Almost shot by some French redneck

Before I started to travel around South America, me, my husband and our cute dog Bestia crossed the Europe in one of the most unforgettable adventures.

Today I will focus on the very first part of the European trip – from Poland to the border with the France.

All started with selling everything we had in our apartment and making goodbye party for our friends. When I saw that shelves in the living room and kitchen are empty, the trip, once just the idea, became real. When you know that there is no step back, your life will change drastically, there is some excitation but fear as well – you hope that change will be good, you dreamed about it, but as you never did it before, you cannot be so sure. Luckily, after five years I can say it was a good idea. I do miss some things and I believe all the places around the world have its pros and cons, but I don’t regret travelling, neither stopping to live in Chile or later in Argentina.

Okay, we said goodbye to our friends, sold all the stuff, packed the backpacks (it weights 28 kg each and it is too much, but we don’t know it yet. We will leave some stuff on the way). Then there was the last meeting with the families – mine, which couldn’t really believe we are going and my husbands, which was very against our trip and tried to force us to stay. Very unpleasant, like most of the meetings with parents-in-law…

From Poland to Netherlands

We carpooled from Wroclaw, Poland to the Netherlands. Our first destination was Brussels, Belgium, where my mother lives. I wanted to see her before the flight. Carpooling with the dog is not an easy thing, most of the drivers prefer to not take the animals, but we managed to do it.

Driver left us near to some tiny village located in front of the lake. We waited on the beach until the sunset and then prepared the tent in the tiny forest nearby. Everything was so new for all of as that day. Bestia, our dog, needed to calm down after the trip. Even though he used to travel with us by car, none of our trips were so long before. Playing with us and swimming in the lake made him relax.
For me and Krzys, sleeping in the tent was still something we did not used to. Sure, we have made many mini trips before, but we were still oversensitive for all the sounds, being afraid something wrong can happen at night. That feeling disappeared maybe after 10 nights in the tent.

_{Our home for the time of travelling}

Next day we left the village, walked to the nearest gas station near the high way and hitchhiked. We were incredibly lucky, as after 15-20 minutes someone stopped to take us to the Brussels. Our savior was from Senegal, but since few years he was living in Belgium (working in Netherlands). He was going to his mother to France, because she had some accident and was in the hospital.
I don’t remember the name of that kind man, but I remember he told me about the problems he experienced as the non-european expat and black person.

Brussels, Belgium

After arriving to Brussels, we have spent three nice days with my mother, spending our free time in the parks, visiting Manneken Pis – most popular sculpture of Belgium (pissing boy), and two less popular sculptures of pissing girl and pissing dog (yenneken pis and zenneken pis). Belgians must be very much into pissing… Our dog, Bestia, was quite afraid of the dogs monument. First he tried to play with it, but when he saw that there is no reaction from the monument, he went to smell it. No smell scared him so much that he started to bark on it!

Of course, being in Belgium means a lot of Belgian chocolates, waffles, fries and very stinky cheese. I love it all.

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Once again we were hoping to hitchhike. We used hitchhike wikipedia to find the perfect spot to catch the car and went there early morning. We were hoping to catch the car to Paris, but after few hours we realized it wont be so easy. We had plenty of luck before, but now… now nobody wanted to take us with the dog.
After many hours, when it was already dark, cold and started to rain, we realized we wont be able to leave the gas station. We slept few hours under the bench and early in the morning we decided to walk.

Rest of the trip via Belgium was nice, full of surprising small towns with beautiful old buildings and friendly people.

First days in France and the dangerous situation

After few days, when we crossed the border with the France, we realized we need to fill our water supplies, like many times before. Usually we were asking people if they could fill our bottles, but this time nobody was in around, so we knew we will have to knock the door. Nobody wanted to do it, so we stopped on the street and started to debate who should go when we saw some man looking at us 200 metres away.

Man was staying in the middle of the street and looked creepy at least. I went to him and asked for filling our bottles, he smiled and said that he thought we were some burglars who want to steal from the neighbours and he was ready to react properly. Then I saw he had a gun. He took it and went home, came back with the water and some soft drinks.

Later I was wondering what would he mean by "react properly" and how would he react when we would go to the neighbours door. Would he shoot?

Another thing which made me wonder: who thinks that the burglars would go to steal something with the huge travel backpacks, Nordic walking sticks and a dog? Not to mention the middle of the day?

To not make this post too long, I will stop in this place. Luckily the gun man is the anecdote now. Nothing bad happened, but believe me, Nord province in France is weird as hell :)

_{Breakfast somewhere in the Nord province}

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Thank you for reading.
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