Postscript to previous post: at least when you hitchhike – for the most part anyway – someone else is doing the driving. This takes the onus off you (me) and your (my) shocking map-reading skills.

Maps and I just aren’t friendly; that’s the long and the short of it. It took me years to catch on that measuring distances in thumbs is highly inaccurate, and I still have to hold the map in the direction I’m going or else I get well dizzy.

Much of my travelling in Europe was done with my friend Kylie, who, even more so than me, was born with a distinct and particularly debilitating lack of sense of direction, mechanics and logic (her words). Naturally, our plans rarely unfolded along the predicted lines. We would take turns being MapGirl, with our knickers outside of our pants, map-cape fluttering in the wind, (mis)guiding the both of us on our quest.

 
Once, trying to find our way to Montmarte in Paris, MapGirl (Kylie, on this particular day) suddenly stopped dead just as we’d half-crossed a major highway, blustery wind tossing her hair and the map wildly.

‘Kylz, where do we go now?!’ I called, warily eyeing the 12 lanes of oncoming traffic waiting at the lights to our left.

‘We’re in…Stalingrad!’ she yelled back.

‘Erm,’ I said. ‘Stalingrad’s in Russia, mate!’ The 12 lanes of oncoming traffic started revving their engines. ‘I believe it fell to the Germans some time during World War II!’

‘I’m serious!’ she shouted. ‘There’s a suburb called Stalingrad! We’re here -’ (she stabs a finger at the map in her trusty Lonely Planet) ‘and we need to get -’ (flips about 65 pages over) ‘- here!’

Needless to say, we barely avoided getting peeled off the street with giant spatulas, but MapGirl soon retired and went back to a) Australia; and b) wearing her undies the regular way.