The original plan had been a stop in Poznan, but as I had stayed in Potsdam for two nights and as my host in Poznan couldn't host me anyway last minute, I had to cover double the distance compared to what I ha planned. You need 5 hours from Potsdam to Warsaw if you go with your own car, so I was quite worried if I'd make it until dawn.
At 9am I took a bus (ticket costed a proud price of 2,60€) to Michendorf, south of the city. It wasn't as hot as expected yet, but still I was quite unmotivated to walk for a long time, so I thought of hitchhiking on the highway for a second. Then I remembered that I might be able to do that in the Baltics but certainly not in Germany, so I continued until I reached a junction.
There I stood for about half an hour, because right at the beginning a girl had stopped for me (but was going the wrong way), so I thought I could evade the walk.
Eventually I gave up on it and continued to the gas station. On the way I tried to eat a banana and fell down very awkwardly because I wasn't watching my feet, so maybe that's why I forgot that I wanted to get to the gas station, not the McDonalds that comes before. (Hitchwiki recommended said station and warned of said McDonalds, but I only remembered that when I already found a lift.)
Most people on the parking lot were going to Berlin, a truck driver who was going to Poland wouldn't take me because if his boss (never had that with a trucker before), and some people with a license plate from Frankfurt an der Oder (which would've been on the way) didn't want to take me either. Annoying.
After about an hour of running around the parking lot to catch all the people, I found yet another Polish expat living in the UK who took me to the first gas station after the Polish border. Martin has been living and working on the southern coast of England for some years, but eventually wants to come back to Poland.
Once on Polish land I treated myself with a chicken baguette and then started competing for people's sympathy with two cheesy guys who were trying to sell perfumes. Luckily I succeeded very quickly (10min); Anne and Hakim from France agreed to take me with them on their way to Anne's family in Poznan.
I got off at the last gas station before the city, where I was even quicker: Adam and Marek were the first people with a Warsawian license plate and were even going to the same neighbourhood I had to go to! All I got out of Marek is that he is a radio moderator for the national channel No. 3, then I got very sleepy and stopped talking, hehe :D
They dropped me just a few hundred meters from my host's place in Warsaw, where I ended up waiting for Andrzej, my host, who had expected me to be stuck in traffic jam. Well well, I hadn't expected myself that I would be at my destination by 5:30, only 7,5 hours after departure! :)
Although very tired (from what, sitting?) and sweaty, we left again after some minutes to a surprise birthday party for a friend of his. There I met not only one but two people who spoke German - a First, before I had only spoken to people who knew Russian.
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