User:Duffajfka

I am a Moravian hitchhiker, currently studying architecture in Weimar. When I was a child, I read many travelogues, also hitchhiking ones, and started hitchhiking at the age of 18. As of October 2021, I've done some 50 000 km, most of which either in Central Europe or on my journeys to Russia and Scandinavia, Ireland and Iran. I study architecture and my hobbies are music, languages, history and graphic design. I have a simple Polarsteps profile about my travels[1].

Stats

Longest rides: 600 km (9 hours) with a truck from Chabahar to Bam (Iran), 580 km (10 hours) with a truck from Sviyazhsk to Vladimir (Russia)

Special rides:

From a police escort with a detained person in central Russia.

Crazy ride from a crazy Arab on the bed of his pickup through Khuzestan.

Getting a ride 3 times from the same retired French pair in northern Sweden.

Getting a ride 2 times from the same retired Guardists in Chabahar and in Kerman - 1000 km and 3 days from each other!

When hitchhiking to visit my friend in Salzburg 400 km away, a couple stopped for me going to the same destination. It turned out that the driver is his brother also going to visit him.

In late February 2020 I rode with a suffering Kamaz truck with a loading capacity of 8 tons but loaded with 24 tons of hardware. This meant that we did the 50 km of the windy border road between Armenia and Azerbaijan (then Artsakh) in 3.5 hours, average speed of 14 kph. In Goris the driver replaced me with a heavy bag of rice.

Left my flute in a driver's car in rural Macedonia, found out the next day and hitchhiked tractors between the villages to look for him and finally found him and my flute.

Countries hitchhiked (in chronological order): Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Bosnia, Ireland, Wales, England, Belgium, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, Albania, N. Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary.

Favourite destinations: Istrian interior, Polish route 28 through the Carpathians, Bosnia, West Coast of Ireland, Arctic region of the Kola Peninsula, southern coast of Iran.

Easiest hitchhiking experience: West Coast of Ireland, German and Polish countryside

Hardest hitchhiking experience: Greece in the hot pandemic summer 2020 and Castile in the hot pandemic summer 2021.

Future plans: Azerbaijan, Baltics, Turkey, Newfoundland and Eastern Canada, Central Asia, Jordan, Cyprus.