The Duckland Trip'09

Friday(10.30)
Mmmmmm.Finally. That amazing feeling of turning off "the sound" of any possible thing, that could distract you from being mentally and physically away for some days. And it's sunny. Good.

11:19 am the bus brings us (me and Ieva) to the airport.
14:25 (or so) pm the plane brings us (me, Ieva and Donatas - a friend, taking the same flight) to Bremen, Germany.

We do 320km by hitchhiking, change 4 cars/drivers and around 7pm, today's goal (Ieva's Erasmus city - Leeuwarden) is reached. Nice time with Sophia and Sarah at their home with pizza, beers, laughs and etc.
Oh well, the rest of the evening was more then interesting, but it's another story.

Saturday(10.31)

"Was it a cloud we were sleeping on, Ieva?"
"Yeeeeessssss....mmmm..."

Breakfast, nice presents for the road and ole - on the road again. Leeuwarden - Lelystad - Den Haag is the plan. 220km says googlemaps.

It takes us 2 cars to get to Lelystad, and one of them was a crazy, ~80 years old grandma, speeding 130km all the time, speaking only West Frisian language (dialect) , leaving us in the middle of the highway (with no gas station close) and almost hitting us with the car (accidentally) while all smiling and leaving us ... jeij :)
We had some nice walk near the highway (Beware!Duckland is full with traps!!! You are walking walking, and ole the road ends and canal appears from nowhere:D Nobody likes swimming in November..so, more walking). But of course we deal with it. HA!
After visiting a friend in Lelystad, we hit the road for Den Haag and Haloween&birthday party. It really took as some time to get there as in, hitchhiked to Amsterdam and finally took a train to Den Haag, partyy....let's continue with the next morning.

Sunday(11.01)
So, the next morning :) Coffee&cig ritual, etc and this that etc.. and off to hit the road again. Was kinda boring: as a perfect spot it was - a bus stop exactly after traffic lights with enough space for the car to pull over.. so 7min it took us to hitchhike our 9th car in this trip. Easy and a bit boring. And it was even raining..

so,
Hola, Amsterdam!
and it's response was kinda cold in the beginning: the only CS host in this trip doesn't answer, hard hard rain outside, it's getting dark and we are somewhere not really in the center. Ok...so, let's have a coffee and some "socializing" in a warm and welcoming kebab place around the corner. And oh well, we really didn't expect that in only 2 hours we'll be sitting in front of the fake fireplace, surrounded by candles, eating Thai food, drinking wine, listening to records and si, just having a perfect Sunday.. thanks to Teun.


Monday(11.01) came and we had good good fun by taking a nice day tour in Amsterdam. This and that, nice places, cig's, coffee, lunch, etc etc, you know the drill. Nice dinner (+ some calimocho) later on and yeah, mondays are not the best days to party, even in Amsterdam, but we took this challenge and oh well, not big, but some success we had: checked all the bars in one street, The Leidenstraat tour it was :) (Don't ask why)...with a popuri night in MAXIM bar (don't go there if you are not drunk enough - vodka+juice=10EU, nono, we didn't pay:) and funny turkish and polish dudes. Yeah, didn't took long for us to leave them..and we found Freddie Leonid Paap ... simply lying in the street. BIG SUCCESS! and some failures - really wanted to meet one special friend - but oh well...

Tuesday(11.02)
Time to pack and hit the road - we are going home! Not so yeah..but oh well, THE END is THE END :) As our flight was early in the morning (6am) in the morning the next day, we took our time with no rush and stress...and almost failed, but as almost doesn't count, it was a SUCCESS again :D In short words we left Amsterdam in heavy rain and cold, and it took us 7 hours (with 5 cars) to reach Airport of Weeze (Dusseldorf) .The last stop wasn't really promising - closed boarder line complex with no lights and one small bar with only one employee and 1 couple inside and only their car outside + cold, dark and rain. Oh well, but I don't know the situation where coffee and cig wouldn't help: yeah, after really nice coffee that couple (both truck drivers!) was bringing us to the airport! OLE!
Those 10 hours in the airport passed very fast, as we found nice "base", had nice dinner with beers and fall asleep with the sound of raindrops outside and the view of sleeping planes. Magical.

Wednesday(11.03)
Flight back was easy and fast, with some nice chats about the trip. As our flight to Riga, we still had some 250km till home. Oh well, as Riga welcomed us with sun and nice cold, it didn't took long...and yeah, home sweet home.


The Duckland Trip in numbers:
in 6 days, we did ~ 900 km by hitchhiking, ~ 3160 km traveled by plane. Visited 3 different countries and 4 different cities (visiting = staying over night). I've met a lot of nice and cool people, 1 person crashed his car while coming to see us :(. Stopped 18 different drivers and cars, and had a pleasure to drive in an old style American car. Took more then ~ 200 pictures. Consumed unknown number of cigarettes and liters of beer. Twice got a present for the road (yeah yeah, same one). Attended 1 birthday-Halloween party.

Hugs and kisses to my dear friend Ieva, who was such an amazing supergirl :*