Story

You have to be dead broke, or a romantic, to persevere.

A ridiculously inexpensive flight from Milan to Tokyo and back, my backpack, a fluent-Japanese-speaking girlfriend wwoofing on a tropical island in southern Japan who is waiting for you (while Europe is buried in snow), and a copy of Will Ferguson's book "Hitching Rides with Buddha" [1].

I left Haydarpaşa a few hours ago and have been very sleepy during the first few hours of the ride. Waking up every now and then from my snooze, I would see large quays, harbour areas in the middle of nowhere and huge oil transformation complexes.

The sun was going down somewhere behind the rain clouds and we weren't even halfway to our destination. After a series of rides off the beaten path from Amsterdam to Northern Germany, my partner and I ended up in a "not-so-good" place, where nobody seemed to be going anywhere that was even remotely relevant to us.