Austria - Slovenia - #41HT

My time in Austria was getting over. These two days were so intensive and so quick. Before traveling there the stereotype that I had in my mind was that Austria was expensive country with a Vienna as the capital and Salzburg to do some tourism in a natural place. In fact

Austria is really more than this and Linz and Grass for me were really great choices. They are these kind of cities that I would go again to visit them whenever I would have the opportunity. I truly believe that there are so many other great spots in this small country that I could have great experiences too.

In this last Austrian chapter, we just had a breakfast with my Basque host early because she needed to work and then it was another goodbye. It means that we have the entire day to travel the 70km that separated Graz to our first Slovenian destination: Maribor.

There were was reason for us to take bus or train this time and it wasn't hard to convince my Cousin's friend that hitchhiking was the best option this time. We stopped in the exit of the city and started to show paper signs with names such Maribor, Slovenia, SLO and SI. Names and abbreviation that could increase our chances to find a ride.

This first ride took us something like one hour, until the first driver picked us up saying that we were in a wrong spot to hitchhike. He saved us; we weren't really in the main exit of the city.

I didn't have so many strategies to hitchhike. I was checking the Google maps and seeing where I could go by walking until arriving in a nice spot to leave the city, but not necessarily what I though was the best one.

It's all right, most of the times I had an angel to save me, this guy just drove us to a better spot few minutes away from our previous one and we didn't take that long to find the another ride. Few minutes later a Serbian guy just picked us up. In the fact he was driving to Sarajevo in Bosnia, one of the destinations that I planned to stop. I could save 700km of my trip going directly to the core of the Balkans and just arrive there in the same day saving money and time. But well I would have to skip these 700km and miss great experiences that were upcoming. Gladly we kept our plan to go first to Slovenia first and afterwards Croatia.

This Serbian Driver in fact had an Engineering company and he just told me that they needed designers and gave me his professional card saying that I could contact him to see if he could offer me a job. A hitchhiking trip maybe could change my life, giving to me what I was looking since I arrived in Europe, a permanent job that could give me a residence visa and enough money to live well.

He dropped us in a gas station in Slovenia, just few kilometers after the border, because he needed to change the road, not crossing Maribor. We were in fact about 15km from Maribor and in this time our trip seemed to be really easy, the only problem was that we for this night we didn't find any place to stay until this moment in Maribor, none Couchsurfing nor attractive Airbnb.