Last week I was running errands with my boyfriend and we finally had a roll of film developed with his photos of our holiday trip last July. I’m looking at them now and thinking back to the lovely time we had – we went to the Alps, the whole trip lasted a week and during this week I did many things for the first time in my life!

First of all – we hitchhiked. Okay – I had done it maybe once or twice, a very long time ago, on a distance of 20 kilometres and not feeling very comfortable. My boyfriend, in his turn, is a hardcore hitchhiker, and he succeeded in talking me into trying this way of travelling. The fact that at the moment we had not much spare money at the moment also helped us decide :-). We set off from Brussels on a July morning and a day and a half later we were at the foot of the Little St Bernard Pass! I almost couldn’t believe it could go so smooth, and I was also realising how helpful people were. And the best thing was, I do have to agree with my boyfriend and all the other hardcore hitchhikers out there, meeting all sorts of interesting, crazy, weird people that you would never meet in another way. Of course we had plenty of those who used to do hitchhiking in their youth and would always take others in their car, we had a twenty-something, earrings-leather jacket-tattoo type of guy, who was moving out of Brussels to a smaller town to look for peace and quiet; we had these teenagers who play their music superloud and do the elbow-in-the-open-window thing; we had young musicians – a pianist and a cellist; a young enthusiastic activist; we had two young Turks and right after them a Kurd (and of course we jumped at the opportunity to discuss politics in Turkey with both); and maybe the funniest was a terribly kind Welsh guy who took us in his truck through almost all of France, and with whom we talked about almost everything, and got completely lost on the ring around Lyon!

And then there was the mountains. I had never been to the Alps before. I love walking in nature, and in my childhood had done several trips to the Polish mountains, which I always found extremely beautiful, but… the Alps were so much grander, of course! Everything was so beautiful, and on such a breathtaking scale. I was very moved, and… very tired, because never before did I have to climb so high! 🙂

A couple of photos taken by my boyfriend: