‘What is your first country you are entering?’ often we got the question just before setting off. ‘Turkey’ – clearly ignoring quite a large european distance. Surprisingly, it taught us an unconditional care lesson.

‘How beautiful is our country’ we waived goodbye to Lithuania after our first night near the slightly frozen nevertheless adorable lake of Nava. We washed away our dust in a chilly water, and drank a lovely cup of seabuckthorn tea whilst hitchhiking towards the Lithuania – Poland border.

Kelionės pradžia. Vilnius | The very first moments of our journey. Vilnius.

Our first truck driver was Belarussian guy, with a lovely belarussian accent, that sometimes I found hard to understand. His journeys across the Caracum desert caught my interest, and his eyes full of goodness as well as his great intentions inspired us lots. He drove us much further than he needed. It seems the majority of other drivers shared the same feature. They did lovely deeds to help us along. ‘There are two students traveling around the world’ with pride and joy announced another caring driver who bought us few chocolates and pushed us some zloty towards our dinner. It seems we got from place to place not realising how it all happened, we just needed to take our backspacks from one truck to another.

Lenko fūristo vaišinta kava. | Polish truck driver's coffee.

After our windy night at the back of Slavakian border, we hitched a thumb to a driver, whose cabin’s warmth we are enjoying the second day. Fog and sunlit Slovakian hills and lakes, crowds in their best clothing slowly walking to the church to celebrate Three Wise Men feast. ‘Magyor’ announced us a driver claiming we have already hit the hungarian border. Some hours to go, and we crossed Romanian customs too. The shabby romanian suburbs frigtened us a bit, and we promised each other to keep close. It seems adventures are somewhere around the corner. Now zigzagging towards southern Romania, and very slowly we are approaching our first destiny. Turkey.

Rumunijoje pasitukusi mus žiema. | Winter in Romania.

And… we are finishing our food supplies. if we dont find money exchange office tomorrow, im going to eat meat as my stomack is already playing marches or waltzes… rah…

***

Our European part has nicely caught its tail as soon as we reached Turkey. ‘You perhaps need to slow down a little bit’ has advised my grandmother. ‘If you speed like that you soon are going to end your journey’ I could hear a huge portion of surprise in his virtual message. They should be right, as crossing Europe in less than six days feels a bit speedy. On the other hand, we always counted our adventures and real travel to commence as soon as we reach Turkey.

If anyone heard what a hodgepodge of Russian-Polish-Bulgarian we have been using with our fellow truck drivers to get a sensible chat.