From Bulgaria to Belgium

I was standing on the highway near the village of Vladaya
I was hoping to get a first ride until Blagoevgrad and after that I could try to catch another ride direction of Greece

Cars passed by and so did time...
I've heard hitchhiking in Bulgaria is really easy and you mostly get a ride in 15-20 minutes, so I kept waiting...

15 minutes became 30 minutes and as soon as I knew it I was standing there for an hour already

I was almost losing hope and was already considering heading back to the city and taking a train somewhere and just going by train, but well... Lets give it another 30 minutes!

After 1 hour and 25 minutes of standing next to the road with my sign, smiling to every driver that passed and trying to look as friendly as possible so anyone would give me a ride a car finally stopped...

I was so happy to see that this car finally stopped for me
It was a mom with her kid, she was going direction of Dupnitsa to drop her kid to her grandmother and afterwards she was taking a plane to Athens 😁

She used to hitchhike before and took some hitchhikers with her as well, she dropped me off at Dupnitsa which was already a bit closer to Greece, but I still had a long time to go....

After being dropped off on the highway in Dupnitsa it got scorching hot, there was no shade and the sun was burning, I was hoping I wouldn't have to wait for another hour here
But well, there was lots of traffic on this road and a lots of trucks passed as well, since I was hoping to get to Greece today I was mainly aiming to hitch a truck here because they usually cover long distances

It only took me 5 minutes for the next car to stop! I could not believe it, this was insanely fast

The driver's name was Jorden and he was heading for Halkidiki
Jorden did not speak much english and my bulgarian isn't that good neither, he asked me where I want to go
I told him i was going to 'Gercia' (Greece in bulgarian)

Since Thessaloniki is very close to Halkidiki he offered me a ride directly to Thessaloniki

Even though we used a lot of hand signals and google translate to communicate aith each other, we both really enjoyed the ride and we had a great time

Jorden, if you're reading this, cheers to you 🍻 And I hope you made it safely to Halkidiki and back to SofiaLeggi altro