It's a very sad thing to lose one's hitchhiking notebook, which we keep so that we don't have to rely solely on our memories when we try to recount our journey. Yet somehow in Duesseldorf it must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere, so this post may not contain all the details it once would have.
We last wrote a thorough blog post when we were in Hannover, over a week ago. We had a great time there. My favorite part about it was riding bikes around town, as I think I may have already mentioned. Leaving Hannover on Tuesday the 7th, we followed advice found on Hitchwiki.org, taking a streetcar well outside the city center and then walking another thirty minutes through lovely fields to get to a Tankstelle.
This is where our memory fails. I believe we had about three rides from Hannover to Bremen, but we can only remember the last one. He was a nice man who told us about several places in Germany we should visit (Hamburg is his favorite) and made one or two disparaging remarks about the French being unfriendly (as so many Germans are wont to do) and noted negative stereotypes about and feelings towards Belgians (some of them stemming from a child pornography ring busted about 10 years ago that reached up into the government). He had a GPS system in his car, and he was kind enough to take us directly to our destination in Bremen. When we arrived around 9pm, our host was away but left a note for us, so we sat at a nearby bench and ate one of our trademark meals--cheese, bread, and apple.
About an hour later our host arrived and we visited with her a bit that night before going to sleep. The next day we wandered all around Bremen in a very touristy way, absolutely loving the tiny streets in the older part of town, and ended the day by eating at the Ratskeller restaurant we posted pictures of before. We left Bremen on Thursday the 9th to make our way back to Duesseldorf for a Magic: the Gathering prerelease we'd heard about when we were there before.
Leaving Bremen, we decided to just walk out of town and hitch along less main roads until we reached the Autobahn. Our first ride was a short one from a woman who dropped us off near a road leading onto the A-1. We walked along the road a little ways until we found a semi-decent place to stand. Soon enough, we had a ride! Sort of...it was the Polizei, coming to tell us we were not allowed to stand there. Now we've had two rides in police cars. They took us to a bus stop outside of an Ikea near an entrance leading to A-1 and said it was okay to stand there. We were just given warnings, not tickets, but they said it could be quite costly to hitchhike illegally in Germany.
Our next ride was from a man going quite far. He was heading towards the Münster area and dropped us off along the 43. We were picked up next by a lovely woman named Ricki and her two daughters. It was her older daughter's birthday and they had just been to large park (riesengrosser Spielplatz) to celebrate. Even though she was heading to Wuppertal, she took us all the way into Duesseldorf and dropped us off at the main station there. We wrote a little birthday story in both German and English while we drove along for the older daughter. (It was about their having a fantasy adventure saving the lonely oldest tree in the area)
Thursday night we stayed with a nice couchsurfer who would have played Settlers of Catan with us if we had had more time. He had family coming to visit, though, and could only host us the one night. On Friday we went in the evening to the game/comics store where we would be playing in the prerelease the next day, and there I left Brendan so he could play some Friday Night Magic. I traveled on to our new hosts' home and got to know them a bit.
Later, Brendan was given a ride home from some Magic players, Tobi and Alex. On the ride there Brendan had found out that our new friend from the week before, Stefan (the one who had told us about the prerelease), lived very close and was hosting a poker night. So Brendan, our host Alwin, Alex, Toby and I headed over to Stefan's place to play. Alwin, Brendan and I took the pot. I came in first, Alwin second, Brendan third. I'm not sure they'll have us for poker again.
Saturday morning Brendan and I headed out for the prerelease. The store, Drachental, is filled with games, comics, and geeks. It was lovely. We paid our entry and the tournament began. I used most of my time for deck-building just carefully reading the cards and asking for help with the German words I didn't understand. Finally, with just a few minutes before play was to begin, one of our new Magic player friends helped me throw together a deck. I did okay, and most importantly had fun. Brendan, though, did so well. He came in second place overall and won nine booster packs. Wow! I was very proud of him.
Magic player, Magic player, Florian, me, Brendan, Stefan,
Alex and Florian
We then traveled with our new friends Alex, Stefan, Florian and Frank to a French festival near the river, where we had plans to meet our hosts. The bunch of us all hung out for the next several hours, then Brendan and I and Stephanie, one of our hosts, traveled back to their place and played some Carcassonne.
On Sunday the 12th after a lovely breakfast with our hosts, we headed out. Alwin kindly gave us a ride to a nearby gas station so we could try to hitch out and head to Copenhagen. We waited there for over two hours before giving up and trying to find a better place to stand. We walked up the road a bit and discovered we were actually in the same spot where we'd stood when we were leaving Duesseldorf before. From this new vantage point, though, we were better able to get the attention of drivers, and soon we had a ride towards Wuppertal, though by now it was already 5pm.
Our ride was with Leo (son) and Hans (father) and they explained that if we were willing to wait, Hans would drop Leo off and then be able to take us a little farther on to a gas station. We were happy to wait. From the Tankstelle, we got a ride within just five minutes from a man headed towards Muenster. He dropped us off at 6:35pm at another Tankstelle, and just a minute later we had a ride with Angelica, who was going to Bremen. She dropped us off at 7:45pm at another Tankstelle and about half an hour later we got a ride to Hamburg with a lovely family.
Before we even left the Tankstelle with Antje and Detlef (who were traveling in separate cars because they'd just been to pick up the car of one of their parents, to try and sell it, I think, or maybe just use it - yes, to sell it - Brendan), they offered us a place to sleep that night. They now feel like another set of parents in Hamburg. They fed us dinner that night and breakfast the next day, and Antje took us to a gas station along the A-1 after breakfast. I know I've mentioned this before, but people's kindness just amazes me! I hope I can be so kind to strangers as our couchsurfing hosts and hitchhiking hosts have been to us.
Taking the A-1 north towards Denmark leads to a ferry, unfortunately. After a very frustrating time of hitching, where it took us two and a half hours to get our first ride, a short one, and another two hours to get our second ride, with one more short ride after that, we arrived at the ferry. It would have been far cheaper for us to avoid the ferry, but we had some hopes that we could hitch a ride onto a car already going on the ferry. However, we were redirected away from the line of cars waiting for the ferry by a ferry employee, who told us where we could buy tickets. So we bought tickets for 18 euros, or about 25 dollars. After such a slow and frustrating day of hitchhiking, this felt like the final blow. We ate some scavenged food, though, and then we both felt a lot better. Yay for dumpster diving, even if it's just trash diving on the ferry.
As the ferry was about to dock, we were wandering around the cars that were about to get off to see if we could get a ride. We succeeded, and a had a nice ride with a woman named Helle who lives in Denmark, but works at the border shop across the ferry in Germany. She took us about a half an hour along the way and ten minutes later we got a ride another half hour along the way with a woman named Karin. Our next ride also came within about ten minutes, from a man named Freddie.
Freddie was going all the way into Copenhagen, and we had a great time riding with him. He was very easy to talk to and by the time we got to Copenhagen he was committed to helping us find our way. He dropped us off at a train station from which we could get to the city center and from there find our way to my friend Marie. Before leaving us, though, he helped us find an ATM, then changed the large bill Brendan got for smaller coins, then helped us buy our tickets.
We got to the main station with no troubles and asked someone how to get to Marie's address. We were told which bus to take and asked the driver to tell us when we arrived at our stop. When we got off the bus, though, we still had no idea where to go, so we just started asking passers-by. The first person had no idea about the address, and the next people, a couple perhaps, didn't either, but the guy of the couple called his parents for internet help. Unfortunately they had a hard time finding it on the internet, so he explained that they lived very nearby and we could actually just walk there and he would look it up himself.
When he and his partner came back down, he explained that he was embarrassed, because the street was just right around the corner and he felt he should have known it. He said his mother was embarrassed as well because she drives down the street every day on her way to work, yet didn't know it. We were just happy that it was, indeed, nearby. He and his partner walked us to Marie's door, and ever since we've been having the loveliest of visits.
Marie has been feeding us and supplying us with tasty treats, and yesterday Marie, her roommate Lene, Brendan and I visited Christiana together. Christiana was created in the seventies when squatters took over what had been a military base. After we visited there, Marie treated us to a picnic lunch along a canal. We went next to the palace and hung out near there by a fountain for awhile, then made our way back.
Marie, Lena and Brendan in Christiana
Marie (and Brendan in the Pissoir in the background)
Brendan, me and Lene in the fountain
That brings us to today! I've been writing this post over an hour, I think, but soon we will head out. We are going next to my relatives in Norway, and we plan to camp along the way. I think we will make it there by the 18th at least, and hopefully sooner. Speaking of which, I should probably write them with another update. Haj haj!
