Hitchhiking: Germany to France

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It took me longer to get out of Berlin than I thought. Getting out of cities is hands down the most difficult part of hitchhiking. Fortunately, there is a site called HitchWiki that provides good advice.

Getting out of Berlin was actually easy, it just took awhile to catch the right train to the right spot. It was an easy walk from the train station to a highway rest stop where I got a ride after about five minutes with a slobby-looking guy named Stefan who spoke no English and incongruously drove a sleek, brand new VW.

At the next rasthof, I waited for about 30 minutes before I got my second and final ride. I think it only took so long because two hitchers were already there before me. They said they'd waited 90 hours at the last place they were at, probably because they looked like homeless ravers: random pieces of hair shaved, other pieces in dreads, random colors, baggy camo pants, piercings. I support people who want to look like cyber-clowns, but it's not conducive to easy hitchhiking. Having moved further down from their spot as is customary when arriving after other hitchers are already waiting, I got picked up five minutes after they hopped on a huge empty bus and passed them on the road ten minutes later.

An Italian guy named Moreno gave me a lift to northeast Munich. He ran some restaurants in Berlin, and was looking to open more. Avril Lavigne ate at one of his places the previous night, and was coming in tonight as well. He was a slight little guy and liked to talk with gesticulations. He had lived in America and loved the country, dreamed of going back there, and had thrown out US-bashing Germans from his restaurant. I got a train into the city and stayed with a Romanian CouchSurfer who just moved into town for a job.

The next day was kind of a bitch in terms of hitching. The road from Berlin to Munich was straight and direct and fast. No such luck getting from Munich to Milan. I had to go through two countries to get to Italy, and use several roads which meant several changes of rides. On the bright side, this is the sort of scenery I was dealing with:



That's looking into Austria from just over the Swiss border. Switzerland has the most stunning mountain scenery, and all I got to see was vistas through a window on the highways. If one is to actually go hiking through Switzerland, or hang out in some rural villages, I believe one may never want to leave.

All in all, it took me all day and nine rides to get to Milan. At one point I was dropped off at a Heidiland rest stop. They had an anamatronic Heidi show in a small tower, and a pen of bleating goats:




I was never fully convinced I'd get to Milan that day, but with crisp beautiful weather and Alpen mountains to look at, I wasn't too worried. It did start to rain while I was waiting near the Italian border. I went inside the rest area to wait out the worst of it and found that a last-minute host on CouchSurfing had said I could stay with her in Milan. Knowing I had a place to stay that night, I went out and stood in the rain until a Polish-Italian trucker who spoke no English gave me a lift. His kindness was overbearing, insisting to call the girl I was supposed to stay with, and arranging for her to come pick me up at a gas station outside the city. I didn't want to push her limits of hospitality, but after he got a hold of her number from me, there was no going back.

Fortunately, she was happy to pick me up in her beat up Panda, and after one of the most amazing pasta meals of my life at a neighborhood bocciofila club, I was happy to sleep after the long day of standing around surrounded by beautiful mountains.



My final day of hitchhiking involved figuring out how to get to gas station on the highway outside of Milan since there wasn't much good advice on HitchWiki. A quick ride with an orthopedic doctor brought me to the next big station where a couple picked me up and brought me down the coast past Genova. Turned out that the woman was into John Irving and was quite tickled to learn I was from the same town, and my father went to school with him. They were super nice and I offered her a tour of Exeter as known through Irving's books if she ever came around to the Boston area.

A young couple in a Jeep gave me a lift further on into France, past Cannes. At that point it really hit me that I had no idea where exactly to go in France other than Provence, which is a big region. Stephane wasn't answering his phone and I had no Internet access. So I sat around for a few hours, trying to call on payphones, and eventually just deciding to hitch further on, anywhere, since sleeping in the bushes at a highway rest stop didn't appeal much to me.

This is where my luck really changed. After a few minutes a French girl driving alone stopped. I learned later that Audrey was thinking, "You're driving alone. Why the hell are you stopping to pick up a hitchhiker?" Well it turned out that she was very interested in my travels and invited me to stay at her family's holiday villa in the countryside with her and her mother when she learned I had nowhere to sleep that night.

That's a story in itself: the place was one of the nicest houses I've been in, and I was served amazing food, and completely made at home with Audrey and her mother. After a day of lounging, good food, swimming, and strolls around the tiny old village nearby, I finally figured out where exactly to meet Stephane, and got driven into Avignon with Audrey. She wanted to see the festival that was going on. Turns out that was more good luck. We met up with Stephane together, and in the main plaza in Avignon, hoisting an enormous mug of beer, surrounded by happy crowds and street performers and musicians, I finally made it to a place that I didn't quite know I was headed to.