More detours, detours for me.

I am dropped off at a Rastplatz just outside of Wiener Neustadt, a detour my driver took for me. It’s getting dark, it’s raining, it’s full of people and trucks. There is a McDonalds and the highway is blasting by. It’s perfect.

I am still feeling insecure but the engine is starting in a nearby truck and I give myself a push and I approach it, determined to ask.

The window is rolled down for me and I am lucky: the driver speaks English. He looks patiently at me and my enormous backpack while I tell him that I am looking for a ride south, towards Graz maybe. He tells me he is going to Klagenfurt. I have no idea where that is, and so he takes his phone out and shows me. It is a while further south-west of Graz. It is just on the way to the Italian border, and he is willing to take me.

It is perfect.

Night falls and the mountains rise around us like black waves. The highway is lit and the tunnels are many and as we come out of them, the rain hits us straight up and the small towns glisten in the valleys all around us: handfuls of wet lights. I am euphoric to be in a truck again, feeling like a king, warm and dry, looking out through the windows up high, pleasantly chatting with my driver. He tells me about his son and his wife, about how he misses Romanian culture while having migrated to Austria, about driving too fast on his motorcycle. He thinks me silly for being impressed about the skill with which he manouvers his veichle but I can sense that behind it, he is proud. We pass by his home town, one of the glistening pools in one of the valleys where, behind one of the lights, his wife is home with his sick son.

My driver pulls into an empty pocket by the road and turns off the engine. We share a simple dinner and he lets me sleep in the top bunk. Still having no tent, I am grateful to not have to look for a sheltered spot in the dark and the rain, and I fall asleep the second I lay down. I remember the sweet sensation of my bare feet being warm.

The next morning we move out at five. It is still dark. When is dawns, it is grey and foggy and as the fog lifts, I find us surrounded by mountains.

…

(This story told in pictures.)