Road Cheap

15/08/2021

ROAD CHEAP NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE:

Link to the Impact Travel Alliance: https://www.impacttravelalliance.org/

13/03/2021

Hello, I hope you are all fine ✨

My best travel and heart mate, Sebastian Lungu, made a funny montage of all the f**ksh*t things we've done during our summer trip in Eastern Europe and our Christmas trip in Poland 🌞🎅 It is full of memories and happiness, so don't hesitate to have a look at it 🧐 !

Eastern Europe : https://youtu.be/SKGzpjwcapQ 🇷🇴🇧🇬🇹🇷
Poland : https://youtu.be/PDQ0OKSbS9o 🇵🇱

Have a nice f**ksh*t around the world 😘🗺️

David

04/01/2021

Day 13-18 : Happy new year's 😃🎆

We left Bydgoszcz for Trójmiasto (=Tricity), the biggest metropolis in the north of Poland uniting the 3 cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot 🏙️

On the last day of 2020, we went for a long walk on the famous frozen beach of Sopot ❄️🏖️ We met Elizabeth, an American who has been living in Poland for 8 years 🇺🇸 We also played beach volley with some locals 🏐

We were looking for a plan for New Year's Eve. This is when Gośia, the owner of our Airbnb, invited us at her place, where she welcomed with some KFC and vodka... 🍗🍶But what happened this night in Gdańsk stays in Gdańsk 🔥🤮🎆

The 1st of day 2021, we woke up and played "Knowledge is power", while eating KFC 🎮🍗 We came back home and were trash for the rest of the day 🚮 2021 started with snow, Leo was once again amazed ❄️

The 2nd of january, we met Radu and Izabela. Together, we went for a walk on the coast in Gdynia 🇷🇴🇬🇧 They invited us for the dinner and Radu even made us visit the center of Gdańsk 🏎️

To celebrate our last day and the 400 likes of Road Cheap 😁, they challenged us to take part in a polish tradition called "morsowanie". It consists of taking an ice bath in the Baltic Sea (air 1°C, water 6°C) ❄️ So we did! 🔥 Afterwards, they warmly welcomed us for a delicious chicken soup 😋 They were very welcoming and we had a lot of fun together. Thank you very much ❤️

Then, we took the train to Poznań, where we were welcomed by Kuba and Roman. We had a dinner of pierogis together, and smoked 🥟🚬🙃 The next morning, we took our plane, back to France ✈️🇨🇵😢

To conclude, even though we feared that our trip would be boring in the beginning since everything was closed, we were able to live those 2 weeks as if a year passed by 🤯⚡By definition, travelling without plans is always full of twists. Road Cheap wants to prove that it isn't the country that makes the trip but instead the people we meet 😃

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

30/12/2020

Day 10-12 : Auschwitz ☠️

We woke up at 2PM and we were mostly on our phones as we had to make plans for the upcoming days. Then, we watched documentaries about Auschwitz, in order to visit it the next day. ☠️

During the evening, we ate at a french crêperie because it was Ania's dream. There, we met Dylan, the cook who we talked a lot with 👨‍🍳 When we came back home, we each told some personal stories until 3AM 🌙

The next day, we went to Auschwitz I (concentration camp) and Auschwitz II-Birkenau (extermination camp). Even in front of the obvious, it was very hard to imagine the atrocities that were comitted by the n***s ☠️ The main entrance of the extermination camp, watchtowers every 100m, barbed wire and the houses of prisoners were especially touching. The rails on which 1,3 million people were deported were also very meaningful 🤢

Back at Kraków, we met Alex, Michel and Charbel, 3 cool lebanese guys 🇱🇧 And then, we came back home and had our last dinner with Ania 😋 All together, we watched the french series "Bref" and Ania loved it. For the last time, we talked until 3:45AM and learned a few hours before departure, that she is working on a PhD in psychology 🤯 It was heartbreaking to say goodbye to Ania. Her kindness, positivity, ingenuity and curiosity made her the best person of our trip ❤️

We left Kraków on the 12th day. We took the train where we had an afternoon nap 😴 Then, we met Mauricio again and visited Torún, the beautiful hometown of Nicolaus Copernicus 🔭 We finally reached Bydgoszcz where our friends from Rwanda invited us to sleep 😊

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

29/12/2020

(1/2) Day 9 : « S**t always happens » - A lawyer 👨‍🎓

Leo had never seen snow before 😍🌨️ We woke up at 5:30AM, in order to go to Zakopane, a city known for its mountains and its frozen lake 🗻 When we arrived there, we had a lot of fun making Mr. Jalapeños, the 1st snowman Leo ever built ☃️ We were also waiting for Aravind who is an indian friend of ours that missed the bus 🇮🇳

Since David's backpack was heavy (containing his vest and all of his documents), he put it aside and noticed that after a couple of minutes, it had disappeared. We did notice a homeless person passing by so we thought he took it 🎒🛒😱 So we started to look for it and went in front of an abandonned house, that a cheese seller recommended David to check 🧐 It was inhabited by homeless people and David got the intuition that his goods were inside🐶

We luckily met some policemen and some english-polish translators who were able to explain the situation 🚔 The police entered the house and found his bag, but empty... Afterwards, they invited David to go to the police office, while Seb, Leo, Aravind and our translator friends went for a hike. 🏔️

David :
« I was telling the story at the police office for hours, while accepting more and more of the reality that I would never find my stuff again... 😢 Suddenly, I got a call from some policemen who found my vest with all of my papers 😍 I was so happy and I was able to get out of the police office at 2:30PM 😃
I came back to tell Kinga what happened. She was the cheese seller who helped 😁 I also had the time to go for a walk in the city center of Zakopane🚶»

27/12/2020

Day 7-8 : Christmas 🎅🎄

We slept in until noon and went shopping before the shops closed 🛒 We bought a lot of food and Christmas gifts for Ania : some flowers and an argentinian wine 🌺🐘

Then, we prepared a typical polish Christmas meal 🎅 : some red barszcz soup with beetroot, pierogi (delicious dumplings with mushrooms and cabbage 🥟🍄), sałatka jarzynowa (salad) and sernik (polish cheesecake 🍰).

There is a polish tradition where families prepare an extra plate for a person in-need that may join the table on Christmas Eve 💝 Therefore, Ania's wish was to invite 3 homeless people for dinner 🤲, but they refused. So we offered them a Christmas meal and wished them "Wesołych Świąt" (=Merry Christmas) 🎅 Back at home, we had Christmas dinner 🥟 My Christmas gift was the only thing I needed : a power nap, against the accumulated tireness 😃

Then, Ania's sister came and we all went to the midnight's Christmas Mass ⛪ While coming back home, I talked a lot to Ania, as if we had always been good friends 😊 Meeting a stranger with whom we have a good feeling and living such great moments, as Christmas, is always the best part of trips 🎅💓 We had pizza and talked until 5AM 🍕

During this day, Leo met a french priest by chance who accepted to do a Mass in french 🇨🇵 The next day we went for it. After the Mass, the priest invited us to drink tea, and it was also the occasion to talk to him ☕ We learned that he had been a priest in France, in Italy, in the USA, in Argentina and now in Poland, and that he used to be a shooting instructor in the french army 🗺️🔫

While coming back to Ania's flat, we visited Kazimierz, the jewish district of Kraków (Casimir was the polish king who gave a city to the jewish people) ✡️ The atmosphere was loomy, because most of the jewish people there had been deported during the 2nd world war 🕍

Back at home, we prepared a vegetarian lasagna for Anie until midnight and prepared ourselves for tomorrow 💅😂

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

24/12/2020

Day 5-6 : Push it to the limit 💸🎵
https://youtu.be/Olgn9sXNdl0

We left Mauricio's flat in order to go to Kraków 🌧️ For lunch, we challenged ourselves to taste random things from a local shop😂🤮

When we arrived in Kraków, the homeless adventures began 👢😤 We got scammed once for 18€, because the owner of the hostel didn't pick up his phone 📴💸 It was very late so we had dinner: pierogis (polish dumplings with cabbage 🥟) and supper on the street, because all restaurants are closed 🍜🎵 Then we got refused for a second time in a hostel that we booked for 17€ because one has to justify that they're on a business trip (new polish government's restrictions) 🚫💸

At this moment, we really thought that we were going to sleep in the streets with the 6°C ❄️ We even started to create Tinder accounts, in order to get matches and find a place to sleep ♥️😂 We finally had to make a fake certificate that we are on a business trip to be accepted in our 3rd hostel 🤵🤫💤

The day after, we met a group of kazakh girls who had very nice vibes.🇰🇿 We decided to go to visit the Castle of Wawel all together 🏰

The Castle of Wawel used to be the place where the polish kings were crowned and lived 👑. At the time, Kraków was the capital of Poland 🇵🇱 The cathedral is especially beautiful as it had been built from the XIth to XVIIth century and therefore has several architecture styles 😍 Nowadays, it hosts all the graves of the influential historical polish leading figures ⚰️😇

After this, we had a dinner and made what might be the f**ksh*ttiest thing 🤣 We offered a tattoo to 2 kazakh girls, as a memory of our very funny day and because it was also their dream ✍️

At last, we arrived at Ania's house, a polish french-speaker that we met on Facebook, and who wanted to welcome some strangers for the 1st time 📱🥇We talked a lot, as she's an open-minded psychologist, while drinking a cup of cannabis tea 🗣️🍵

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

23/12/2020

Day 4 : 3 pornstars play basketball 👨‍👨‍👦🏀

We woke up at 12PM at Zuzanna's flat, sore as f**k from the ski 🤕 We lunched on the lasagna from yesterday and said goodbye to Zuzanna and Wanda her cat 😿

On our way to leave Warsaw, we planned to visit some cultural monuments, which we hadn't done at all yet 🏛️ But our attention was caught by the first cannabis shop that we saw, where we bought some hash flavored lollipops and teaHC 🍭👅🍵

Then, we were late so we took the funniest Uber ever 😂 The belarussian driver drove very badly and we had to indicate her the directions for an entire hour. When Sebastian showed her the directions, he unpurposely showed her a picture of a huge piece of crap 💩🚽

Watch the videos for the next paragraph 😎 :
We finally arrived at our meeting point with Mauricio, our friend from yesterday 😩 We met at a trampoline park where we had a lot of fun 😂 : we did some Ninja Warrior's parkours, played basketball on trampolines and had the funniest shower of our lives ⛹️‍♂️🚿 But Leo and David almost got paraplegic while learning to backflip ☠️⚰️

We were able to take the train where we learned how to say "f**ksh*t" in polish (=Jebać to g***o) 🤙 and we got our tickets controlled for our 3rd time since the beginning of the trip 👮‍♂️

At last, we reached Błonie where we're gonna sleep in Mauricio's 9m² co-living. Mauricio doesn't stop farting in his sleep while we're writing this article, despite our psychological breakdown 💨🧟‍♂️

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

21/12/2020

Day 1-3 : 100% f**ksh*t lifestyle 🎲

Things never happen the way you think they will 🎲 On our way to the airport, we got f**ked several times in the transports. We weren't fine, or maybe I should say : we got fined for 35 € 🚨

We landed in Poland on friday the 18th. On our way to Warsaw, we met a french young man called Stan who goes to Poland to buy cheap alcohol 🤑 We also met Darya, a cool belarussian girl 🇧🇾

We walked around during the night in the beautiful city of Warsaw. Indeed, nighttime starts at 4PM 🤩🌃 We unsuccessfully tried to make friends for 4 hours 🕓 To emphasize our depression, a vietnamese woman even recommended us to join a Facebook group, called "the friendzone" (she meant "The French Zone") 😂 The only original guy we met was Mateusz, a beat boxer disguised as a dumpling 🍌

Towards the end of the evening, we met a group of firejugglers who weren't particularly welcoming at first 🔥 But this problem was solved when we started to drink all together in a public park 🍻 We even had the occasion to try juggling with fire instruments 🤯 When we came back, we spent some great time with the people of our hostel 🤝 We were very tired 😴

Saturday, we shared a lunch with our friends from the hostel. We had cordons bleus and we drank some whiskey 🥃

Then, we met Zuzanna and Agata who live in the most vintage flat we had ever seen 📀 Back in the mood of the 50's, we spent 10 hours talking mainly about theater, Zuzanna's passion 🎭

Sunday, we had a proposal of Mauricio, who was a guy from "the friendzone", to go skiing and snowboarding in a park in Warsaw 🇪🇨 As you may have guessed, we accepted it and it was the f**ksh*ttiest thing ever. We hurt ourselves so much, it was so funny ! ⛷️🏂😂

We came back to Zuzanna's house in order to prepare for her some vegetarian lasagna. We almost killed ourselves trying to perform jalapeños challenges 🤒🌶️

To conclude, even though we cannot tell the huge amount of funny details of those 3 past days, we are f**ksh*tting everything to the end 🎲 The recent restrictions just destroyed all of our plans, but we managed to have some very good surprises like Zuzanna and the ski, and a lot of fun 😊💓

David Thiaw & Sebastian Lungu

28/08/2020

Jour 38 à 44 : Leçons de terrain 📝

Situé au sud-est de la Turquie, Mardin est l'une des rares villes au monde où cohabitent islam, christianisme, judaïsme et yazidisme, répartis entre Kurdes, Arabes, Turcs et Syriaques ⚔️🏳️🤝La ville est bâtie sur un flanc de plateau, offrant une magnifique vue sur les plaines de Mésopotamie 🌄

Dans ce climat multiculturel, j'en profite pour faire de belles rencontres : le groupe d'Européens 🇪🇺 qui ne se connaissaient pas mais ont décidé de voyager ensemble, Rodi le réfugié libyen 🇱🇾, Ahin avec qui j'ai aimé débattre de religion 🧕 et Nurullah. À Nusaybin, ville frontalière avec la Syrie 🇸🇾, Ferhat m'apprend que le restaurant dans lequel nous mangeons a été touché par un missile il y a 10 mois 💣 Il est vrai que me promener à quelques mètres de la Syrie, où tant de droits humains ont été bafoués dans un conflit sanguinaire, confère de terribles sensations 😬

Pour en revenir à nos pommes 🍏, je partage le point de vue des nombreux locaux et touristes que j'ai rencontrés : l'image du Kurdistan turc véhiculée par les médias ne reflète pas la réalité du terrain 📰🙅‍♂️ Je ne me suis jamais senti en danger, même de nuit dans les ruelles sombres ✔️, et les habitants sont toujours prêts à nous aider 😊

De retour à Istanbul, je revois mon amie Derya une dernière fois et Cem qui m'accueille pour la nuit 🌃 Puis, de touriste que tout le monde plaçait sur un piédestal, je redeviens simple M. Toutlemonde 😇 Ce voyage fut l'un des meilleurs de ma vie 💖

David

24/08/2020

Jour 36 et 37 : La ville des prophètes 👳

J'arrive l'après-midi à Şanliurfa et je prends le temps de discuter avec Leyla, la gérante de l'hostel, d'identité kurde ! 🍵 En effet, le sud-est de la Turquie est majoritairement peuplé de Kurdes, dont la culture diffère de la turque 🇹🇷
Puis le soir, je rencontre Hamza qui me prend sous son épaule et me fait visiter le centre historique de Şanlıurfa, dont le fameux Balıklıgöl, littéralement "étang de poissons" 🐟

Şanlıurfa aurait été la première ville construite après le Déluge 🌊 et le domicile d'Abraham et d'Adam 🍎 De nos jours, c'est une ville de pèlerinage pour les Turcs et qui comporte de nombreuses belles mosquées 🕌 Je les visite et assiste même à une séance de prière 🙇 Puis l'après-midi, après de nombreux rebondissements liés au niveau d'anglais exécrable des Turcs, je décide finalement d'aller à Göbekli Tepe 🙏
Bâti en - 10 000 av. J.C., il s'agit d'un des plus vieux lieux de culte encore observables de nos jours 👀 et est considéré comme une prouesse architecturelle pour l'époque 💪 En anthropologique, les chercheurs suggèrent que ces lieux de culte collectifs ont joué un rôle dans la concentration de la demande en nourriture en certains points 🥩🥖, engendrant la domestication animale et l'agriculture, qui sont apparus à l'époque 🐂🌾

David