So Open Up, I’m Climbing In
9/7/10
This one is labeled “???, Germany->???, Germany”
Yesterday was my third day of hitchhiking, and my hardest yet, but I ended up VERY lucky. I woke up early (it was cold) and started hitching about 7am. I waited for HOURS, and no one stopped. The only person that did was an undercover police officer who gave me a bit of trouble (not for hitchhiking, but you can ask me about that personally). This was even worse, because all I saw was the officer looking at my sign as if she were trying to see if she wanted to pick me up, and then they pulled over; I was REALLY excited, until she flashed a badge at me. I was let go, though, with no fines or threats of jail time. Apparently I will get a report of the incident in the mail back in the states.
I was annoyed, but I kept waiting. Someone picked me up on his way to Cologne, and I was so desperate for any ride that I went with him; I didn’t have a map, but I thought that it would be on my way, and I REALLY wanted a change of scenery from the rest stop I had been at for upwards of 15 hours now (including the night of sleep). The guy ended up taking me onto a different freeway than I should have been on, and I spent the entire day trying to get back on trap. The positive, though, is that he could not have been nicer. He was great to talk to, and we had an hour conversation entirely in German. He was about my dad’s age, and acted in something of a fatherly way toward me. When it was time to think about getting out, he grabbed an enormous atlas of Europe and helped me plan my next move. When I sat there poring over it for another ten minutes trying to memorize everything, he offered it to me to keep. It was heavy, about five pounds and bulky, but extremely useful and I couldn’t have been more thankful.
I was let out at a rest stop that was too big and had too few cars. I waited awhile before deciding to walk–I just had the feeling that nothing good would happen here. I walked about two or more hours on the side of the Autobahn until I got to the rest stop about 7km (about five miles) away. It wasn’t easy–a lot of the time it was slanted hillside, and I even walked through the woods for part of it along the freeway, but I didn’t hate the walk. I had to take two more freeways to get onto the freeway I needed to be on, and it seemed impossible. When I got to the next stop, the work had paid off. It was an ordeal, and I had thought I was going to be done hitchhiking, but in just a few minutes I was picked up by a nice guy who drove me 20km (12 miles) out of his way to get me to a rest stop on the right side of the right freeway. I was picked up from there by a hippie couple in a van who drove me another 30 minutes to another truck stop that I thought I would be spending the night at. They were on their way to an organic farm with their baby and dog where they would be staying a few days and working and learning. A good portion of my conversations during the day were entirely in German, and the hitching experience is a great way to practice!
It was a quiet truck stop, but I thought I would try hitching that night and gain some ground, since I had effectively gone nowhere. A car of three or four stopped for me, but they were only going to Koblenz, where I had just come from. Then, I got a huge break: a van stopped for me shortly after, and he was headed to Metz, in France, for a biking trip. It was on my way, a long ride, and a huge break! When we started moving, though, his warning light came on and we discovered a broken alternator belt. He ended up having two convertible beds in his van, though, and invited me to sleep in his van, since he would be there for the night until a service station would be open the next morning. We had a few beers, a great conversation, and I got to sleep under cover for the first night since two previous. It was lucky, too, because I woke up in the middle of the night and it had started raining! Had I gotten all of the rights I wanted that day, I might have had to sleep in the rain. A lucky break.
