Berlin & Potsdam

I spent 4 nights in Berlin with the coolest Israeli I know, Gal, and another two nights in Potsdam with my friend from university, Marie.

Berlin, like some other places, seems to be different for me every time I visit it. This time there was no schedule at all, apart from an obligatory visit to the Jewish Museum, so I spent my days chillaxing at a nearby lake (Plötzensee) and/or with Gal and his awesoooome friends. Somehow I ended up with a bicycle and, to my own surprise, I enjoyed it SO much to ride the streets of Berlin that I even visited my cousin at the other end of the city. I also got to know some activists from Berlin in a spontaneous meeting - thanks for that again!

I didn't really take a lot of pictures, but maybe you still like the impressions.

In Potsdam my highlight was definitely the freely accessible boulder wall we went to, even if we gave up after ten minutes and went to have some cake. Don't judge us, it was hot, people!

Hitchhiking VII (Potsdam - Warsaw)

I guess you all know what I'm talking about when I'm saying that the heat makes me lazy, haha. Just for the record I will tell you how I got from Potsdam to Warsaw.

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.

Hitchhiking VI (Szczecin - Berlin)

I think today was unexpectedly one of the easiest hitchhiking days ever. Around 9:30am my host gave me a lift to the bus station in the city center, from where I continued to Kolbaskowo. 

There it was already at 30,C and when I started walking towards the highway I already saw me dying of thirst somewhere on the way. 

Using my cardboard more as a sunprotection than anything else, I stood right before the beginning of the highway to Berlin. It had been recommended on hitchwiki, but I think it was a rather dangerous spot. I decided to try it for some time an if there would be no reaction whatsoever, I would walk to the next gas station, where I at least wouldn't be run over by cars so easily.

Surprisingly though, after 10 minutes Michal stopped for me and I hopped in the car before I even knew where he was going. Everything must be better than this spot, so I thought.

After we had passed the gas station nearby and I had checked my map, I realized that there was no other stop until Michal would take the highway to Rostock. So I asked him to drop me off at one of the emergency stops right on the highway - dangerous, but better than a gas station on the wrong highway whatsoever.

There I stood, in the sun, with no civilization in a 10km-radius, hoping for the best. After 30 seconds I heard someone honk behind me and saw that a French car had stopped around a hundred meters further down the road. Awesooooome!

Thanks to Frederic I escaped death by thirst once more and arrived in Berlin - Birkenwerder around 12 o'clock. I spent another hour in public transport to get to my friend's place - Berlin is just too big!

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 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 :)

Day 23

After only one full day in Hamburg (which was too short, yes, I know), I continued to another world-known metropole: Lüneburg!
The only reason why I wanted to come here, is the award-winning TV-series Rote Rosen, which I watched regularly for more than one year almost every day. It takes place here in Lüneburg and I always wanted to see all the sets in reality :D

For getting here, I walked back to the highway I had come from the other day. Even though I was kind of under time-pressure because my host in Lüneburg, Julia, had to leave her flat around 1pm, I arrived there at 10:30 - only to realize that this was a stupid and dangerous spot to stop once again!

Hoping for the best I asked all the cars that had to stop at the last traffic light before the highway whether they were going to Hannover. The highway was leading to Hannover and Bremen, but of course, suddenly everone was going to Bremen or leaving the highway after 5 minutes. There were a few cars with a Lüneburg-license plate but ignored me stubbornly. Pah!

But after 30 minutes another Lüneburger car had to stop at the traffic light, so I waved at the driver enthusiastically, holding the Lüneburg-sign in my hands, and he waved back at me, a little bit annoyed, though, and I hopped in. Alexander had just spent a night in the hospital because his one-year-old son Louis had had some health issues, and was now going back to his hometown Lüneburg.
I asked him to drop me off at the train station, thinking that it would be only a stone's throw away from my host Julia's place.. but it wasn't. In the end Julia came too late for university, because I had to walk 3.5 kilometers xD Funny how things surprise me again and again when I think that I researched everything.

Today there won't be any sightseeing for me - my feet are hurting badly and I will have to see the doctor tomorrow. I know he will tell me that the choice of shoes I made was probably the worst one could make, but what can I say.. beauty comes at a price, haha xD

Tomorrow the weather hopefully will be better (it's really raining right now :/ ), so I will have plenty of time to see all of Lüneburg.


And on thursday I will set out for the Fusion Festival - the root of all evil!

A loose acquitance of mine, Boris :D, had once mentioned it and had also told me that he had hitchhiked to said festival the year before. That was when I came to realize the possibility of hitchhiking and began planning this very trip.

Funnily, a lot of people i know already are going there, among them friends of Josie and one couchsurfer from Berlin and one from Dresden. Hope to see them all there, and hope to climb over the fence without being caught and especially hope to not fall down from it, haha! Wish me luck :D

Day 22

Compared to my frustrating experience the day before, the trip from Bremen to Hamburg was quite unspectacular. The only exceptional thing is that I left Sine's flat around 7:15pm, because I really wanted to stay another day, but then remembered that I didn't know if my host in Hamburg would be at home for the whole Monday. The ride from Bremen to Hamburg is only one hour, but still 7:15pm definately was quite late, considering that I had to walk to my chosen spot and then wait for an unknown period of time.

The spot was not too good, the street was not too frequented, and of course most of the cars had a Bremen-license plate and were probably not going on the highway. Still preparing my MP3-Player for the music and not holding up the Hamburg-sign, a car with the HH-license plate came closer slowly, which motivated me to vigorous waving, grining and hopping. And I was successful, because the car finally stopped little behind me and Hubert was already busy cleaning the co-driver's seat for me when I arrived at the car.
Hubert had hitchhiked to Portugal in earlier days and was eager to know everything about my travel experiences. I still dream about him making a story about me, because I later found out that he was a journalist for the Spiegel-magazine. I was too shy to ask him for his contact details, though, so this is probably not going to happen xD

rainbow!

Anyway, he was living close to Othmarschen, where I had to go, so he dropped me off there and I had a really short walk to my host Enderson's place.

Enderson is from Brazil and lives in Hamburg now for one year as an exchange student. His German is really good, but still he reminded me of someone.. can you guess who it is? One hint: Germany's Next Topmodel-watchers will definately know him :D

Day 21

Time flies by!

And so do the cars when you stand at a shitty hitchhiking spot.

That was the case when I tried to get out of Oberhausen again last Saturday after 3 lovely days with my dear Josie and her amazing circle of friends. Oberhausen doesn't have a ring-shaped main road going around the city but only one entrance to the highway, with almost no opportunities to stop safely. At first, I was standing on a road leading to the main road, but half of the cars wasn't even going on the highway, so after 30 minutes I decided to walk further.

Stopping there, just before the highway-entrance to the right, was even more dangerous, but it was the only possiblity. So, I positioned myself directly in front of the entrance with a sign saying "==>", and waited. Smiiiiile!

There also was a traffic light that turned red from time to time, so I asked the people in the cars to pull down their windows, and if they did, where they were going. A lot of people, though, looked at me as if I was ompletely nuts. Especially old people shook their heads at me and then continued looking straight, ignoring my nicely smiling face. But, of course, if people do that, I'm not mad at them, or better don't allow me to be mad - because if I was, my mood would get bad, and that's the last thing I want.

After around 30 minutes, Dennis stopped for me. He was going back to Dortmund and had been to Oberhausen because he commented Wrestling fights in his freetime and there had been some event in the city. I had asked him to drop me at a parking lot, so that I could continue onto the A43, which then would lead onto the A1, but when we arrived there, I immediately saw that almost no car would stop there.
So Dennis dropped me somewhere in the outskirts of Dortmund from where I thought it would be very easy to access the A1.

I wasn't sure about the best position because I again was standing directly in front of the highway-entrance, but also in the middle of a big crossroad. Cars from all directions were entering the highway, the most coming from a bigger road - but the didn't have any possibility to stop safely and  would have had to stand on the road to talk to the drivers. The smaller roads were safer but of course not so frequently used.
Still I decided for on of the smaller roads in the end and tried to talk to the cars that had to stop because of the traffic light. Again I met a lot of unfriendly people and also realized, that most of the friendly people were driving to the center of Dortmund instead of continuing on the A1.

After 45 minutes I aready was quite hopeless and couldn't force myself to a smile all the time anymore. But finally, Julian showed mercy. He was coming from his job in IT security in Dortmund and was going home to Unna now, which was located at the A1.

There he dropped me off close to the IKEA because it was the only safe spot to stop and from where I walked some 10 minutes back to the highway-entrance. Of course, there once again was no stopping-opportunity, not too many cars were coming from the IKEA-direction, and even though I found the first sign of other hitchhikers before me, I decided to walk a little bit further towards Unna.

Most impractically, the loads of cars coming from Unna had tot turn left in order to enter the highway, and there was no space for me to stand there and talk to the waiting drivers. So I continued walking until I came across a bus stop. That one could have been a nice spot but wasn't, because a lot of cars were already using the left lane because they wanted to turn left later.
After 45 minutes of waiting, in which only one car stopped but was going to leave the A1 after 5 minutes, I again walked further towards Unna and stopped at a crossroad. There I waited for another 30 minutes without any car stopping. Really frustrated by now, I finally entered the main road of Unna, hoping to get really all the cars possibly going my direction, but suddenly almost no stupid car came out of this abandoned city anymore.
It was already 6 when I walked back again and sat down in the Burger King by the road and ate a burger. I wrote my host in Bremen that this day was really tough and that I hoped to make it before nightfall. I was almost desperate, because it was not only almost impossible to find a lifter, but because I also still was about 2 hours away from Bremen.

But nevermind, life goes on, at some point I have to find someone - that's what I aways tell myself.
And I even got a free coke at Burger King!

I tried it again at the bus stop, smiling smiling smiling and already thinking about where I could set my tent without anyone bothering me. By the time I had spent 2 hours in godforsaken Unna, the longest waiting time ever.
After another column of cars had passed by, I decided to try it again at the dangerous crossroad, because there no one could lie to me and tell me they wouldn't enter the highway. So I walked back in said direction, holding up my "Bremen"-sign for potentially passing cars half-heartedly.

And a car stopped. Aaaaaah <3
My dear Ayas was inside and on his way to Lübeck which is even further on the A1, so he could take me with him the whole way. He was a Kurd from the North of Irak and had escaped from there with his family in the early 90s during the war, at first to Iran, then to Russia, and finally to Northern Germany. My first fauxpas was to as him if he spoke Turkish, because I thought he was from Turkey, but he forgave me and then I learned alot about the Kurdish people and their history and traditions, and the two hours to Bremen passed by in no time.
Without question he drove me into the city and directly in front of the doorbell of my hosts house. Thank you Ayas <3

The day ended with a very nice dinner at my host Sine's boyfriend Fabian and his flatmates' place and I was really happy to have finally arrived at my destination and to be in such a nice company. I got along with Sine so well and we kept exchanging travel experiences and other stuff all night long.