Sunday, 23rd of September, 2019.
Swiss people are lovely! At least I had a blast there, mostly by hitchhiking the country.
I wake up just in time to leave the garden before the people who live in there turn on the lights. Walking to the hitchhiking point, I pass in front of the actual EuroSpar where I should have bought the food. So silly of me… I cross a lot of apple cultivation. Loads of trees and no one around to check on me. I could have take as many as I wanted. I have one with me that I bought for breakfast so I take just one and from the floor.
The first person who stops for me, in about ten minutes, is a lady who is going just 30 Km further. When I ask her if it is in the highway, she says yes, so I decide to keep in my spot.
When I am coming back to the bags, another car stops, a really nice old one, looking like a Brasília, and a young guy, with part red hair and dread locks, Johnny, offers me a lift, also just about 30 Km. But when I ask him about the road, he says that it is a small one. So I get in. It is my first lift from a long line of them through the day.
Johnny is a pretty chill and cool guy. He is a musician and is coming back from his girlfriend’s house. We talk about society and how when we are different from what society calls “normal” we are treated a part. So he drops me in front a small kiosk of fruits and coffee shop where I decide to have my breakfast.
At the parking, I have my fruits with oats plus some of the little circles of flour, olive oil and wine, that are baked like biscuits and are really good plus cheap. I node to the two ladies from the small shop, Latscher Imbiss, and keep eating. Suddenly, one of the ladies come with a basket of fruits and a coffee! Wow! What a wonderful surprise! I was astonished! And pretty happy, of course. A fresh made coffee, in that cold morning in the mountains, it was everything I needed. Such an amazing attitude from Viktoria, as he tells me her name later. After I finish, I walk to her and some of her friends, to say how much I appreciate her gesture, and they are all pretty nice. When I am leaving they even try to give me a bottle of water, but since I already have some with me, I just say thank you very much but do not take. So I really think that if you are going from Merano in direction to Switzerland you should stop to have a coffee and some fruits from this nice shop with such amazing people. Again, it is called Latscher Imbuss, 39021, Latsch, and it is a small pink trailer in the road. If you pass there, tell Viktoria I say – hello!
I walk a little bit further, looking if it is a better spot to hitchhike, because Viktoria’s place is just after a turn, so the cars have not too much time to see me and decide to stop. Unless they are going quite slow. But I cannot find anything good enough so I come back. As soon as I put my bags down, a lady stops. Mariana is a beautiful woman, with short hair and glasses, who works in a company which measures the impact, the damage caused by some other companies in the environment.
She is also going not so far, just about 14 Km, as I can see in the map on her phone, so unfortunately we do not have too much time to talk. But she is lovely! She drops me in the road just before her turn.
In a few minutes starts to rain. It is when Uliv stops. He shows me on the map where he can drop me, a little town a bit out of this road, but which leads to Switzerland. Yay! Plus, I can get out of the rain. Driving, the rain gets stronger and me and Uliv talk a bit about the cultivation around and he tells me some facts about that region. He needs to get a bit out of his way to drop me in the small town. Really nice of him.
To not get to much wet, I decide to (for the first time) put on my rain cover, and make arrangements in my backpacks to the computer and camera be safe from get wet. Then I start to walk out of town (just 300 metres) to hitchhike again. I drop The Hulk under a small tree to prevent to get too much wet and stay under the rain with the small backpack under my rain cover, since it is huge.
Elisa, this pretty woman in her read hair, stops for me and tells me she is going a bit further. She is a nurse who lives in a small town back a little bit but she is going to Switzerland (which is what is written in my sign now, since morning). As Mariana, she is a wonderful lady, with a smooth voice as much as her personality. Married just for one year now, she and her husband are just finishing the house, where they have about 50 ships and grow some vegetables. She even gives me some tomatoes from her garden! Delicious ones! She also gives me umbrella! What? Yeah! I was about to refuse, of course, but them she said to have two more in the car so I had to take one. So I did! A white one, perfect size, from the clinic where she works: KLINIKGUT. We stop in a gas station, in a road which leads to Zurich, but she is going back a bit.
My sign where I wrote “Zurich / Muhlethal” is completely wet but luckily inside of the store of the gas station I see some spare cardboard boxes. Toblerone ones! So I write a new sign. Now with my brandy new umbrella, I decide to use the rain cover on Hulk and to keep the small backpack under the umbrella with me. Again, I just wait about five minutes until the first car stops.
Walter (which looks a lot like a “Walter” and the Walter from Breaking Bad, because he is bald and has a mustache) is a nice old man, who I actually thought it was going just before Zurich but he actually drops me just a bit further, in the road that, he tells me, it is the main one around to go to Zurich. This time I can wait under a small rock bridge, those semi circle ones, so the rain does not gets me. But just after a few minutes, Walter is back. He just say a few words because his English is a bit limited, something like: “The road is block / snow / come with me / another road / all the cars there.” I do not even now how he figured that! But what such amazing soul he has, to come back for me and drop me in the second more common route to Zurich. Incredible! At this point, I am already in love with Switzerland!
What I actually realize is: since Merano people are already behaving pretty different. Remember I told you that in Italy people were looking pretty said, with angry faces all the time? Here is not! By the opposite, so many people who passed for me were smiling, and nodding, and a lot of them were making “I am sorry” signs, showing me that they were not going in the same direction as me. That gives me a injection of good mood, hope and energy, to not be redundant. So I just had this feeling that I would get lifts every where, without any problem.
It is still raining. I am waiting in the road before a quite big queue of cars, and before this weird sign where there is a car on a kind of mine wheel. A lady from one of the cars in the queue come out and says: “Come on, let’s go!”
Freya is also not going to Zurich but I come with her anyway. With her the conversation flows like we already knew each other for long years. All the topics come naturally and even the questions we make to each other sound so normal. She looks much younger than me and I have the feeling that she is around 23 years old. What a surprise when she tells me to be from 1989! Wow! We talk about cinema and it is nice to talk with someone who remember so many details from the good movies and know a lot of actor’s and director’s names. So there we are waiting for over an hour for this train. Yeah, a train! A train which transport the cars to the other side. Like a Ferryboat but a Ferrytrain. That is what that weird sign means. And that is also what the weird sign in my map means. So even that the train can take a lot of car, it still take a long time because there are a lot of cars today. But it takes just around 20 minutes to cross to the other side. And it is quite expansive: 32 Euros! When we cross, as soon as we “step” out of the tunnel: the Alps! Wow! My first sight of the Alps! It was just “a few” of them but so beautiful! Unfortunately we turn right pretty quickly and they get out of my sight. Freya drops me a bit further and there I am waiting again.
Of course it does not take long to someone stop. Three people this time. They actually passed by but came back. Two beautiful young ladies and a nice young guy full of tattoos in a nice car. I do not understand until where they are going exactly but I get in. Unfortunately for my time they just drop me a bit further but fortunately to my heart, belly and curious for cultures mind, the guy buys me a very traditional Swiss drink, Rivella, a traditional Swizz biscuit, a type of the Brazilian Pão de mel (Honey bread), full filled with an apple mixture, called Appenzeller Bärli-Biber, and my first Swiss chocolate! Yay! He said have done that also to another friend, when he first arrived in Switzerland, because he wants to provide those very important things for the first time. They drop me in a very good point too, in a gas station.
A van stops a few minutes later. Johann, a nice man in his red long bear, is bring some of his students, all engineers, back from a expedition day. They are also, as Mariana, in a kind of Environment force. Johann is pretty nice and funny, who also did some hitchhiking before, so we have a nice little chat during the lift. He is quite surprise to see that I managed to travel through the whole Italy by hitchhiking. I am surprised that is half past five and I am still not in Zurich! Laugh. Looking back to my day I agree that it totally worth it.
I cannot believe that I will be stuck in Zurich when now I am so close to Peter’s and June’s house. So I decide that I will keep hitchhiking even if start to gets dark. I just had a wonderful day, surrounded by wonderful people, so I have this feeling that I will be all right and safe even if I hitchhike at night.
Cordelia and her beautiful blue eyes stop for me. She is going a bit out of Zurich, in the direction I need to keep to hitch Muhlethal. She does not lives there thought, she is just going to meet a friend in a restaurant. She is all dressed in white so I assume she is also a nurse or some kind of doctor. But our conversation it gets so interesting and it flows so marvelous that I do not even think about ask her what is her job. She even knows my name’s origin! Apparently, this island in Hawaii called Leilane, it was the home of an old Volcano (subject for which Cordelia is passionate) but one day the volcano had an eruption and destroyed a big part of the island. Poor Leilane. Anyway, Cordelia already traveled a lot and had her dose of big adventures around the world too! She actually still loves to travel with her backpack. When she drops me off she even offer me to come over to her house in case I get stuck in Zurich. What another wonderful soul!
My last hitchhiking lift of the day it takes a bit more to stop. Something around 20 minutes. But I understand that it was quite late already, just around 7 p.m., plus it is a quite distinct area where I am going.
For the last another wonderful surprise: Carina Martins, this super talented Portuguese woman, is a Interior Designer, who has her own company and it brings ideas of vegan products to her high sophisticated clients. Plus she is an wonderful artist because she shows me her paintings and they are simply terrific! Beautiful pieces of art! When she explains to me that each one of them it has a personal importance to her, because they talk about some important moments of her life, as a poem, everything makes sense. You can feel when you look at them that they are filled with emotion and history. It is amazing! She became vegetarian when she was 20 years old, like me, and just three months ago she finally managed to become Vegan. I loved the way that she is relax about it, though, probably the first Vegan I met that is like that. Which proves my theory that you cannot generalize anything. I think it is pretty funny when she says that “If I take a sip of a chocolate milk, which I do not know it is make with animal milk, or eat anything from animal origins but I do not know, the Vegan police will not come and ask me what I am doing, saying that is not right and arrest me or something.” She leaves with her two daughters just out of Zurich and I am surprise in how much we really are alike when she tells me to have difficult to make decisions, to make a choice, and get nervous even when it is a wonderful decision, just with good choices. Anyway, we call Peter and now I am hoping he can come and pick me up because Carina will drop me just 20 minutes from Muhlethal. In her cute German, she talks to him and they arrange everything. She even told me before we call him that if for any reason he could not come, I could come over and spend the night in her house. Oh, Loki! What did I do to deserve those wonderful people to pick me up? We chat a bit more until Peter arrives. She gives me her card, so her company is called Shop Carina Martins, and her website is carina-martins.ch. Go take a look and you will not regret. I bet that if you live in Switzerland she is the best Interior Designer you could ever find, because she really gets to know her clients, to be able to do something which fits them completely and make their home, office, or shop to look like them. Plus, as you can see, she is a wonderful person. Do not you want someone like her to work out in your home?
Peter arrives. A very polite and nice man. But I will tell you about my first contact with him and June in the next chapter.