De Barcelona a Genova

I left the house at 6. I took a metro to Passeig de Gracia and from there a train to Montcada. Near the station was a station on the highway which was perfect for getting a lift to France. After a while of asking, a man who went to Switzerland offered to take me to Nimes, almost halfway. We were chatting about everything and ate a big sandwich of tortilla prepared his wife and a Coke. But I was pretty tired and not paying enough attention, so I missed my stop, so I had to do some almost 100 kms. to Orange. There, I met a veteran truck driver named Jean Claude, who deviated from his route to take me in the right direction, a very good spot after a toll and there were several groups of people hitchhiking.

The place was fantastic, and after only 2 minutes stopped Danielle and Manuel, who came from a reggae festival and went to Nice, about 300 kms. With them I discovered to my surprise, that I speak French! We were about three hours talking about France, its places and people, and I understood them perfectly and they understood me. We stopped awhile at the roadside, and they invited me to the tastiest tomatoes and melons than I had in my life.

We said goodbye on a toll before Nice on the highway, which was a quite bad spot. After just an hour, a van stopped, with Gotama, Laetitia, crazy Jean-Marie, small Yulan and Theodore and his beautiful dog Valkyrie. They were doing a study tour on alternative fuels, renewable energy and reuse of waste and going from Switzerland, so it was my shirt with the flag of the Alpine country what they decided to stop. We went to Empire, in Italy, relaxed pace, laughing and drinking beer. Here we find Antonio, Elio, Tiziana and Nicolas who followed in another van.

We said goodbye and I started to ask people. After a while I met Agatha and her son Pacome, who despite being travelling in an overloaded car made room for taking me near Genoa. Pacome told me about his travels in the Trans-Siberian through China, Mongolia and Russia. Despite being a very young boy, he was full of interesting ideas and plans. Agatha told me about his work as an agent of contemporary artists, and we talked about how screwed the art scene was.

We said our goodbyes and parted ways, and then one last ride with some guys from Algeria, Morocco and Romania, which led me to the bus stop that left me in town, and after a bit of an ordeal I met James at the center at 10 pm . We talked about the latest adventures and began to make plans for the trip. We had no place to sleep, and as we thought we trated ourselves to the luxury of a cheap kebab. Then happened one of the miracles that happen when you travel: a girl asked me where was I from, I said "Argentine" and she said she knew an Argentine who hitchhiked around the world. I told him I was hitching Europe, and she asked out of the blue if we needed somewhere to sleep. Boom! Thanks God, your ways are amazing ...