Hitchhiking through the wounds of the former USSR: "The biggest danger is that in many countries people drive very badly"

BarcelonaMiki Kisenvole (Sabadell, 1993) always has to seek out paths where not everyone wants to go. A few years ago, he found himself near the bridge over the Kerch Strait that connects Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, Vladimir Putin's pharaonic project to ensure that Crimea remained Russian. He thought no one would help him hitchhike across the bridge, but surprisingly, it was police officers who gave him a ride. "Hitchhiking is an adventure. I like it because every day is different, but also because I get to know the places I go to better," he explains. Miki is a curious man who speaks nine languages and has led the creation of a casteller group in Stockholm. He studied International Relations and has worked as an international election observer. Now he is publishing The Soviet Hitchhiker's Guide (Editorial platform) where he recounts his adventures, combining some of his passions: borders, the former Soviet Union, corners of the planet turned into diplomatic hotspots, statues of Lenin, and hitchhiking.

Miki, his real name, enjoys hitchhiking and answers ARA's questions from China, where he is currently located. Kisenvole, a surname that is a pseudonym, entered the world of this way of traveling thanks to his Polish partner, Dorota. "It's not that she hitchhiked often, but it's much more popular in Poland. A few years ago, we got stranded on Mount Etna in Sicily. We were going to have to wait for hours without a bus, so we decided to try it. I didn't think it would work, but it only took us a few minutes to find someone. They were very friendly, and we saved money. I'd never even considered it before. And it seemed like a superpower. It was a way to get to know people and countries better, to travel while saving money."

And so he became interested in a form of travel that has taken him all over the world, from South America to the Balkans, from China to Ukraine. "I had a blog explaining my travels, but to write the book I wanted to focus on one region and I decided to do it on the former Soviet Union, since I had visited all its states and also unrecognized areas, such as Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh," an area he visited a few months before the return from the war that would end in defeat. "What fascinates me about this area is the diversity, but also the uniformity, since they were the same state for a long time and it shows. I was visiting a mosque in Tajikistan and I realized that when my mother was the age I am now, that territory was the same country as Riga or Tallinn, which are completely different cities. You hear different languages, but at the same time you see the same apartment blocks, the same street names, the same murals and statues. You can tell that for a long time it was a single country with a strong tendency towards uniformity." plove"...a dish from Central Asia."

During his travels, Miki has analyzed reality by experiencing anecdotes, such as the driver who took him from Moldova to Romania after deviating slightly from the route, since the more people he had in the car, the more tolls he was charged without paying. Abkhazia, a region that, with Moscow's support, does not want to be part of Georgia. "I think that talking to the people there while hitchhiking has given me a better understanding of reality than talking to the professor of the master's program in international relations that I studied in Poland." cheap. "And apartment prices are rising, creating problems for the local people," he explains. Visiting Belarus, a country that didn't help with visas, but in 2019 allowed entry to anyone who bought tickets for the European Games. couchsurfingThe network that lets you find a bed or a sofa to save money. But is hitchhiking safe? Miki argues that it is. "My wife has hitchhiked alone many times and hasn't had any problems. In fact, more cars stop for her, since many female drivers want to give another woman a ride. Or many men stop and tell her they want to help, that they've seen a woman alone on the road and want to make sure she gets to the next town. I consider it very safe. Yes, I've had some problems, but obviously you'll have some problems sometimes, but it's not worth worrying about."

One tactic is to "hitchhike at rest stops, instead of being in the middle of the road" or to ask for a photo of the car's license plate. "I explain that my mother worries about the way I travel and asks me for a photo of every car's license plate. Sometimes I don't even take the photo or send it, but if it were someone with bad intentions, I'd think twice. Now, in general, what you find are curious people, eager to talk. There are often surprises. "When you hitchhike, you spend many hours with people who trust you because you're a foreigner. They tend to open up. I show curiosity, and if, for example, I'm in a country with a dictatorship, I ask them if it's true that they've been with the same president for years, since I live in a country where presidents change," he explains.

But there are scares. Like the day he was in Mexico and a truck driver stopped. "I was interested because I didn't want to spend the night on the road, but I quickly saw that he was doing strange things." At one point he takes out a light bulb, unscrews it, puts a white powder and a little liquid inside, heats it with a lighter, and puts it under his nose. He tells me he went to school to sell drugs to a drug lord. He can endure so many hours of driving.pattern"I controlled it by GPS and didn't let them rest. But of course, he was drugged and dancing behind the wheel, it wasn't easy," he admits.

Experiences far from home, where not everyone understands him because hitchhiking isn't common here anymore. "It's been lost at home. We no longer have the tradition. And in fact, it's internationally recognized that hitchhiking works very poorly in Italy, Catalonia, Greece, and Spain. In other places it's still popular, but not at home. I suppose the key factor has been that we now have more roads and train lines, which makes it easier to get places. Before, you had to hitchhike because there weren't any stops for cars. Besides, you can access bus schedules and tickets from all over the world online, and few people think about hitchhiking." Miki and his wife do. They're still doing it in China. Who knows if a new book will come out.