ON THE ROAD.

There were roads; There were many roads.

 Staying for a couple of days in parking on Swede's side of the Norwegian line,  a woman came with her car asking money for parking, she wanted 300 kroner for two days parking, I said, I will no pay an öre, telling her that I'm a free man from a free country. This place is full of trucks under open sky surrounding fields and emptiness, why should I pay off anything.
"You must go", the woman said.
By the evening I took the road to Stockholm.
Been driving about twenty mail or so, it began to rain, and darkness descended. I pulled off the road; there was a little parking lot empty of cars and travellers. In the night I heard some noise from outside and wen peeped out I saw a group of Serbian gipsies setting their tents. They told been on the road for Norvegian.
When in Södätelje, I wanted to see the places, so I sought up parking for my MH, There was an empty place by the canal, I took a walk to be sure there will be no sig for parking forbidden, I didn't find anything like that, so I walked to town and drank a cup of coffee in the street coffee. There was every kind of people around. When returned to my M-home there was a woman again with her white car putting a ticket on the windscreen, "Wait a minute" I said, "Where is the parking forbidden? I didn't saw any anywhere". ?
"They are outside the down; there they show that the parking is forbidden".
I then drove through Stockholm, over many bridges and crossroads, it was morning when arrived in Kapershar, where was to take a ferry over to Finland. A few trucks were waiting for the ferry. Outside of the terminal building, I saw several caravans with some pickup truck outside of the terminal building perhaps belonging to British travellers. A young mand was carrying water to the caravan and in the cafe sat some youngest member of that group. I had some talk with them still nothing particular.
In the evening boarded the ferry and took my journey over the sea of Äland

The road which starts from northern Baltic to southern Europe is called Via Baltika, it's a terrible road, so speaking, with its heavy truck traffic and those pits that hammers your wheels.
In the summer of 2007, I was doing this and that. The summer went that way, when autumn came, I engaged with a company that was running some 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 raft owner called Frans; I was toiling that job for two weeks, and there was a gale blowing; it blew almost every day and every night so that we had to turn the raft around unable hearing against the seas. I spend nights ashore, sleeping in my MB parked on the upper bank nearby the Cap of Porkkala. I don't remember much about the days and what was the real work there. I remember that we got the job done. At the beginning of the October, the night turned chilly 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, I wished him a good voyage, and with the old camper, I went. It was already late when I made boarding a ferry in Helsinki for Tallinn. On the ferry, I elected to sit in a bar full of noisy passengers. The music was playing, and as the noise bet my ears. An old female began to sing with her high pitched stone. I sifted the place to have my coffee in peace. So I became across an Estonian man, a building worker who wanted to know where I was going. Getting to know that I was travelling nowhere, he invited me to visit his home. I told going another way.
After arriving and secured at the quay in Tallinn didn't find my camper. I was trying to get out to the car deck from the wrong door, so I return to the reception where I met a girl and a man in uniform when questioned why they don't let people out, the man sets up his wrist and started for me, it looked like this Cock was ready for fights. The girl told me that all other cars and passengers have landed, perhaps I had been locked behind the 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 at Tartu after few hours of rests I took a walk and find nothing interesting in the city. so I set on the road again. The roads lead to the Viru the southern town of Estonia, from that place I had to turn more westward to get to Latvia and the road Via Baltic. Riga's road was wide, and small loose stones were beating the bottom of the van, still 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 so poor I tried to find a place to pull aside to spent the oncoming night somewhere. And there it was, nearby a shop-an an empty black asphalt lot for parking.
The morning was grey, chilly and vet as I woke, After making coffee on my gas cooker I visited the grocery I bought a flask of whisk 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. A roundabout and one more roundabout, it was the Via Batik that runs from Estonia to Poland. It runs with heavy traffic to Europe. The trucks occupied the road performing such a horror race on the road.
The environment is flat and straight forward in which the Via Baltic road runs, there are few meanders after crossing the border of Latvia to Lietuva, the road is mainly straight and the landscape flat the checkpoints abandoned. You can drive with no stop to Lietuva. So I did on that afternoon day of bitter cold October.
Getting pasted Kaunas the road bends and it's separate from the highway to be continued now as a two-way road, lined with heavy trucks. After Marjan Pole, I saw a gas oil station aside from the road together with a bar, had 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 quite boring place, and boring is the life of travelling too, with strange, not talkative people who are not a bit interesting in you, where you are coming from, or where you are driving to. No, that all is so common and daily, and there is no difference.
During the night around nine o clock, a clone of old buses and some kind of van drove to the parking lot. I soon realized that it must be some gipsy convoy like a small circus or something like that. The group entered the bar; they seem to be white-skinned youngsters, I listened to them talking, trying to figure out which language they spoke, it sounds like Chez. An attempt to get a conversation with them in Russia failed, they wanted to be themselves, and they had fun together.
Late in the night when I tried to shift my MB some distance on the parking lot as 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 Lublin, a town on the eastern side of Poland. By night the darkness and the heavy traffic made me feel lost. There was a dim parking place for trucks; I pulled aside. A tiny bar for beer and then sleep for the next morning. The morning revealed that I had come to a suburb of the Lubin and was now in some mud field which serviced as a parking lot. To continue my journey, I had to find a bank office for getting my currency changed. Getting all that done I put on the road again and continued my journey to Tylava, spend the night on a poor tiny gas station nearby the border of Slovakia. The night was rainy and restless, could hear cars and the trucks going and coming along all night. In the morning, I bought some food from a small grocery on the roadside. I bought polish ham as it was known for being so tasty and soft it tasted. After a couple of hours of driving there were some stone buildings, both side of the road all of them abandoned, I was a mark that I was crossing the board, travelling now to Slovenia. I could see a man and woman sitting in the forest, and when I came to the first 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 roaming on the roadside, in a single and groups. I could see horses and the carts and plenty of stuff of all sort piled on the roadside. I drove with non-stop - and there was not even a place to stop, so full was loaded the road with its sides.

I came through the Vysne Komarin and Presov. The landscape was turned into mountainous. I stopped for a while to have some shopping in the shopping centre. It was Wednesday afternoon and having completed my shopping, I mounted and drove again - getting ahead. I had to lose money, too much. When checking 300 dollars minus in my purse. I must be careful with the money, How could I come along with no money? There is no temporary job in an offer for such a man like me in Eastern Europe. The begging is out of the question. So, be careful I said to myself, eat little and drive before the wind.

It was night as I arrived Kotice, I don't much know about the city, I just know there was plenty of trucks traffic and when I saw a little place aside the road showing free rooms for travellers I pulled in and parked my MB down in a place where seemed stood a couple of dumber-truck by the wall os some large building. I went up to the bar to have a beer and see people. It was a small bar room and a boy has serviced the beer. As the boy heard that I was driving from Finland he told me to be a fan of Raikkonen, the Finnis origin race driver. .The boy told been imagined once becoming also such femes driver like MR Raikkonen. I wanted to say something about the mater but had little to say because I haven't ever been fond of such a sport.

Getting complete my beer drinking I descended to the yard where my MB was parked, I bum into two very dark and small men standing outside of the MB. I invited then in and offered a cup of coffee and one-shot from the Riga balsam bottles. They were probably gipsies and a very silent couple. Sudeley The Truck staying alongside my MB started its engine. Wit roaring sound it burst a black smoke out of its exhaust pipe, filing my MB with bad-smelling oily smoke. What wast this such abuse. Maby the driver in that truck didn't like the gipsy coming in my MB.

On the net day as I drove on the road for Kosie, the smell was still there attend at the interior of the My MB.