Nope, not joking. Not wordplaying. We had a bad carcrash back in Andalusia and it wasn’t what I would call a funny anecdote. But before you start worrying: we must have had some sort of guardian-something because although the car was a write-off after the accident, we climbed out without a scratch.

But how did it even come to me sobbing and shaking like a leaf? Well, we hitchhiked. Like we have done a hundred times before and all those hundred times before, we have had great experiences. But on that particular day, everything felt wrong. We had left Theo’s farm in search for more adventures and ended up having a massive fight on the way to the trainstation (I’ll spare you the details, but yes, even happy couples fight sometimes and so do we…). We missed the train and decided to hitchike instead. We didn’t have to wait long. A Spanish local picked us up and already at the first bend of the road, my stomach felt a little uneasy. He just took it super fast but hey, he was a local so I told myself that he must have driven on this windy mountain road many times before and knew every bend. I didn’t even have time to think about it properly because it didn’t take 3 more minutes until the next thing I saw was us hitting some sort of bush, I heard him break hard, smelled the smoke of his cigarette getting mingled with dust and then felt the car tumbling. We rolled down a hill, properly overturning ourselves a couple of times, and I remember stabilizing myself with my hands on the roof while thinking “this just CAN’T be happening for real”. I screamed, heard Sebastian shouting that everything was going to be OK, felt his hand trying to grab mine. The world was dust and rubble and noise and panic. And then we stopped. The car came to a crooked halt and my only thought was that I had to get out. We climbed out of a shattered window and moved away from the car shaking and staggering.

Looking back now, we were EXTREMELY lucky: One of the car’s wheels got caught in a fence which slowed us down. Plus, we had only tumbled down a rather small slope instead of right into a gorge. We had all worn seatbelts and had the luggage stored away safely in the trunk of the car. The car was new and not some sort of dodgy lorry with an open deck. All of us excaped the accident unharmed except for stiff necks and a huge shock. Pew…

But you know what the odd thing is?

Sebastian and me still can’t get over the fact that we were quite alright a few hours later. Part of us expected the accident to have an overall life-changing effect on us. You know, it would be such a fine story to tell: “Remember when we had this aweful accident and then we became Buddhists? Remember when we had this terrifying accident and then dedicated our lifes to cancer research? Remember when we had this bad carcrash and then stopped eating chocolate for good?”

Life is too short. So YOLO and all that stuff. Indeed. Word.

But we knew that before so maybe that’s why this incident didn’t change our way of life? We’re still trying to figure it out. One thing is certain though: We won’t stop hitchhiking.