2010, was jus to visit the baltic states. then last year, during the summer buli tour, one of the girls said she had had an amazing experience hitchhiking from poland to finland, so i borrowed her idea and this was my plan for 2013..

considering i had never hitchhiked before, i went on looking for someone to do it with me, and a couple of weeks before the trip, i found a friend with plenty of experience willing to share the adventure.. and with her, more changes of plans.. we decided to start a week earlier in italy instead..

off i went to bologna, home to the oldest university in the western world, and still basically a student city.. considering it was august, most of the locals/students left the city to visit their hometowns or to escape the high temperatures, around 40^oc, and with them, the social life of the city..

i managed to couchsurf there, and we were lucky enough to gather a small group of CSers to hang out a couple of times around via pratello, normally the busiest place in town.. other than that, some sightseeing like piazza maggiore, fontana di nettuno, torre degli asinelli and torre dei garisenda.

after a couple of days, it was time to begin the hitchhiking trip.. we decided to go to zürich, took a bus to a busy service station right out of the city, and 2 hours later, we found our first ride to milan.. 3 more hours there and a second ride to the entrance of the saint gotthard tunnel (third longest tunnel in the world, already in switzerland)..

even though there were thousands of cars slowly driving by, we weren’t lucky, and we ended up sleeping between the picnic tables in our sleeping bags.. cold night, hard floor, but beautiful view! next morning we finally made it to zürich, and we had no idea what waited for us there...

it was the street parade, the biggest street event of the year, with around 950,000 people partying and dancing to electronic music all day, all over the city.. it was a beautiful and colorful day.. no sightseeing needed!

we stayed at a friend’s place, and next day we had an awesome brazilian/argentinian style barbecue in ziegelhütte, a nice park, apparently not very well known by the locals and definitely not by the tourists..

next day, the hitchhike nightmare started..

[continues here]