After arriving at Mia-Simone's in Oslo and getting a good night's sleep, the next day we simply rested. We lounged in bed, read books, and were bums. It felt delightful. Later in the afternoon we went downstairs and hung out with Mia-Simone, and Brendan made dinner that night for the three of us and Mia-Simone's flatmate, Lauren. We played some Yatzy (not quite the same rules as Yahtzee, but very similar) and enjoyed laughing together. We felt very comfortable staying with Mia-Simone and Lauren and were a little reluctant to get back on the road. We ate a late breakfast together the next day and took a leisurely time getting ready, and then checked our email. We had invitations to come and interview at a couple of Berlitz locations! This got us motivated to continue on to Germany. We responded to the emails to try and set up some possible interview dates, and then set out on the road once more.
We walked from their place to an E-6 south entrance. It wasn't a busy entrance, but it was in a beautiful spot surrounded by high hills and trees, and the weather was finally not rainy but rather beautiful. Sometimes slower spots almost seem like better spots. It's as if the people passing us realize that we will have a hard time getting a ride, so they feel more responsible for helping us get to a different spot. I sometimes think that people who pass us at very busy spots are just thinking "Ah, I'm sure someone else will stop for them." So just 11 minutes of waiting and we had a ride. This was at 2:46pm.
Our ride was from Nels, a football (soccer)-coach dad. His team had recently played in the Norway Cup, the largest youth football tournament in the world. They had been eliminated after a couple of days and even though they had planned to stay and watch the rest of the tournament, the coaches were so disappointed that they left. They made it up to their team by taking them out for pizza later. One of my Norwegian cousins was also participating in this tournament with his team from Haugesund, but I'm not sure how they did in the end. If any Norwegian relatives are reading this, could you post a comment with the results?
Nels wasn't going far but said he could drop us off at a better spot outside the city. It was indeed outside the city, but not the greatest spot. It was another plain entrance rather than an entrance by a gas station, which is usually better for us. Even so, we got a great ride within half an hour from a man named Frederick who was going quite close to Gothenburg, which was where we were trying to get. Frederick is from Sweden but had been in Norway for the weekend for a jazz festival. He is our age or a little younger, but has a house and I think he said he has a kid. He has been working since he was 17 years old and now has his own company. He sounded a little jealous of our travels because he feels he is too tied down to do much traveling.
Frederick dropped us off at a gas station. We used the restrooms and by this point Brendan wasn't feeling very well. He wasn't sure if it was his appendix, but the pain was feeling similar to what he has experienced in the past, so we started talking about the possibility of going to a hospital. He wasn't feeling so bad, though, so we kept on hitching. We walked out to the freeway entrance and soon had a ride with Leo, a man we'd had a ride with on our way north to Norway. As Brendan described in a previous blog, he felt more comfortable with Leo because we had already met him, and Leo showed us the way to the hospital in Gothenburg.
The rest of the story you have probably already read, so I will end part 2 here. We are in Saarbrücken now and had interviews at the Berlitz here yesterday. They were the last of our scheduled interviews, so now we are going to return to visit friends in Bonn and Düsseldorf as we wait to hear back from the Berlitz locations where we already interviewed--Magdeburg and Hamburg. Next post I will try to bring everything back to the present moment, but for now we must begin another hitchhiking day.
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Hey there. I found your blog through a search about busking in New York City. I wish I had known about you two when you were here. I would have liked to have met you. If you ever make it back to the Big Apple, you can find me playing my tin whistle in the pedestrian tunnel at 42nd street between the ACE and 123 stations most Sunday afternoons.
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