Truckers: Misunderstood Travelers

   Veemer, originally a brand of auto motors, is what my sisters would nickname these usually quiet, sometimes dirty and crude guys that whistled to women on the street. The term generally meant for those who don't say much more than "Hey beautiful!" to a passing woman in a dress such as construction workers, mechanics and many times truckers.
   Although seen as rude and sometimes even creepy, these silent travelers are generally just people like you and me who have a job to do and don't usually have a lot of time for reading, socializing or getting together for a pic-nic at the park. Most are family men, fathers, grandfathers, travelers who have been to many different places and are curious about the world out there. Their jobs take them to far away roads and unheard of rest stops, except they have no time to enjoy these locations for they are always on the job and almost every time have no one to share their thoughts with, voice their concerns or express their dreams and wishes. Many stop on weekends, but they cannot do much more than sleep inside their lonely and enclosed work environment, so really you never feel like you've left work. Some of us are able to work extra hours in a day in order to have another off, if truckers drive more hours than their daily quota (the truck's computer registers it) they can get incredibly high fines for over-exhausting themselves. Most truckers just wanted to have a good job and be able to travel, much like most of us and yet nobody is around to hear their stories.
   As a hitch-hiker I've met many of them, of all shapes and sizes and different backgrounds and different motivations. They have a reason to be silent, but even more of a reason to pick-up these other lonely wanderers of the road-side with their little city signs and hopeful expressions. It's a chance for them to socialize and have a little taste of traveling (which is exchanging experiences). Truckers are always the best rides if going long distance since they can use the company and usually drive through many countries, this is common knowledge for hitch-hikers. They are generous and I've never met a driver who didn't stop to buy me a can of energy drink or a snack or share a meal with this new companion. In a sense it seems natural that these two always pair up for long or short lengths of road, the trucker and the hitch-hiker.
   Yesterday while hitching to Prizren and back I made the acquaintance of Rafit, an ethnic Albanian Kosovar who drives his truck up and down the Balkans three times a week and has only one to spend with his wife and daughters at home in Pristina. Rafit has been all over Europe, he has 6 children and 8 grandchildren at the age of 52 (it's common for Albanians to have big families). While telling me stories of his travels and his country he also shares his experiences picking up many different hitch-hikers on his routes (mostly Polish). Many of his children live in the U.K. now, except for his two younger daughters who work in Kosovo OSCE, along with his wife. He reminded me of the first trucker I met. Even though a former trucker, Orli Schemes is a Brazilian who has so many stories and wise advice, he is a man I have come to admire even more after meeting other drivers.
   I also met Fatmir, who bought me and my friend Alex a meal while going to Prizren. Even though he spoke nearly no English, we were able to work out a series of short conversations, exchanged numbers and e-mails and even took pictures with him in from of his Man brand truck he bought in Frankfurt. A very proud and friendly guy who just wanted to be a good host to his short-term visitors.
   The truth is that these gentle lonely wanderers are just misunderstood travelers of the roadways who sometimes have a chance to meet their truckless counterparts on the occasional gas station or roadside. We hitch-hikers are already big fans, but next time you meet one, have some respect and give him a break, he's been driving the whole day. If he gives you the "hey beautiful!" as you walk past, give him a smile... that's all he really wants.

On and on

            My trip has led me here and there without any specific route in my mind. All I knew is that I wanted to go to those places nobody knew much about or that someone had briefly mentioned in a story or short conversation. In many ways I have, from exploring every little corner of the Veneto in Northeastern Italy to living four months in the Balkans (mostly Kosovo) to hiking through forgotten caves and trenches in Südtirol to seeing camels in the middle of Austria to scavenging through an abandoned five star hotel in Macedonia to rowing a rubber raft through the Venetian canals to having coffee with complete strangers in Albania to sleeping with the homeless (politely invited). I’ve always gone to places trying not to backtrack too much and always compelled by a sudden curiosity to see what’s out there and try to understand it for myself instead of seeing it through the eyes of others. To understand it more than the casual tourist passerby that visits it, takes a few mental pictures and thousands of digital ones. If I were to compare it in those terms alone I’ve taken millions of mental pictures which are full of memory, sound, smell, taste and heart and considering my love for photography I’ve taken so much less of the kind you look at (the mental ones are not meant to be looked at, but transported back to and experienced again and again through memory). If I thinking about it halfheartedly I think I’ve taken a few tens of thousands of photographs, of which there might be a thousand worth showing and maybe less than a hundred from which any true feeling might be captured.
            Roughly, I’ve been to Northern Germany, London, North France, Switzerland, South France, Ligurian Italy, Lazio Italy, Triveneto Italy (it’s different everywhere you go), Austrian Tyrol, Bavarian Germany, Upper Austria, East Germany, Südtirol, Vienna (a different planet), Veneto Italy, Central Italy, Southern Italy, Albania, Macedonia, Eastern Kosovo, Northern Mitrovica, Western Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Southern Bosnia, Croatian coast, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Vienna… I write to you from the last where I delight in spending long afternoons by the Danube and entertaining evening with good new friends everyday. It is one of the few if not only larger city where I feel comfortably at home in cause for the most part everything is very efficient and from my perspective, free. Many of the places I just mentioned might not mean anything to you, they might also mean a lot but you’ll get to know them (through my mind at least)… I’ll make a big map of this actually (to-do list).
            So where am I going from here?
            South, towards Turkey and everything on the way there (it’s always been the direction my mind has always pointed to and it’s a more concrete plan than I usually have anyway).
            A few days ago someone offered me a bike, another offered me a bike luggage carrier, I found a helmet and slowly this idea of cycling down the Danube River to the Black Sea was brewing in my head. My brain brewery busy at the same time with the idea of meeting up again with Sara and go wandering and camping about. All the fermentation got cut short while I was transcribing this and read a job offer to me for an English speaking Summer camp in Ankara, Turkey, starting on June 11^th (which is a great opportunity in fact). Which would be a driving force, speeding up my trip South a bit, but also means goodbye to at least one of the other very attractive possibilities. So as much as the first two options speak a lot more to my heart and mind than something as grown up as a job offer, it might be the little push I need to move on with the journey, maybe it’s the right time. Arriving sooner in that part of the world also means I’ll have a whole new culture and people to dissect and other new concerns and conflicts to try to grasp. I’d also be able to meet my loyal friend and photo-journalist who is not far away, covering a certain conflict in a country whose leader receives those very harsh letters of concern from the U.N. while massacres are being carried out. That sort of letter little harmless friendly faced dudes like Kofi are able to send out to stop it. It would also men I could keep my promise to soon after come and visit Paula in Israel and maybe go live with the Bedouins in the deserts of Jordan… the brewing process begins again with more ingredients. Got some fine ales up in here, fine indeed.

Anyway, there’s still an interview before I know anything for sure. I hope they don’t notice I haven’t shaved today!

A Fresh New Entry

            So now I’m sitting here again writing a fresh new entry to this journal that lay dormant for so long. Time and time again have a tried writing down my thoughts so as to reflect on them later or show my nephews and nieces when their older or just to get news back to those who care simply because it feels a lot less repetitive than telling the whole thing again. I guess that’s one of the only reasons I still use Facebook, although itty bitty status updates hardly ever have what it takes to convey a feeling hard to explain in a very large journal entry alone (no matter how many nifty new features they come up with). Anyway, time and time again have I also lost my writings. Once all on a travel notebook Kiti gave me before leaving Brazil, (I remember how curious I felt to read hers) which I forgot inside a phone booth at Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport trying to call Luma in London and ask if she can pick me up somewhere when I arrived.
             If you’ve ever known me a bit longer you’d also know of my nearly chronic forgetfulness concerning items such as towels, notebooks, tooth brushes and so on. If ever you’ve found something in your flat or car that you had never seen before or didn’t recognize, there’s a good chance it belonged to me once.

            In other attempts to compile my thoughts I had once recorded my own voice to preserve my ideas, which would have been brilliant had I not erased the files by mistake when trying to make more room for pictures (which would have made no difference considering the size of a RAW file and that of a minute voice recording). In creative desperation, I’ve written on the backs of pizza boxes (6 in total) which got thrown away by Matteo or Diana in Venice. Even after many people said “Make it online, like a blog. That way you won’t lose it!” I still didn’t because I never felt inspired to write anything sitting in front of a screen. I mean it’s really counter productive, just ask anyone who has ever had to start writing an important report, book or term paper (I remember Elisa sitting for long periods of time in front of her computer waiting anxiously for her fingers to write the first line in the chapter of her TCC)… That damn screen doesn’t help, it’s all the more pressure from that little insisting ever blinking line at the top of the page waiting for a typed word to be surrendered, like a penguin does when a fish is dangled in front of it, it’s almost as if you could hear that annoying little thing say “MINE” in a Disney-Pixar seagull fashion.

            Although I must admit that at Ana Carla’s good natured journalistic request (it’s most impossible to reject something Ana asks you so innocent and politely, that’s why I’m confident of success in her chosen profession) I gave in and made this blog with one single entry of a song Bilbo sang before he set off on his journey.
            The funny thing that just dawned on me is that I’m talking about all this computer and online stuff while I’m actually just sitting on the floor in Maria’s flat in Vienna scribbling hastily on any piece of paper I can find while listening to the Across The Universe soundtrack (valeu Rafa!) which usually gets me in a reflective mood. I’m just trying not to think how boring it will be to transcribe all of this to the blog later. I’ll be laughing at myself when I type this part (and right now, I am).

            Going back to registering thoughts, I made a single entry of The Road Goes Ever On And On thinking of greater things to come and appear on this blog, which they did (they just never made it into writing before) up to the point when a few days ago my Couch Surfing friend Mila echoed something I had heard a lot. It’s about all these people who every once in a while see the things I post on Facebook and imagine how I got from one place to a completely different other the next time I update a status or post a picture and how all my fellow would be travelers would love to hear the stories, ideas and tips (which I’d love to sit down and share personally, but I can see how that’s not too easy). So half dutiful and half just wanting to put my thoughts down as a healthy exercise (as once my dark brother had rather darkly on his blog) and half so that I can be completely honest with you, my friends and maybe followers (Cassio’s words come to mind “You’re fucking Jesus!”). And yes, you did see three halves to that argument, it’s just that space and time work differently in my mind. Math on the other hand doesn’t (at all).
            So I guess I should try to explain some of my reasons, objectives, strategies, plans, yes? Well this trip used to have a plan and so did this life for that matter (even a vague notion of plans and strategies). The truth is that I set out to travel as a pause to life as I knew it, but slowly and suddenly at the same time, the two things have blurred together in a sense that today, life as I know it (or have come to know) cannot exist without travelling. Life is in fact the trip no matter how physically inert you are. Therefore, in my eyes travelling is the only way of living, which of course doesn’t mean you have to be moving all the time, it simply implies that your mind must. You just have to choose if your body will follow suit and chase after it. I did.