The train took 5 hours, we had no battery in our phones, no internet connection and no food (expect two pieces of pizza from yesterday). Luckily it wasn't too hot in the train, actually I would rather say it was too cold. We tried to sleep, but couldn't as we had to take some pictures of the amazing views.
In Ventimiglia we went first to eat something. We found a nice little restaurant. There we ate a proper lunch and checked our mails.
We found also one market to buy fruits for our trip and C-vitamin for my flu. Aka red berries.
Shower in the sea and then back on the roadside.
It was again quite a bad place to HH, but we weren't able to go further because of the autobahn. While I was checking for some better place Mika started to scream in Finnish "Hey Finnish guys, come on, stop!". I saw the white Audi TT with Finnish register sign. Inside was two guys who had left from Helsinki only the other day. So they had been driving really fast. They told that they had seen only a few accidents on the road. With the word only I mean only driving, not stopping anywhere. Atleast for me it doesn't make any sense, but Mika joked that maybe they had taken the car just for a weekend test drive from the shop and were in a real hurry. The dudes where funny, they took pictures of us with their iPhone machine. Unfortunately they couldn't take us as there were no places.
I love Polish and German people. It would have been great to get atleast one ride from the local, Italian people, but no. We got lucky, the man called Berthard and his daughter Natalia were so lovely and helpfull. I could say it seemed that they were truly interested of us and our trip. They were going near to Cannes as they were living in a small village on the hill. They had been doing some Canyoning that day. Canyoning is a sporty way of swimming and jumping down a mountain river. So they were happy and excited of explaining the experiences they had gotten. We should have tried that also in Madonna di Campiglio. (You always get ideas and make plans for next trips to come as you are traveling)
It came out Berthard was a member of Couchsurfing, but he hadn't been hosting anyone yet. Well, maybe he noticed that we are not bad people and offered us his couch for the night. Ofcourse we were really surprised and appriciated by that invitation a lot and so we were ready to go and see the countryside of Southern France.
The house was something awesome with a pool, beautiful garden, red fishes and a dog called Pepsi.
In the evening we ate together tasty and fresh bread with smoked salmon, ham, cheese and local tomatoes, drunk rosevine and mixed beer. I actually liked that beer as it wasn't so strong. We were told it is a French habit to mix the beer with tonic water or lemon limonade. Maybe I will do it back at home also.
I saw from the pictures inside of the house that Natalia rides also. She told to having a horse in Poland and nowadays being a teacher for the young rides. She also showed us pictures from the big jumping competitions she had taken part in. The biggest edge was 2,0 metres high and it looked just amazing when she was flying with her horse over it.
After having found Berthard's profile from CS we went to sleep as next morning we needed to wake up early.
Sunday 5th
Breakfast was sweet like always in the Southern countries of Europe, I think. I got musli with gogi berries and milk, omg how I had missed it. They offered us ham and cheese with the bread, unfortunately our darkbread had gone bad so they couldn't taste that we usually eat in Finland. Natalie was lovely and made us bread also to take away.
Berthard and Natalia left to pick up their friend from the airport of Nice and took us next to the road going towards Toulon and Marseille.
If I said that Friday was the worst HH day ever, I'm sorry to say I was wrong. We stood beside the road almost four hours before getting the ride. Most of the people passing by didn't even look at us even I was almost standing on their way. I got really angry that I have been learning some French just because it sounds nice. That day I realized the French people are not so nice and it feels insane. Well, it might be just bad luck, but if it continues it cant be.
Finally we got the ride. The dude was spending his holidays (I have noticed people maybe take more easily HHs in if they are on holiday), he liked lindyhop and watersports like kitesurfing. He was actually from France, but spoke surprisingly good english.
He took us to a resting place and there were a lot of cars and trucks. We thought it must be a good place to continue towards Barcelona. Yeah on the road we thought about dropping out in Toulon, but desided to just continue. We had to change our plans and not go to see white wild horses or naked beach. But I think it would have been impossible to HH back from Toulon. Or maybe if we have found Polish or Austrian people to get us a ride.
We offered him lunch and coffee so he could still drive about 600 km back to home. We loaded our phones a bit and then just started to HH again. I thought it would be easy, but no. There were also other HHers, I think three couple some of which were going to Toulouse and some on the same way than we.
The others got a ride, we didn't and gave up at 7 pm. Mika has found one truckdriver who was driving trough Barcelona next morning at leaving 4 am. We thought it would be an option, as then we didn't have to pay the hotel or hostel and were able to sleep there in a gasstation in a tent for free.
There was just a one problem, some dude that had eaten too much mushrooms and stuff. He was walking around the station, sometimes he stopped to speak with the trees or to look for some food from the bins. The evening came and I wasn't ready to put up a tent. I was so scared but also very tired and we had no more options than just to go to sleep on a table until 4 am.
Mika:
I was still asking for rides from other cars, but mostly they were eighter full or not interested in english speakers. When it started to be really late Janina tried to sleep on a bench next to the station while I was still asking for rides. I saw a guy trying to take off with a car that sounded really broken. i went to stop him and managed to explain the situation. We opened the hood and I saw that another rubber strap that gives power to water pumo, charger, etc engine parts was broken. Just like in Austria when the Audi broke on the road while we were in it. This time I got to help the owner as he didn't understand much about cars. So I explained to him that he needs a mechanic to put in a new one. We got a younger kid to translate. He spoke english and the same language as the dude it wasn't one that I had heard before. Maybe it was African language. He was really thankful for the help but couldn't take us towards our destination with that car. :)
After that episode, I joined Janina on the table for some sleep before tha truck would leave.
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