On the road

by harry's lingo

There were roads, there were many roads.

The road which leads from northern Baltic to southern Europe is called 'the via Baltika,' it's a terrible road, so speaking, with its heavy truck traffic and those pits that hammer your wheels.

I was summer in 2007 and I was doing this and that during that summer. The summer went that way and when autumn came, I engaged to a company which was running some kind of offshore activities, conveying goods and instruments to the outer archipelago, off the coast of southern Finland.

Using a landing craft we delivered things over there, I worked with the owner of the raft called Frans. I was doing that boring job as a deck man for two weeks and a gale was blowing hard, it blew almost every day and every night so that we were many times forced to turn the raft back from the sea and return inshore unable hearing to the outer lighthouse. I spend nights ashore, sleeping at my MB camber parked ashore, near the Cap of Porkkala. I don't remember much about the days and what was the real work there, I just remember that we made a few attempts to get the work done. At the beginning of the October, the night turned cold and the leaves on the ground covered with white frost. I thought it was high time to leave, and I set off on my journey. Frans had given me five-hundred and I wished him a good voyage then with my old camper I went. It was already late when I boarded a ferry in Helsinki for Tallin.

After secured at the quay in Tallin I didn't find my camper, actually. I was trying to get to the car deck from behind a wrong door, so I return to the reception where I met a girl and a man standing in uniform, I questioned why they don't let people go. The man sets up his wrist and started for me, it seemed like this Cock was ready for fights, then the girl said that all other cars and passengers have landed, perhaps I had been locked behind a wrong door.

The sailors on the car deck hailed hurry up after me as I started the engine and drove off, picking up the road to Tartu - the second largest town in Estonia -I continued my journey. It was six in the morning when I arrived Tartu, after few hour rest I took a walk and find nothing interesting in the city. I set on the road again. The roads lead to the Viru the southern town of Estonia, From there I had to turn more westward to get to Latvia and to the road Via Baltic. The road for Riga was wide and there were small loose stones beating the bottom of the van, but no much traffic on it. It was getting dark and it started raining, suddenly the road was full of cars and beams of reflections, the rain and darkness hampered my vision, the visibility being so poor I tried to find a place to pull aside to be spent a night somewhere. And there it was, nearby a shop. An empty Black asphalt lot for parking.

The morning was grey, cool and vet as I woke, After making coffee on my gas cooker I visited the roguery, I bought a flask of whisky and two stone bottles of Riga Balsam, I felt that my stomach would need a balsam. On the line, one of the battles fell aside and the bold cashier burst into a crabby moan.

The ringway took me past the Riga, it runs along the road of the Tam, which lead over Riga river and there was the great lake of the power station on my left side. Roundabout and one more then it was the Via Batik that runs from Estonia to Poland, it's heavily trafficked route to Europe, And quite dangerous too, since the trucks occupied the road performing such a horror race where you who are the smallest one, can't but try to stay away as well as you can without driving your vehicle out of road.

The landscape is flat and plain in which the Via Baltic road runs, there are not many meanders after crossing the border of Latvia to Lietuva, the road is mainly straight and the landscape smooth and the checkpoints abandoned and you can drive with no stop to Lietuva. So I did in that afternoon day of bitter cold October.

Getting past Kaunas the road bends and it's separate from the highway to be continued now as the two-way road, lined with heavy trucks. After Marjan Pole, I saw a gas oil station aside from the road together with a bar, been made a lot of kilometres, and as the day was turning evening, I pulled in and stopped at the cafe, to have a bottle of beer and dinner. It was a boring place, and boring is the travelling too, with strange people with not talkative people who are not a bit interesting about you, where you are coming from, or where you are driving to. No, that all is so common and daily and there is not difference.

During the night about at nine a clock a clone of old buses, and some sort of van drove to the parking lot. I soon realised that must be some sort of gipsy convoys like a small circus or something like that. The group entered the bar and they were a white skinned youngster, I listened to them, trying figure out which language they spoke, it sounds like Chez. An attempt to get some conversation with them in Russia failed, they wanted to be themselves, and they had a fun together. Late in the night when I tried to shift my MB some distance on the parking lot, two young gipsies came out and said through the windscreen,"What are you up to? You better settle down and sleep". It was plain Russian they spoke.

The next day brought me Lubin, a town in the eastern Poland, by night the darkness and the heavy traffic made me feel totally lost. There was a dim parking place for trucks and I pulled aside. Tiny bar serviced a beer and then sleep for next morning. when it revealed that I had came in a suburb of the Lubin and was in some mud field which serviced as a parking lot. To continue my journey I had to find a bank and get my currency changed. Getting all that done I put on the road again and continued my journey to Tylava and spend the night on a poor tiny gas station nearby the border of the Slovakia. The night was rainy and restless, could hear cars going and coming along all the night. In the morning, I bought some food from a small grocery on the roadside. I bought polish ham as it was known being so tasty, and tasty and soft it tasted. After a couple of hours driving there were some stone buildings, both side the road all they abandoned, I was a mark that crossing the board, travelling now to Slovenia. I saw a man and woman sitting in the forest, and when I came to the net village - - less that in half an hour the colour of the inhabitants had changed - there now was seen mainly black coloured folk, I could see them walking aimlessly on the roadside, in single and groups. The horses and cats were seen, and plenty of stuff of all sort piled on the roadside.

With no stop I drove - and there was not even a place to stop, so full was loaded the road and its sides.

I came to Vysne Komarin and to Presov. the landscape was mountainous. I stopped for a while to have some shopping in the shopping centre. It was Wednesday afternoon and having got complete my shopping, I mounted and drove again - getting ahead all the time- where- I had still not knowledge.

The road was serpentine,