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!