In my sweaty hands I am holding a warm cup of tea. The cabin of the truck is hot and my belly is full. The window is rolled down. In front of us is a grey gravel wall, behind which is the highway nr. 9. We’re in Germany. The noise of the traffic passing is loud, though somewhat suppressed by the wall. On both sides of the truck, as well as behind us, are other trucks taking their breaks.

Leisurely I pick up a cookie from a nearby bag an put the little thing in my mouth. It’s Polish and it tastes like in my childhood. I let it crumble slowly as I sip my tea.

It was yesterday morning I joined with my current driver. As my previous Portugese host dropped me off at a gas station near Paris, I exclusively went for the trucks with their cars registered in Poland, Latvia or Lithuania; few other companies drive to Poland, I’d been told, because they don’t pay too well.

Most had still their curtains drawn and windows shut. Some just shook their head as I approached and tried to make contact through the window. One spoke neither English nor Russian, and two others didn’t yet know where they were headed. (One of them told me that I could go with him if I wanted when he knew where he’d be sent, and I told him I’d check in with him later, which I never did.) Finally I found a man in a Polish truck, smoking peacefully out of the window. He told me he was going to Wrocław, that he was waiting for his trailer but would leave when it came. He welcomed me aboard.

He introduced himself as Vasilij and as I asked, he told me he was from Kazakstan. He told me he was 51 and that he had been working as a cargo driver in Europe for the past three years. He told me about his country, what foods were good, the corrupt politicians and the kind and hospitable people. As we crossed the French countryside he’d sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence to comment on the landscape:
“Now isn’t that just beautiful? Makes the eye happy.”

He said “blin” a lot, and jokingly called me сударыня [sudarynja] as he asked my permission to smoke or toasted to my health with his cold coffee.

He himself was a prime example of hospitality. From the start he told me to feel at home and he insisted on sharing his meals with me. “What do you want to eat for lunch? There’s rice, gretchka, sausage, pork, bread. Fishsticks, potatoes. Do you want some sauce? Coffee? We could fry eggs. Have these biscuits.”

And I ate all of it. He usually bought his food in Poland, which suited me and my eastern European tastebuds well; in the less than two days that I hitched with him, I nearly finished his bread.

We crossed the border to Germany in the evening after having driven through France all day, and I got to sleep in the top bunk of the cabin. In the morning he asked me to make the breakfast. At this point, I already knew where all the stuff was, and I was happy to fry us some eggs and bacon. And of course, bread. I saw it made him happy too, having someone cook for him.

The contrasts of this journey are staggering. Just some days ago, I was sleeping in bushes and eating maybe one meal a day, if carrying a can of beans felt at all attracting to me, or if I could find a store. Or I would have some white bread and call it a day. My feet were aching and full of sores because of my too tight shoes, and my back and shoulders were exhausted from carrying the bags. Sleeping inside, sitting down and having real meals felt like proper heaven and I enjoyed every second of it. I took my shoes off in the cabin and let my swollen and sore feet rest. On the second day, they were already feeling way better.

And, maybe for the first time in my life, I have really felt joy and gratitude for my post-soviet cultural heritage. Because I can understand this hospitality, the jokes and the complaints, even though my Russian is slow. Thanks to this part of me, I can relate to somebody all the way from Kazakstan (which actually is very close to my father’s home city, Volgograd.) My heart aches with gratitude as I let myself become adopted, become a guest, a daughter, a protegée, and I long so much for the moment when I am able to give it back and pass it on.

I don’t know how my journey will continue, who I will meet or how I will get where I want to go. And this insecurity makes me appreciate these moments of kindness even more when I can land in a friendly presence like a bird in a palm of a hand; I feel held, I feel safe.

Oh, and I can’t wait to visit Kazakstan.

…

(This story told in pictures.)