You cannot really imagine the Russian roads until you’ve seen them. They go straight, straight forward for hours and days, just one direction with a village or city once in a while passing. Fortunately, the M9 is just some 600 km short until the European stronghold is sending its lights out in the air. But first things first.

Getting rides seems to be pretty easy today, the second lift appears just after a minute walking along the highway. A 7.5t truck, my favourite type of transportation next to old Lada cars. Alex, around 25 to 27 years old, and me are trying to communicate in Russian. Pretty successful, I have to admit. Even so successful that not even five minutes later he offers me his peace pipe to take a drag.

Both happy and enlightened we pass some hundred kilometres, during which Alex continuously tries to stop other 7.5t trucks and ask them drivers to give me a ride further along the way. Nearly everyone seems to get off the same junction as he does. He even called his boss, just to be told that two hours ago one of their drivers was heading towards Latvia.

I decline his offer for tea, having the flight and time-limit in my head. Fast good-byes, and I find myself along an empty police outpost somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Soon another driver stops, just in time before my nose got frozen again. This time we get stopped by the police, and a fifteen minute conversation between the officer and my driver starts. They argue heavily, lots of swearwords are falling, and nearly twenty minutes later my driver continues on his trip, obviously pissed off and still screaming for the next kilometres on. I don’t even dare to ask what happened or why we had to pay a fine.

Russia

Nevertheless, the flow of rides continues, and two rides later I’m along the road next to some gas station. Great spot, but sunset is close and I’m still some 250 km away from the border. But karma has a name, and this time it’s Sergej who is picking me up in his Latvian truck. And yes, he and his colleague, driving behind us, are going all the way to Riga! Hell yeah!

We stop in Veliki Luki for nearly three hours, but I have no idea what they both are doing. They leave the trucks at some parking, leave me the keys(!) and tell me to wait in a pub nearby. All I can do is sip my soup, drink tea and wait.

At some point they come back, and we continue our trip. We arrive at the border at 11 pm, just in time – one hour before my visa expires. You can already see the huge light instalments of the border from a twenty kilometres or more distance, as they are the only settlement around. A lot of pollution fulfilling the sky if you watched the darkness around you for some hours before, only seeing the light of the truck in front of you.

Sergej tells me to wait at the Latvian side, as it may take him only one hour today to cross the border controls. Nearly no trucks in the waiting line. What a miracle compared to the situation one month ago.

Crossing the border is again no problem, I even have time to joke and mess around with the Russian custom officers. Waiting is the biggest problem, as it’s again pretty cold. But after one month you nearly get used to minus twenty degrees. After some time, the second truck appears, telling me that Sergej has huge problems at the border. We have to wait, so his colleague opens a bottle of vodka and prepares some sandwiches for us. I have no other choice than joining him, as the traffic is immense around one o’clock at night, with no cars going anywhere into rural Latvia. That’s it, and at 3 am Sergej joins us, tired and not willing to end this night riding towards Riga. His colleague is drunk anyway. We didn’t even shared names, but soon I climb into the second bed of the truck, happy to have a warm cabin to sleep in, even without any blanket or sleeping bag it’s warm enough inside. My last thoughts before falling asleep were about some air plane, not even a three hour ride by car away, taking off in the morning, but again without me. Why the hell I spent my money on this, but whatever, the hospitable company around makes up for that for sure. Who cares, what counts is the moment and the experiences you make while travelling. That’s what we do it for.

At seven in the morning we wake up and soon continue the ride towards Riga. In between we have a delicious breakfast with caviar, sausages and bread in the cabin of the truck. This time the mission continues, the hitching is not over yet, the next morning I will have to hitch back all the way from Riga to Hörstel, together with Jona by my side, at least until Warszawa.

But that’s another long story.

Tags: hitchhiking, Latvia, Russia