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.