Misadventures.....Part Two

THIS IS PART TWO OF MISADVENTURES....BE SURE THAT YOU READ MISADVENTURES...PART ONE, FIRST!

We stood at the side of the road a while, dazed and speechless, thanking God that the van hadn't been searched, knowing full well that if it had, we would, by now, be in handcuffs. We were both overwhelmed by our close call and grateful beyond words that we'd gotten past the border without incident.  We could only hope that things would go more smoothly as we determinedly stuck out our thumbs and faced the on-coming traffic.

Several minutes passed and a car cruised by....going in the opposite direction. But wait....what's that?  It turned around.  The driver must have realized he was going the wrong way, and corrected his course.  The vehicle approached and......stopped! This was very strange and more than a bit suspicious.  Should we or shouldn't we take the ride? We really needed to make some headway. Glen would be arriving before we knew it and we had to be there to meet him. Yes, it was decided, we had to take the ride even if it meant going only another ten kilometres.

As we approached the vehicle, the man in the passenger seat got out, opened the back door and slid inside. That meant that one of us had to sit beside the driver while the other sat in back.   The look we shared was, by now, all too familiar...it was a look of resignation, a silent sigh.  Each time we got into a car, we knew it could go either way. This time, we hoped, it would be in our favour.

Normally, the sister who sat in the front seat was subjected to some form of one-handed molestation, so to be fair, we took turns sitting beside the driver. Fortunately for Shelley, this time it was her turn in the front, which left yours truly in the back seat with a potential violator.....one who had both hands free!!  

"Where you go," asked the driver. "Petrovac."  "Ah, Petrovac. Very good, Petrovac!"  He started off down the road.  We made small talk with the two men, hoping to endear ourselves to them, to avoid any future groping.  We learned that the man in the back seat was a boxer and the driver was his manager...unwelcome news to be sure!  Judging from the size of the guy beside me, I could easily believe he was a boxer.  

The two men started conversing in Slovak.  At one point, the conversation got rather heated and after several minutes of back and forth, the driver pulled over to the side of the road.  They opened their doors and switched places!!  This did not bode well, at all! Shelley turned in her seat and eye-balled me.  By unspoken mutual agreement, and before the new driver could take off, we opened our respective doors, grabbed our backpacks, and got out.  "Thank you very much." The men yelled and motioned for us to get back in the car, but we started walking.  The car followed for a while, the two inside shouting and gesticulating, but once the 'gentlemen' realized that there was no convincing us to join them again, they made a U-turn and drove back down the highway. "Are we having fun yet," quipped Shelley. "Not quite yet," I replied.

Out went the thumbs.  "The hitchhiking doesn't seem to be going too well.  I vote that we try to make it to the next town and catch a bus there.  Whaddya think?" "I agree," said my younger sister.  A Mercedes pulled alongside, a single man behind the wheel. I steeled myself because it was now my turn in the front seat.  


Watch (breathlessly, I'm sure) for Misadventures....Part Three...coming soon, to a blog near you!