I hitchhiked in total for 5139 km.
I travelled for 13 days.
I got lifts from 21 drivers.

The day before the last was the hardest. I had managed to get to Gdansk after a lot of waiting and after spending the weekend there, I thought that getting to the Baltics would be a piece of cake. Instead, after many hours of trying, I managed to get a ride down to Warszaw. Not exactly the right direction, but I took it. Sure, we checked the trucks at the stations on the way, and the trucker was very kind, though he only spoke Polish. A language which I definetely do not speak. But I ended up in Warszaw feeling frustrated that I had gone so far in the wrong direction and even more frustrated as the next day, after spending half the day waiting, my best option was to ride back with the same driver exactly the same way we had come and just make it about 30 more km east of Gdansk than before. I wanted to cry, I called my friends, few of whom said what I wanted to hear and I tried to remember why I was doing this again. I didn’t know.

I called my friend in Mozambique. She understood me, but felt so far away. In a different life.

We drove north again for four hours, and I was dropped by a small gas station in the middle of nowhere around five in the evening. After more than an hour of thumbing (none of the truckers were going my way, but I was kindly offered a ride back to Gdansk), two very kind Polish brothers picked me up and did a huge detour to take me 30km instead of 5km, to a better spot for me to thumb.

By this time it was around 19 and I was in a good mood again. The sun was low on the beautiful Polish countryside and I figured I could go for another good hour before starting to think about where to sleep.

Cars kept going past. But I was on the road leading to Lithuania, so they were all going my way.

Suddenly a car with a horse trailer burned past me, closely followed by an enormous horse truck which stopped.

The driver had already opened the door and was scooping piles of stuff out of the front seat as I approached. Music was playing and he spoke, almost yelling, about a hundred words a minute.
– Where are you going?
I smiled and raised my voice – why be shy?
-Estonia! I yelled to outdo the music.
He stopped in what he was doing, clearly surprised, then said:
– Come on! We’ll take you all the way!

I threw myself and my stuff inside as he stepped on the gas. As it turned out, he has been driving tightly behind the other car with the horse trailer. Both the trailer and the truck in which I was sitting had been bought by my driver in Germany, and him and his friend were currently driving them home. And they intended to drive through the night.

It was just an off chance they took this small road instead of the highway.

Both the men were Estonian. My driver’s jaw dropped to the floor as I started speaking my mother tongue with him. Later on it turned out that as I child, I took riding lessons from one of the teachers he is currently employing at his stables.

What my friend told me as I had called her in my frustration was:
“I will pray for someone to pick you up and take you straight home.”

I think of it as a day later, I jump off the horse truck and say good bye to my drivers, smack in the middle of my country. Sometimes luck is what other people wish for you.

And I am grateful.

To all the kind people who stopped and asked me where I was going. To all the people who took a detour, just to take me a little but further. To everyone hearing me out through my broken languages. To everyone offering me food, coffee, beer, candy, water, soda, fruits. To everyone wishing me a safe journey, truly, deeply with their hearts wanting me well as we parted ways; they thought it so loudly I could hear it in their eyes:

“Please, get home safe.”

To the twists of fate, leading me to be in the right place, at the right time.

And I am grateful to me. For my courage, for my stubbornness. And for my softness, that I’m still learning.

What a life I get to have.

Thank you.

…

(This story told in pictures.)