See the goal, don't see obstacles

by Nataliia Hrytsenko (Ukraine)

A leap into the unknown Ukraine

I lost my the best job opportunity at that time, almost failed my University and what I decided to do after 2 days depression? Euro-trip for 1 month with hitch-hiking and Couchserfing( where you can find another travelers, who will share their house with you for free, but in our case for ukrainian souvenirs), because my budget was approaching to 0, so that was the plan was to survive. I got only once this kind of experience. My first trip was to Spain( Barcelona-Malaga) for 1 euro from Black Friday sale, when there were no hitch-hiking in their culture and we, 3 unexperienced loosers, almost missed our flight and all our money stuck in bla-bla-car system, when we stuck at some gas station at night, at the middle of nowhere… Anyway, nothing can stop really passionate traveller, so this time, with holy Ryanair we got a chance to visit 10 countries in Europe for 20 euro. When we got to Norway, after a hard day of hitch-hiking the driver offered us to visit a big bridge. Of course, we agreed. It was amazing and huge. He left us there and we met the best sunset in our lives. Anyway, this bridge was between the tunnel 8 km long and some abandoned village, after 50km of fields… it was 11p.m (we lost a time, because it’s light till deep night). There were no cars to hitch-hike, so our choice was 8 km tunnel…by foot. We sing songs, played games not to go crazy. When there were trucks we went under the wall and prayed not to die. When we almost finished that uncertain job,some man in a white car came for us. As it turned out, the police watched us in cameras, closed the tunnel and wanted to give a fine, but was too busy, so they called this man and we went without a fine. Anyway, night on a street was obvious that time. When we returned to Ukraine and passed my hard-time University, we couldn’t stay long there and decided to go to Balcan countries to hitch-hike.The problem was, that I had tickets to Ibiza to go low-cost clubbing with my another friend( it was her dream) in 2 weeks. So we just had to return to Ukraine in 2 weeks. It was a total disaster. Hitch-hiking didn’t work and my friend lost his phone, it was really hot so we put yogurts on our burned skin not to burn it more( now I am realizing why h-h didn’t work) . On the top of it I hurt my leg in our last day during climbing on the waterfall in Bulgaria( after 21 day the doctor would tell me that it’s broken, but now I had no clue about it). I just came to Ukraine, picked my friend and the next day we went to Ibiza. Trying to save some money, we were late for flight and were running 6 km. With my broken leg. It got much worse, but I worried about my friend’s dream more. When we arrived to Ibiza, we had no host, because it was a summertime. After spending some time at street, finally some hippi texted us that we were welcome to his house. You must saw this angry eyes of my friend, who expected to watch “fancy ibiza lifestyle”, but instead we were living in a old garage for a boat, with no electricity, no shower, no kitchen, no sanitary, but amazing people and dogs. Hippies were doing bubble show, playing guitar, diving and chilling. One of them was living in a cave. That was totally new. But my friend didn’t like this at all also with my broken leg, so we left this wonderful people and found another guy. He was fancy and my friend was glad with this. But at night we must share 1 bed for 3 of us, so my friend chose to sleep on a carpet in bathroom( fancy one, probably). The next day this guy kick us out, because his ex-girlfriend returned, so friend, me and broken leg stayed on street this time… Hitch-hiking from Madria to Ukraine was too, but i leave it for another story...