First rides - #2HT

Here we go. It's the second chapter of my adventure. For who didn't see the first one, just check it out: Charleroi.

After my arrival in Charleroi that I've spent just few hours walking around and eating some fries until starts my first trip.

My travel strategy was about to send Couchsurfing requests to stay in places that were in the way of my trip, looking in cities that could be interesting to visit as well. Who would accept me, I would go to the highway trying to reach my destination. I had to do it everyday. Once I didn't know where I would sleep in the day after, two nights later I couldn't know where I would be neither. It was in the beginning; overtime I would learn how to plan my trip at least in few days in advance.

So, I've sent some requests to Namur, the capital of Walloon, just 50km away from Charleroi and I was accepted to stay in the place of a Belgium girl. Then I need to figure it out how to reach there. 

Theoretically 50km for a day trip don't seem to be that complicated, however it wasn't that easy as I expected. 

My first act was walking until the exit of the city. Travelers use different strategies, such as stop in gas stations and ask to drivers, but I preferred to be in the exit of the city with a signal indicating the city's name that I wanted to go and wait to someone help me. That's how I got stuck after my first riding in the exit of the city in a dead gas station with no clients.

In this beginning of my trip something unexpected happened, my backpack just broke. My partner that would spend my entire trip with me was died in the first day. Pretty bad, but luckily there was a Decathlon just next to the spot that I was: like 15min walking. It's a store with a lot product for travelers and people that practice sports. Most of the products made by good material in a nice budget.

Then in this cold day beginning of April I just bought the cheapest one that I found that seemed to be a good one. It would be my partner for this trip and many other that I had and I'll have, once that it's still alive. The cool blue backpack that you saw in the previous post with 40L cost me 35 euros.

Once I was in the street and my broken backpack and it was really well packed, I couldn't exchange my stuff from the old to the new one. Basically I carried both all the time.

Walking back to my first spot, I've spent 30min until finding my first ride. It was a Belgium woman with a fancy car, really well dressed that stopped for picking me up. Honestly I wasn't expecting it. Sometimes I have the feeling that how rich you are, it makes you help people less.

It was a curious time, we had some small talks, once in this time my French was really poor and it was the only language that she could speak. During one of these small talks, she just received a call and after 1 or 2 minutes she suddenly started to cry, but to cry hardly. I didn't understand what was going on and I couldn't help her, because I couldn't communicate with her. The best thing that I could say was: "Ça va"?

I felt a little bit frustrated because my language skills didn't let me help her. After few kilometers she just dropped me in a spot that I took another ride and I will never know what really happened with her. 

Magically few minutes later one Belgium guy seems to be 35 - 40 years old just stopped me and gave me a ride. This was for more less 10min, again He didn't speak English and my memories about this ride was that he was driving really fast in this small road that we were. In one of his French speeches, I just understood that he took cocaine few minutes before and he wants proof me it showing his noose. That moment I understood the reason why he was driving crazily. It was fun, even kind of the dangerous, but gladly just for 10min. Afterwards he dropped me saying that he was going to a bar and he offered me a beer, but I wasn't that comfortable to accept his offer, I just decided to keep going to reach my goal? Namur.

My last ride that took less than 10min and it was the normal one for this trip. It was a Belgium student, younger than me that gladly spoke English allowing us having a conversation. Our 30min were nice and he dropped me in the city center, really close from my CS place.

Well, these were my first rides to reach Namur, I will tell you about Namur in my next post. Keep following #HT.