Five cities, six days, 19 rides and 1700 kilometers.
On June 12, 2014, I started off in Berlin towards Brussels. Hitchwiki showed me there was a good hhiking spot in Raststätte Grunewald. It’s such a good spot that there were already two hhikers who had recently arrived. One of them was a Berlin Tramprennen organizer, so he was quite experienced. I was still too shy to try asking the drivers in German, so they did the talking at first. In less than 5 minutes they got a ride to Mirchendorf for all 3 of us.
The experienced hhiker had a map of all petrol stations in Europe. He explained to me the best way to get to Brussels and had me take pictures of his map all the way to Brussels.
They were still doing all the talking and another hhiker showed up in Michendorf. There were now 4 of us, each going to different directions.
The first two hhikers eventually got their rides. The other one wanted to go to Göttenburg. He saw a car with a GÖ license plate passing by us and ran after it. He didn’t return, so now I was alone, and had to talk to people myself.
I started by repeating what the other hhikers were doing earlier. I didn’t understand all they were saying, but basically it was a warm greeting – “Guten Tag” -, followed by asking the drivers if they were going to the city we wanted – “Fahren Sie nach Hanover?” -, or asking them wheter they were going in the direction we wanted – “Fahren Sie in Richtung Hanover?” -, or through a certain road – “Fahren Sie aus die A2?” -. If affirmative, I asked for a ride, with “Können Sie bitte mich mitnehmen?”.
Asking was easy. The hard part was understanding the replies. I would try to follow-up the conversation as much as possible, but sometimes I had to ask to switch to English.
After some time, I got my first ride. A couple drove me close to Hanover to a Tankstelle – petrol station – I had on the map.
The driver was Ukranian and she wanted to practice English, so we switched languages. She mentioned she wanted to spend her vacations back home in Ukraine but the political situation there made her change her mind.
So, I was close to Hanover in a petrol station and started asking for rides again. This time I was more confident. I got a short ride until just after Hanover, in another big petrol station.
I spent some 20 minutes there talking to people with no success. At some point, a car pulled over, and a guy with long white hair offered me a ride. This was Michael, from the city of Titz (he says all English speakers laugh when he says this). He was going back home from Berlin. His MP3 player’s battery had just died, so I plugged in my solar charger and we got music. The selection was really good: lots of Blues, Jazz, Rock, and Country. He left me close to Titz, in a small rest station which he said he used to hhike from all the time in the 70’s.
That was my first big mistake. I didn’t follow the picture I had from the map. It might have been a good place in the 70’s, but it was a horrible place now.
It took me over an hour to finally get a ride out of there, which left me in another small station inside Belgium, close to Aachen. As soon as we crossed the border, my mobile data plan ceased to work. It was good only inside Germany. So I couldn’t access hitchwiki in any form anymore.
After some time there, a worker from the station told me that was a bad spot for where I wanted to go, that he was going back home and would drive me to a better station in the way.
In that station, I met the first French-speaking drivers. That’s when I realized my French was bad. Another hour spent there. I got a ride for some 30km to the next station.
At this point it was already quite late. It took me another hour to get a ride, from a Dutch guy who had already been driving for 10 hours and was quite tired. He left me in the Zaventem Airport close to Brussels.
It was midnight, the last bus to the city centre had already left. I got a bus to the Botanique, quite far from where I had to go. The only way left was walking, with the 17 kg backpack. Hey, I actually want to hike, right? This was training.
What have I learned from this? That a hitch-hiking spot that was good in the 70’s might be a horrible place now.
