The border crossing took over an hour with all the checks and photograph scrutinisation. There was a vehicle infront of mine driven by a huge woman with a small group of kids. She was better prepared than the rest of us and when it looked like the guard might refuse her passport, whe produced two cans of beer and slammed them on his desk. The beers disappeared into the fash hut and a passport popped out in return..
I was dropped outside Keleti train station in Budapest, where despite being two hours early, I boarded my train and went to sleep. When I woke up the carriage was full of people and the train was already moving towards Bratislava.
For some reason, I never give Bratislava much of a chance. I think the most time I have afforded there was 6 hours in 1998 and a little less in 1997... and that was in transit too. This time I marched out of the train station and swiftly found my way out of the city towards the motorway. It was a long hike before I found a worthy hitching spot - about an hour along verges and footpaths and then I waited over half an hour for a first lift.
Things were looking good. The driver said he was going about 40km up E65. I jumped in. The place where he eventually dropped me was actually no more than an off-ramp out into the countryside. Time was pressing on and there was hardly any traffic heading North. I sat down on the crash barrier and cursed myself for not having waited for a better lift. I cursed the driver for having dropped me in such a useless location, then I stood up and loudly cursed the few cars that drifted by without so much as a hint that they might stop to pick up a scruffy hitchhiker.. Big cars, small hearts.. a favourite slogan in these situations!
Despite being a freeway, the traffic didn't seem to be moving too fast, so I stuck my sign out and just hoped for the best. It was about 20 minutes before a car pulled up. It was a police car! Inside were two very unimpressed looking coppers. who were in no mood for negotiation. The window came down and the driver stuck his hand out with a brief, but easily comprehensible demand "500 SkC". I pretended not to understand, then came the second demand "Passport!!" So I slapped the passport into his hand and waited as he browsed the pages. There was no point trying to say anything. Whenever I opened my mouth, he immediately yelled the words "500 SkC penalty". I told him he wouldn't see his penalty this side of Christmas, unless he wanted a bunch of worhless Romanian Lei, then seeing as he clearly wasn't going to budge, I decided that I wasn't either and sat back down on the crash barrier so we could stake eachother out in the midday Slovakian sun. They eventually gave up and yelled at me some more, clearly telling me to bu99er off and find somewhere else to hitch.. I took back my passport and offered a richly-tailored list of appropriate sounding obscenities at the back of the car as they drive off up the motorway.
It was only a few minutes before I found a small crossroad surrounded by woodland with a narrow feed back towards the motorway. The place was entirely deserted and only three or four cars passed in the first half hour. I seriously thought that I would be spending a night in the woods, but just as I was assessing the verge's potential for dandilion soup, a van pulled up and I was back on the road. The lift was a good one and he took me right up to the border, where I jumped out and crossed on foot into Moravia. There was plenty of traffic passing thought, so I celebrated with a sandwich.
I guess I was waiting no more than 5 minutes before a blue dung beetle-sized Lada pulled over. It was driven by a geezer in his late fifties with lots of brown teeth crowded behind an idiotic grin. It wasn't until we started moving that I realised I was being driven in a disabled car by a guy with two tiny disfunctional legs. With the Lada loaded up and unable to use the freeways, our progress was slow. We wound our way through hills and villages in something only vaguely like our intended direction. Poor bloke - his head was nearly as duff as his legs. He habitually punctuated every sentence with a cadence of hysterical laughter - apart from when he explained that his wife had died eleven years ago and that he was alone. I tried to change the subject and asked why he was driving to Czech Republic. His simple answer was that his mum had dies 3 days ago and that he was going to bid her farewell.. Poor guy was clearly lonely and he didn't want me to get out of the car. He offered to introduce me to his friends, or to take me further into Bohemia, but I knew that at this rate I would never make it to Praha by nightfall, so as we approached Brno, I decided to jump ship. and hitch back onto the freeway. As it happened, I was on completely the wrong route, but I was rescued by a doctor on call, who whisked me round to the right junction, then vanished to sort out his next patient.
Praha is an easy hitch from Brno. It never takes more than one car. This time it was a young dude called Tomas, whose car was big enough for me to slump back for some shuteye. Two hours later we had parked up and were in a restaurant drinking Czech beer.
There was no sign of Tony in town - not until about 1am, as I was drinking beer in the hostel, when he wandered in. It seems he had a difficult hitch up from Slovenia and he had given up half way and trained the rest! It happens to the best of us - just be sure of that!