Statistics!

People who know me in person often make jokes about it: I compile lists about seriously everything :D
While there was one time when I even documented the colour of my eyeshadow every day, I by now limited myself to only write down all my receipts and expenditures. I do this all the time, but of course it's especially interesting during a period of travel.

So, let me proudly present you my spendings of the last 6 weeks of travelling:

click to enlarge

Food & soft drinks: Most of the time I buy stuff in local supermarkets for one or two days in advance. I always make sure I have enough food with me so that I'm never forced to buy something extremely overpriced when nothing else is around. Of course I don't get the chance to check out the "local cuisine" too much by this behaviour, but I also spend way less money and sometimes you can find really interesting stuff you've never seen or tasted before in supermarkets as well.

Alcohol: This is mostly cheap wine from supermarkets - definately should work on that one, a little bit of luxury should be allowed :D

Transportation: I spent 30€ for the ferry to and from Terschelling Island, the rest is public transport, which I didn't use a lot, and a train ride from Fusion Festival to Berlin.

Clothing: I was forced to invest in new shoes and trousers, as the first ruined my feet and the latter fell apart :D I also bought some t-shirts as a souvenir and my beloved blue cap which replaced the sun hat I had brought with me originally.

Accommodation: 42€ for camping and the ticket for Oerol on Terschelling Island hurt my wallet a lot but it was worth it! As you know, I couchsurfed most of the time, but I spent 2 nights in the ONE80° in Berlin (42€), and another 3 nights in St. Christopher's Inns in Prague (40€).

Others: Postcards, city tours, horrific cash withdrawal fees in Holland, open-air cinema (8,50€, gee!) - many a mickle makes a muckle :D


As I heard from most of you that you don't have the patience to read all my texts (shame on you!), I will let pictures speak in the following:

stuff I took with me originally
blue cardigan, scarf, 2-person-tent, trashbag, mp3-player, Canon EOS 550D,
2 longsleeves, 2 pairs of tights, turquoise purse (used as daypack), 3 dresses, underwear,
sun hat, zebra & nacho-top, sleeping bag, gaffatape, shorts, leggings, trekking towel,
painkillers, cutlery, sandals, 2 black tops, grey pants, make-up, small purse,
sleeping t-shirt, pants from India, toiletries, soap, shampoo

stuff I used less than 5 times or not at all
2 pairs of tights, glasses, bikini, extra black top, 2 longsleeves, sun hat,
rope thingy, eyeshadow base, eyeliner, lipstick, eyeliner,
small purse for going out, date book, trashbag

stuff I used (almost) every day
notebook, scarf, cap, waterbottle, sunglasses, mp3-player, trekking-towel,
travel diary, textile bag, roadmap of Europe (my holy bible), earplugs!!!, wallet,
eyebrow powder, compact powder, liquid make-up, eyelash curler, mascara,
brushes, rasp, toothbrush, comb, toothpaste, sun protection (50+)

stuff I found, bought, or got as a present
rain cape, light stick, cap, shoes, 3 pairs of socks, 1984 by Geroge Orwell, baby shirt,
cardigan, painkillers (didn't help), black panties, 2 t-shirts, a pair of jeans

stuff I lost or gave to someone else and stuff that didn't survive the trip
grey pants which I bought in Dubai *sob*, pair of shitty shoes by H&M,
my beloved blue cardigan by Takko (lost in Amsterdam metro, bitch!),
2-person-tent which I donated for refugee relief

amount of hair grown in 6 weeks, haha!

In total, I used 57 cars, surfed 12 couches, visited 15 cities, joined two festivals, and covered a distance of more than 3000 kilometers only by hitchhiking.

I met people from all kinds of places in Germany, from Turkey, Portugal, Croatia, France, Italy, Ecuador, Martinique, Tunesia, Romania, Spain, Holland, Iran, Czech Republic and from Ukraine - because they all stopped for me and gave me a lift. Wow!


I can't tell you which city or place or people I liked the most, because I had a lot of absolutely different experiences you can't compare - but there is one occasion I will never forget in my life: When, in five minutes, I decided not to go to Amsterdam and come with Roeland and Machteld instead, to a completely unknown island where a completely unknown festival took place: Oerol!

<3

The two of them cared for me as if I had been their good friend for years, shared everything with me and treated me with such a self-evident friendliness that I want to hug and kiss them over and over again.


All those numbers, as interesting and informative they might be, of course can't tell how much I enjoyed and what I learned from this trip. But I can tell you one thing: A LOT! :D

Day 40 - The End

Sorry for the delay! Not only did I get very lazy once I stepped over the doorsill, but my day of returning home instead of going to Nuremberg also was really long and exhausting, so that I don't like to think of it too much :D


Anyway. After I had spent half an hour walking around my hostel and looking for the post office to send some postcards, I took the Metros back to the station where Tomas had dropped me when I had arrived in Prague. It's located right at the street that leads out of the city to the West, and finally ends in the highways, so I thought it would be the perfect spot.

Buuut half an hour and a gazillion cars later, I was still standing at the bus stop where busses arrived every ten minutes. I had thought about taking the bus and see where it leads to, but didn't want to spend any money for ending up somewhere I didn't want to go, so I stayed. Finally, a very nice girl whose name I forgot (it sounded very Czech though), stopped for me. She only took me about 4 bus stops further, because she had to leave the street afterwards, but I was still thankful.

At said bus stop I waited again for I don't know how long, until Suzana pulled over for me. She told me she wouldn't enter the highway, but again she was driving further, so that was good for me. She dropped me in front of a huge Kaufland, where she wanted to buy some stuff and where I realized that there was rails in the middle of the road.
While I thought about my options, a tram arrived at the tram stop just in front of me - it was number 22, which would've left just in front of the door of my hostel in Prague 2. Now you tell me how much that sucks!! :D  But there was no time for laments, I decided to ride the tram another two stops up to where it ended and was now, two hours after I had left the hostel, almost on the highway.

At least that's what I thought. The citizens of Prague left me standing in the Czech midday heat for at least one hour, and my water already was becoming less and less, until, finally, Peter stopped for me. He was driving a transporter which he had transformed into a camper all by himself and was going for a weekend trip in the woods with his friends. Because he thought that he didn't pay the highway-fee for 2013, he used the small roads and we went up and down and up and down all the time. Later I discovered that he did have a valid ticket, but somehow he kept driving through the plains. It took forever of course, but at least I saw something of the absolutely beautiful landscape.

this is not representative of course

Finally he dropped me of in something called Beroun in front of the highway-entrance. There actually even was space to stop, but this time I had another problem: No one, absolutely no one seemed to enter the highway :D
Funnily, I got lucky here after not more than 10 minutes -  guy in a swanky car pulled over. He didn't speak any English and actually I wasn't even sure where he was going, but I FINALLY wanted to get onnnn the stupid highway, so I would figure things out later and hopped in. His car was full of pictures of naked women and other swanky stuff, so I felt a little uncomfortable, lol. But after five minutes of driving, a wild gas station appeared, which hadn't been marked in my map, so I asked the guy to drop me off there. He was really surprised and didn't understand why I wanted to leave the car, and I couldn't explain it to him of course, because he wouldn't understand me.

Anyway, I had entered the highway!
It was only a small gas station, but enough people entered it, and I was actually still sorting my things when two guys who had seen my cardboard, approached me and asked me if I wanted to go to Pilsen. I found them very likeable, but most unfortunately they were from Ukraine and didn't speak any English either. I tried to explain them that I wanted to be dropped off at the next big gas station, which was also marked on my map, but I guess they didn't understand what I meant. Still I managed to get off at said gas station eventually by pointing at it when we came close, haha :D

Said gas station was a very good one and the till girl even filled my almost empty water bottle from the tap. Most of the cars were still Czech, but I also saw four German cars. The first woman said she had space but wouldn't want to take me (no one ever said that to me before), the second guy said his boss wouldn't allow hitchhikers, the third group was from Berlin and already completely full, and the fourth even was from Munich but also had no space left.
In the end a very friendly Czech named Peter said he could take me with him, and after a short talk with his girlfriend Daniela, everything was fine. They were on their way to a small metal festival in Holysov and had to leave the highway after Pilsen, where I asked them to drop me off, because I was sure there would be a lot of people entering the highway from there. But before we started, Peter rolled a Joint and began smoking it... leaving the gas station we noticed that two police vans had been standing ten meters from us for the whole time, haha!
I think if I hadn't promised Dani, my host in Nuremberg, to show up in the evening, cook something and then go to a barbecue with him, I would've joined those two for the festival. Would've been a nice finale for the trip, especially with the amazing weather we have right now :) But anyway, it took me some time until I noticed that Peter and Daniela had secretly agreed to not leave the highway where they actually had to, make a detour of 40 kilometers, and drive me to the next gas station instead. THANK YOU YOU AMAZING PEOPLE!!!!!! <3

Sooo I was near Kladruby then, and it was 5pm already.
Absolutely exhausted and probably smelling of weed and sweat I looked for German license numbers of which I found plenty. The first people I asked, Yunqing and Lukas from Frankfurt, agreed on giving me a lift anyway, so it can't have been so bad :D They had been in Prague as well, but they had set off at 4pm, not at 11am like me, haha.

It soon became clear that I wouldn't make it to Nuremberg until 7pm, and so Dani proposed me to go to the barbecue on my own. I then found out that it was another trainride away from actual Nuremberg, and calculated that I would at least need 3 more hours to get there. That was when Yunqing and Lukas opened up that they actually weren't driving to Frankfurt, as I automatically had supposed, but to Munich!!

Tired and exhausted I decided to take the chance and surprise my family by arriving one day earlier than planned. Thanks Dani for being so indulgent :)

Around 9, I finally arrived in Munich, where Yunqing and Lukas most kindly dropped me at a metro station :)

I almost missed my train to Holzkirchen, but in the end everything went alright.
I really had to laugh, though, when I saw what I looked like:

oh god :D

Still my parents and brother were really happy to see me, and I was as well :)

Stay tuned for another post in which I will show you how much money I spent on different things, what my most useful items were, what I remember the most, and some other geeky stuff!

Day 37

Wow, Prague! This really is some special kind of city.. :D

Jewish Quarter - you can pay in Shekels here, lol

Getting to Prague was very comfortable. I took a bus that took me to the outer parts of Dresden, from where I had a very short but very beautiful view over the whole city. There I started asking people waiting at a traffic light wether they would take me the short way to the highway and got a surprisingly high number of unfriendly replies. But in the end a transporter-driver gave me a lift - unfortunately to the wrong highway :D He was entering the one to Berlin, so that I had to walk a short distance to the other highway-entrance.

I considered myself very lucky, because there was a small green lane just before the entrance, so it was at leats not impossible to stop. I had prepared a "PRAHA"-sign, but soon decided to paint an arrow on the other side of the cardboard, so that people wouldn't have to read stuff. Still I waited for around 30 minutes, because the nice contiki-tourbus-driver sadly didn't stop (imagine how much fun that would've been), and a lot of other young people were smiling at me enthusiastically but still driving by, lol.

In the end Tomas stopped for me and was even going directly to Prague. He was transferring cars from Germany to Prague as a job, which he had chosen over studying in university. He dropped me off at a metro station and there I was.

I have to admit that it took me quite some time to orientate myself in the big public transportation-system of Prague, but in the end I found my hostel without making detours. And the hostel is SO great! I'm in a room with 15 other people, but it still feels as if you almost have your own space thanks to the clever arrangement of beds and lockers. It always has a very nice temperature and we have two toilets and two huge showers for ourselves. And all of that for 13 Euros, blimey! :D
Also, believe it or not, in the three days I've been here now, I meet three different groups of people that stayed in the very same hostel with me in Berlin. So romantic ;)


In general, Prague is definately the most romantic city I've seen on my whole trip - so much nicer than Paris!! No one should go to Paris anymore, seriously. It bored me after half a day, while I could walk these bridges up and down here all day and night long.

Tomorrow I'll take off for my last stop: Nuremberg. Guess I won't meet any of my acquitances there :D

Day 35

35 is definately an impressive number, don't you think? And it all came just like that.. though I have to admit that I am starting to miss my family, my cats, my friends and the privacy and tranquility of my own four walls at least a little bit :D

Anyway, let me tell you how I came from Berlin to Dresden!

Kind of naively I supposed that I could manage to hitchhike out of Berlin straight away from Alexanderplatz, where I had been staying in a really nice hostel for the last few days. But even after quite some walking up to a big street in fact leading out of the city, it became clear that everyone was just driving around in the city center and I wouldn't be lucky there.

I kept walking for another hour until I reached the Ostbahnhof - which made me notice that my foot was obviously okay again, because otherwise I definately couldn't have made this walk :D From there I took a train to Neukölln, which looked quite close to the highway on my pretty low-scaled map, but of course wasn't. After a chat with a currywurst-man I took another train to "Grenzallee", from where I could see a sign for the highway already.

I had already been walking/waiting for trains for two hours now, but then I stumbled upon a fleamarket just on my way to the highway which I couldn't miss of course. I bought new socks there (all of my three pairs have holes :D) and some presents as well.

Finally arrived at the highway-entrance road, I only had to ask a few people until Ute offered to take me with her up to Schönefeld. She had been hitchhiking in her youth as well, oh yeah :D, and ended up driving further than she wanted in order to find a good spot for me. She dropped me close to Ragow, just before the highway, which we both considered to be a quite nice position.
But weeeeeeeell :D Not too many cars seemed to come out of Ragow, and the few that did were obviously going to Berlin and not towards Dresden, so I enjoyed myself dancing in the sun for one hour without talking to anyone. Then I guy whose name I most annoyingly forgot came up to me and we had a really nice chat about what I was doing, how I had ended up in Ragow, and so on :D He would've really liked to help me but only had to go to Königs-Wusterhausen, which, as you can tell by the name, wasn't the best spot either, so I decided to stay where I was.

After another while, a motorcyclist turned around and stopped in front of me. It was 24-years old Julius who was driving around, looking for new traffic signs as a paid mini-job, while he enjoyed the weather on his motorcycle. He had been on his way home to Berlin, but still offered to drive me to the next service station on the highway, which was around 6 kilometers away. He even gave me his only jacket and helmet while he himself was driving without any protection - gee!

And I can tell you, this was the best lift ever! If we hadn't been driving up to 160km/h, I would've probabaly spread my arms and legs away from the bike and screamed of joy. But in this situation I considered it to be safer clinging to Julius as much as I could :D

Once on the right highway with Dresden as the only big city in front of us, I knew it would be a question of minutes to find a nice lift, so I sat down on a bench for a little while and had a chat with the grandmother of this cute boy. They were going to Dresden as well, but didn't have any space left.

Anyway, they hadn't even left the service station yet, when I asked Vincent, a dreamy guy with long blonde hair and paint on his fingers, if he was going to Dresden - and he was.
He's originally from Lübeck, then moved to Penzberg with his mother (which is like 30 minutes from where I live), then moved to Berlin, then to Dresden, and is now going to live with his mother for a few months because of a job he got in Penzberg. He told me that he's thinking about moving to Vienna and wants to study philosophy - and with that being said, we had the most intriguing discussions about good and evil, fate and free will... and our most preferred superpowers :D

He most kindly dropped me off at the central station of Dresden, from where I took a short trainride to Plauen, where my host Frido lives. In the evening, we and some other people went to a free concert at the other side of the city, and afterwards everyone wanted to go to an illegal party in the woods - which you all know I would've enjoyed a lot, but I was dying from sleepiness once again. So I went to sleep while everyone else danced their feet off and went sightseeing the next day.

And Dresden is soooou nais!

watched Zero Dark Thirty open air.. but the view was better than the movie, haha

I decided to stay another day and see the city when all the shops are open again. Afterwards I will continue to Prague, which will probably be my last stop. Time to spend some money, lol!!!!

Day 26

Let me tell you about the odyssey from Lüneburg to Fusion festival, which included not less than 9 different cars, lasted more than 7 hours, and produced a lot of funny selfies shot in waiting times :D

I woke up at 8am, because I originally had a date with Lutz, Josie's friend, in Lüttow-Vallhuhn at noon, where he wanted to pick me up and continue to Fusion together. At 9 o'clock, though, when I had just finished packing my backpack, I got a text from Lutz saying that the car was full up to the rooftop and that I would never be able to fit inside. That's how it goes, not everyone can have a car as beautiful and big as mine :D

Anyway, that was no problem at all because I had no time pressure anymore, and so I slowly hobbled to one of the bigger streets of Lüneburg. The first guy, Stefan, I asked at a red traffic light if he could give me a lift to the Bundesstraße was nice enough to do so, and at that point, I already thought I had almost made it, haha :D
Sadly, he dropped me off a little too early, indeed on the Bundesstraße, but in front of two accesses to the highwy and another bigger street leading back to the city center - so after 15 minutes of waiting I had to change my position, and after another 15 minutes, I walked even further again. Every step was hard work, not only because of my dying foot, but also because my backpack was around 5 kilos heavier than usual, packed with wine and food for the festival:

cucumber and Frühstücksfleisch - no festival without those two!

When I stood at my final destination, it took no longer than 5 minutes until a huge truck pulled over. In fact I had decided not to drive with trucks again, because they are SO slow, but as I was using the smaller roads instead of the highway this day, and as I was absolutely exhausted already, I went for it. Volker turned out to be a really lovely companion who told me everything about every single sight or landscape we passed until we reached Boizenburg, where he would pick up pig bones for the gummi bear production.

trucks are so cool

flooded fields of Meck-Pom

Most annoyingly we were so into our conversation that we missed the point at which I wanted to get off, directly at the access to the B195, which would then lead onto the A24. But I would survive it, and started asking people at a red light if they were driving towards the highway. After ten minutes or so, I was lucky - or at least thought I was.
Marc even blocked the street for me until I had balanced my backpack into his fancy business car,and then we already had a nice conversation about my trip going on, when I realized that we were driving in the direction I had just come from. Shit! It turned out that Marc had been speaking about the highway to Hamburg, which was quite a ride away, while I had talked about a completely different road. Haha!

So, Marc dropped me of somewehere in the middle of nowhere at a crossroad on B209. By the time it was already 12 o'clock and I was really happy to know that no one was waiting for me in Lüttow-Vallhuhn right now, and also that I was able to change the route if necessary. I waited quite a while at this point, around 30 minutes at least, but I had an amazing time - the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I was freeee and I was alive. What else do you need to be happy?

In the end, another truck pulled over and came to stand, even though my position was an absolutely dangerous spot for a truck to stop - thank you Stefan! He was driving to a stone quarry nearby the B209 and dropped me off near Dersenow, where, for some reason, a lot more cars were passing by than were I had been standing before.

Just behind the spot where I was standing I found this beautiful view:

After around 5 minutes, Roland stopped for me and offered to drive me to Pritzier, which was connected to the B321, which in turn would hopefully bring me to the A24.

In Pritzier, I waited quite a while again, even though the direction was distinct - but I understand that people are not likely to stop for someone standing at a bus stop in some one-horse town, haha.

But still, in the end an elderly couple stopped for me and told me they where going to Hagenow, the next big city and the last one before the long-awaited highway. When I told them about my trip, they where more shocked than pleased, but still they had stopped for me, so I'm proud at them :D They even made a small detour to drop me off at a better spot - thanks <3

At said spot, I again asked people if they were driving onto the highway - this time there was no space for misunderstandings - and soon found a not very talkative guy in a transporter. He dropped me off directly at the highway-entrance, which is, as we all should now by now, not a very nice spot to hitchhike from. But I was there now anyway, set up my nicest smile, and even had time for another self-portrait when no cars were in sight.

There weren't too many cars entering the highway (most of them were commuting between Schwerin and Hamburg), and those who were, often had cars coming behind them and couldn't stop. But in the end I got lucky of course, and Biene stopped for me. She was in a special good mood because she was a teacher and her vactions had just started 20 minutes ago. Yaaay!

She dropped me off at a service station near Neustadt-Glewe, where I kept asking around a little bit if anyone was going to Berlin. At first it seemed like Berlin was the only direction people were NOT driving to, but after 15 minutes I found Rainer, who was definately a Berliner, speaking the very dialect I only know from television, haha. I had really funny and nice talks with him about his trips with friends, about his work, about Berlin, and about life, and was really sad that our time was over so fast.

He dropped me off at a service station near Wittstock, where I allowed myself a coffee and two pretzels until I continued my journey. The beautiful weather had dissappeared and dark clouds had gathered above our heads - sooner or later this had to happen, haha. After asking around a little bit and even meeting two girls who where going to the Fusion but had no seats left, I decided that it was probably better to walk past the highway in order to catch only the cars using the small roads towards the Fusion.

It started to rain heavily and I already saw myself falling into the gutter from exhaustion, because I had no idea of how far I had to walk until I would find a good spot. When I reached a bunch of trees, I saw that a car had stopped because the driver had to pee. I already wanted to shout something about the service station he had just passed, when the guy turned around, saw me, smiled, and said: "FUSION?"

:D That's how it goes.
Around 6, Christian, Nazgul and me reached the festival site, and the rain became lighter and lighter until it stopped completely and the sun came out again. Amazing <3

I tried to reach Sven, my couchsurfing connection for Berlin, who had a friend who could put her festival bracelet on and off, which took me forever, because the mobile network was overstrained. Finally I found them heading to the supermarket in a bus, which would take another two hours I didn't want to wait. So I decided to try the clim-over-the-fence-option first, and wait for them in case I failed.

I wasn't standing in front of the fence and thinking about the best tactics for five minutes for more than five minutes, when Philipp approached me and said: "Audacity probably wins, huh?"
There he was, my most anticipated accomplice :D He helped me throw over my hundred-tons backpack and then we climed over the fence and ran across the field in beetween some parking cars, where we congratulated ourselves. But when we walked further, we saw another fence coming up - with guards all over the place, looking for the entrances. Oh well. Audacity wins, my friends, and so we simply went thorugh an open gate while the guards were talking to some other people. TADAAAAA.


Then it was seven o'clock and time for a break in which I enjoyed a nice beer and waited for Lutz to receive my text message and pick me up.

HELL YES! That's life! Peace out.

Mission accomplished!

I'm not completely sure what the mission was, but I claim it as accomplished by now :D

After an 8-hour journey from Lüneburg to a former airfield  in the middle of nowhere (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), about which I will tell you everything tomorrow, I successfully managed to climb over the fence and had an amaaaazing weekend at the FUSION Festival.

Dixi romance!

Sure, my foot was hurting like hell, so I was on painkillers all the time, and it rained every day, but who cares! There were sunny moments, I had great company, and the festival itself was simply beautiful - I definately have to go there again next year <3

Yesterday I arrived in Berlin, which was some kind of goal during this journey. I already visited Berlin once about 3 years ago with a bunch of boozers masked as "political discussion forum" and didn't really have fun, and also didn't like Berlin at all. But I changed a lot compared to these times, so I thought I would have to give Berlin another chance - and here I am!

After I visited a doctor this morning, I will now go buy some good shoes and then hopefully be able to explore the city.. the weather is on my side :)