Yesterday’s lesson: With a large backpack you start to feel 15km on your feet, it is better to use the wheels.
Saturday 24/10/2021 9:06 Socerb (SLO)
I had guessed that it would be chilly due to the wind and altitude, but I didn’t think the wind would continue in gusts between zero and 12 knots until the morning. However I slept, I woke up after a good fourteen hours, finally coming out of the cocoon of the sleeping bag. During the night, every now and then I dreamed of relatives or family at home and I said yes yes, tomorrow I’ll take care of it. But then I thought “No, I’m in Slovenia, I can’t go to Reggio tomorrow.”
Under the already high sun I walked towards Kastelec on a plateau with a large pasture dotted with clusters of pines and oaks and lots of vermilion red bushes (Cotinus coggygria). This is where the bouquets of flowers that I saw yesterday in the hands of hikers came from.
Within an hour I arrive on the road to Kastelec, which is still a long way off. Also today I aspire to get to Ljubljana, which is almost 100km away. Since Slovenia is the safest country on the list, why not try hitchhiking, as the place is adequate?
Not even half an hour and the second car that stops is the right one, they are two men in their forties, one of whom speaks Slovenian and Italian and the other Slovenian and English: perfect.
They say they can take me as far as Divača, 15km away, but that it will take a long time to get to Ljubljana. Luckily it’s Sunday, I have a few more chances to find a passage along the 409 state road to Ljubljana.
Here the fun begins: very few pass along the old road, they all turn for the highway. Those few who go straight go fast and would never stop. I try to move forward looking for any curve or slowdown, but the next town is several kilometers away. After an hour, around 1pm I decide it is time to get something to eat, I take a path and turn on my brand new wood burner.
A piece of the Flixbus ticket, two twigs, a lighter and so the water heats up. Today the galley offers authentic Scottish porridge, bought in 2019 in Edinburgh. I was saving it for the round the world trip.
Smooth porridge is for true connoisseurs only, so I avoid offering it to passers-by, who would not grasp the subtle flavors of the Highlands.
It’s 2pm, and I have a new plan: try with the highway.
I retrace my steps and then I miss my way, but I find a clean piece of cardboard, perfect for my black marker. I cut a piece of it with a knife and take a path that cuts through the woods to the roundabout to take the highway. It is not a secondary path, far from it, I meet a lot of walkers along the way.
At the roundabout, I park just before a lay-by with my thumbs up, my backpack and my hat on. For an hour and no one stops, but I’m still experimenting, it’s fun just the same to see the nods and apologetic grimaces of drivers and passengers.
It doesn’t work, I change side of the roundabout because this is now in the shade. The place on the other side is a little less favorable, but after half an hour I hit the mark!
A campervan with a couple in their thirties on board pulls over and beckons me to get on. They go right to Ljubljana, great.
My drivers are called Petra and Andraž (I think you spell it like this, but the ž is pronounced like “je” in French, becomes Andraj) and they tell me that when they were twenty they often hitchhiked, visiting Slovenia far and wide. Now it is rare to see a hitchhiker here, a bit like in Italy.
Meanwhile, Slovenia flows by out the windows, made up of two things: forested mountains and mountainous forests. Nothing to do with Italy.
Chatting I discover that they both work, but she can work only from home because she is not vaccinated, while he had the covid a few months ago and he owns his shop, so he would work anyway.
From them I learn that in Slovenia the restrictions for the unvaccinated are even stricter than in Italy, here without the green pass you can’t even go shopping at the supermarket, but only in small shops. For the rest there are the same rules, it seems to me, except that less than 50% of Slovenes are vaccinated, so here the restrictions have a greater social weight.
They were both at the demonstration last Wednesday in the capital, pushed away by the police with fire hydrants and tear gas.
They are not vaccinated as a matter of principle, not out of fear of the vaccine or who knows what.
Enough, we have arrived at our destination. I let them take me to a fast food restaurant that sells a typical food, the Burek. It is a kind of puff pastry snake, which has rolled up on itself to digest the filling.
They don’t accept card, cash only. Apart from the hundred euros that I have on me, which are difficult to access, my change is not enough. I start to go to the ATM, but Andraž stops me and offers him.
I thank him several times and he cuts it short with “Now you will say we were nice people. “
Among a few hundred cars they are the only ones to have stopped, they took me to my destination before sunset and even offered me a meal. If they don’t have a good heart, who has it?
Now: it is getting dark, I have no idea how Ljubljana is made, but stuck to the city there seems to be a space-time passage for central Italy, the park of Tivoli.
It is like having the woods of the hills of Reggio just outside the ring road. Too easy like this, with the last lights I go to ambush.
The park begins as a garden with a small castle, but then the gravel roads become paths in the midst of oaks, chestnuts, beeches and hazelnuts: I’m in the hills in Reggio.
With the flashlight I find a good place, hang the hammock, put the backpack on a branch and goodnight.