My Husband and I Hitchhiked Our Way Back From Our Beach Honeymoon in Europe
Just go with the flow… like water.
What do riding the waves and getting back home from your honeymoon with no bus have in common? You have to go with the flow.
And that’s how we ended up hitchhiking our way back from our honeymoon with just a beach umbrella, two suitcases, and our rain-soaked clothed selves.
You can make plans, but you can’t always account for Murphy’s law.
After staying in the old Hotel Transylvania for our wedding night (why was there a board going down the middle of the bed?), we spent a week in his (now our) apartment before heading off to see the Black Sea. We relaxed on the beach, ate delicious food, did honeymoon things, and burnt ourselves to a crisp.
We still look back fondly on our first vacation with each other.
It was unforgettable.
But so was getting dumped by our bus and being left stranded in the rain 10 hours away from home with one little mouse running around our feet for company.
Actually, the bus did come, it just didn’t stop.
My husband is a pretty worldly-wise, street-smart kind of guy. The way he grew up, he had to always think ahead and stick up for himself. He’s also very spontaneous and laid-back. All that to say, he did call the day we were heading back home to confirm our reservation with the bus. We were assured our spot was secure.
Cut to a massive downpour and standing out in the rain at the bus stop with our giant beach umbrella, luggage, and a tiny mouse that was also trying to find shelter. We’d spent a lot of time in the water at the beach, but when it came down to soak your luggage, it looked different.
We got there early because it was the only bus headed in our direction that night. A few other hopeful travelers showed up as the rain showed signs of letting up.
That’s when we see it. A large bus with the name, FANY, scrawled across it blew past us at about 100 mph. We all watched it go. Then checked the time. I tell my husband, “I think that one is headed to the bus barn to change drivers and then is coming back.” We waited for about an hour and no other bus was coming.
Phones come out and we start calling the bus, the train, and we also call the hotel where we’d been staying. The bus doesn’t answer because it’s after hours, the train only runs the next morning, and our hotel room is already full of new people. Great. Ten hours is a long way away when the only wheels you have are on two rolling suitcases.
Everyone at the bus stop starts trying to figure out what to do next. One person at the bus stop has a van but he had no sleep in the last 24 hours. His wife and daughter were headed to a wedding and he was going to follow them down after he got some sleep.
Hitchhiking home from our honeymoon was in the cards.
The first time I went hitchhiking I was with an American friend and a Romanian friend. We’d been invited to dinner in the countryside, and we took a bus halfway. At the halfway point, we found out that the bus that went the rest of the way would only come in two hours. And so the Romanian friend waved down some guy driving past and the three of us hopped in. My American friend happily shut the door, then as we start driving she whispers, “Wait, do we know this guy?” I told her I was pretty sure we didn’t. However, we arrived at our countryside dinner on time.
When I started dating my husband, he was pretty used to hitchhiking, too. We actually hitchhiked quite a lot, I just didn’t tell my mom back home. You’d have to wait maybe 20 minutes to catch a ride that was going in the same direction and he’d always exchange a few lines with the driver. He knew when to accept and when to give it a hard pass.
I would never hitchhike in the States because you hear stories. However, where we lived, it was still pretty common to help someone out if you had an extra seat.
So, the no-sleep man, his wife, daughter, my husband and I, some guy that seems to speak only in foreign swear words, and a few other stragglers, discuss the van. The longest I’d ever been hitchhiking was about 45 minutes. Ten hours was a bit riskier but our other option was to sleep outside in the rain with a mouse. These people didn’t seem like psychopaths.
Van it was.
We hop in. My husband offers to keep the man awake in the front. And the back is full of one giant mattress. The guy’s wife seemed sweet and the swearing man found his stop about an hour or less down the road. I briefly wonder if it’s a good idea to fall asleep with my purse and passport and a bunch of people I don’t know on a mattress in the back of a windowless van.
I don’t think too hard though before I fall sound asleep while my new husband keeps the guy awake so we don’t all crash and die on the 10-hour drive. He wakes me up when we get back and pays the sleepy-but-kind-man what we would have given the bus.
“How was it for you?” he asks.
“Better than the bus, I had plenty of legroom and got to sleep laying down. For you?” I ask.
“It was good. But, I’m tired.”
He called the bus that was supposed to take us. They just said that no one was at the bus stop when the bus came by. I guess that’s what they said to all five of the groups that stood out there wet and tired in the rain watching it blow right past. Denial is the round-file of customer service.
“Its name might have been Fany. But, that wasn’t very funny leaving us at the bus stop like it did,” he said.
No, it wasn’t.
[Disclaimer: I am not endorsing hitchhiking as a mode of transportation. Bad things do happen — even in Europe.]
