Hitchhiking talk

Well, sign us up for the talk show circuit. We spoke at our first public event last week in a workshop titled "Hitchhiking, couchsurfing, and scavenging" (And I would subtitle it - living efficiently in a wasteful civilization) for the Candlelight Collective.
A few minutes after the meeting, I was browsing the bookshelves and came across an anarchist cookbook (not THE anarchist cookbook, apparently there are several). It had a section on hitchhiking. The author said almost word for word what we said. So... go us! Hitchhikers agree: hitchhiking is awesome and very possible.
We spoke on how to prepare for a hitching trip, evaluate the rides you'll get, and get dropped off in a good space. We addressed safety, because everyone's always concerned (though not this group as much as most individuals are... or perhaps we made our case before they could get concerned).
We spoke briefly about scavenging and couchsurfing, but those weren't the focus of our talk, as our audience was already more familiar with those issues than hitchhiking.
The group left the meeting very enthusiastic, and, I think more well prepared than if they hadn't attended the talk, for what that's worth.

Hitchhiking, for us, is about getting from point A to B, adventure, and building a global community.

Preparing:

• Know your route. Use a map (or online mapping service like Google maps) and know the names of cities between you and your destination.
• Make a schedule. Leisurely travel can take you 300 miles and offers time enough for unforeseen adventures, and 12 hour days can get you 600+ miles if you get long semi-truck rides and don't accept off-route adventures.
• Pack as lightly as possible, but be ready for inclement weather. If you go on any major trips, you'll probably spend nights on the road and get stuck in rain or snow. Don't forget food and water! Bonus: A big backpack makes you appear more trustworthy to some rides.

Picking your spot:

• For long distances using a thumb or sign, find an interstate onramp close to a gas station.
• Try approaching people at the gas station. Even if everyone says no and you move on to the onramp, sometimes the impression that you gave them there will take a little time to marinate and they'll pick you up at the onramp.
• People are friendly and helpful. Use your own judgment, but you can ask for advice from the truck stop employees or patrons.
• Find a spot with high visibility of cars approaching you for a long distance (500+ meters/yards) and room for them to pull over.
• Stay on the legal side of no hitchhiking signs.
• Rides will leave you in bad places. Do your best to avoid it, but if it happens, you may need to trudge to a better spot. Smile anyways. Always thank your ride. You are a hitchhiking ambassador.

Signs:

• Who knows?
• No, seriously, sometimes signs are good, sometimes they seem like hindrances. Rides read them and think "I'm not going THERE" and don't stop. Sometimes they don't stop anyways. Who knows what the rides who don't stop are thinking. It's all a guessing game.
• We heard making a sign with many place names helps. Drivers see one name and block out the rest and stop because they are going to that one place. Or so we heard from another Hhiker.

Getting someone to stop:

• Smile.
• Look like someone you think people you want to get a ride from would stop for. For us, that means (relatively) frequent showers, clean (ish) jeans, and plain t-shirts or sweatshirts. For others that might mean a suit and tie, military garb, or Anarchy patchwork. I think our garb is relatively innocuous and gets us a wide range of rides.
• It's POSSIBLE that traveling in pairs leads to more consistent rides, but who has done a study on this? Not many research dollars funneled towards hitchhiking studies.
• If you have a weapon (or weapon-like utensil like a knife) displayed, people may not feel comfortable stopping for you.
• Smile. Or not. Who knows if it really works? But it makes you feel good. Make eye contact with drivers passing you, too.
• Keep your cool. If you get frustrated, pray to the hitchhiking gods. Getting angry at passing cars will only hurt your chances of getting a ride, and might draw the attention of the cops.
  

Deciding whether to take the ride:

• Look for signs of drugs or alcohol, and don't get in the car if you see or smell them. Just say "no thanks". Walk away if you have to (grab your bag as you go).
• Check for seatbelts. There HAVE been studies done on the importance of seatbelts. Wear one.
• Ask where they're going. If you don't know it, take a sec to check a map, or ask if there's another onramp near a truck stop along your route (usually the interstate) before they turn off it.
• Trust your instincts. They might be wrong, but if you're nervous about hitchhiking anyways, always remind yourself that you have the power to turn down a ride. If your partner feels uncomfortable, listen to them. You're there for each other, so let your partner's feelings sway you.

Once you have the ride:

• Tolerance. You'll have a lot more fun if you give up your responsibility while in the car to promote your point of view. You don't have to agree, just observe. This is one of the best places to get to know a whole 'nother world that you might otherwise never encounter.
• Listen. It's conversation 101, but it bears repeating - to be a good conversationalist, ask a person questions about themselves and then just let them go.
• If you get uncomfortable, ask them to stop and let you out. Keep your eyes open, and your wits about you. I have no advice for people in a bank during a robbery, but whatever that is, do that. Stay calm, probably. If you don't avoid going into banks because there might be a robbery, don't avoid hitchhiking because you might meet a crazy, but be as prepared.
• If someone offers you something, it's up to you. We often accept a can of soda or a candy bar (sometimes a meal or a place to sleep, too) if they're offering, but turn down money or inedible gifts, because we don't want to seem like we're panhandling. Food and accommodations seem like hospitality, other stuff seems like charity, which we don't need and should go to someone more deserving. Maybe you! =)
• Be POLITE! Always thank your ride. Even if it was the worst ride ever, thank them profusely. A stranger is trying to do you a kindness; thank them. Be nice.

And finally,

• Be flexible. It's an adventure! Balance your journey between getting to your destination in your predetermined fashion, and finding a new route because person A IS going West, but first they're going to a hot springs. That's where the awesome is.

Hitchhike today for a better world tomorrow!

Resources:
digihitch.com
hitchwiki.org
couchsurfing.org - group: hitchhikers

Final Day-Seattle to West Bend

I left you all sitting on the edge of your seats--"Surprise thunderstorm?" you asked. "Did they make it out alive?" you further questioned, then reminded yourself, with relief, that they must have, because they are writing this.

It was just a gentle rainfall when it woke us up. We started to pull out the tarp to throw over the tent, then checked the watch and saw it was 6:15am, only fifteen minutes until we planned to wake up, anyway, so we just decided to pack up. We hurried as much as we could, but the rain just kept falling harder and harder and the lightning and thunder came closer and closer together. We had nearly everything put together when it really started to dump and we made a run for it. The parking lot was already covered in a light layer of water, so what the rain didn't wet, the splashes did.

We got as far as the pumps and stopped to catch our breath and put our stuff together the rest of the way. Then we went inside and I changed into my only other dry leg coverings, my shorts. Last time we took a big hitchhiking trip, my second pair of pants were nondescript black sweat-type pants. They were comfortable to sleep in, but also fine for day wear. It was good having them for times like this, when my jeans got drenched. However, on this trip my second pair of pants were just pajama bottoms, not something I feel comfortable hitchhiking in. Lesson learned for the next big trip.

We ate breakfast at the truck-stop diner (have I ever told you all how much I love diners?), then headed out to start asking truckers for rides. None of the truckers filling up could give us rides, and we started to head out to the freeway entrance. We noted a Jefferson line bus filling up, and decided not to ask the driver. As we walked past him, though, he said "Where ya headed?" and when we said east, Milwaukee, he said he was going to Minneapolis. That sounded like it was in the right direction, so we accepted the ride. But as we drove off with him, he told us he would get to Minneapolis at 4pm because he was making stops along the way to pick up and drop off paying passengers. Also, we looked at a map and realized Minneapolis wasn't right on the I-90 route, so ultimately it seemed like it would cost us time. We told the driver our concerns and asked if he could let us out. He said it was no problem and pointed which direction we needed to go to get back to the freeway entrance.

We were really kicking ourselves at this point. We should have taken the minute to figure that stuff out while we were still at the truck stop, in a good position to get a different ride. As it was, we had to walk all the way back to the truck stop, costing us about 45 minutes. We chalked it up to our exercise for the day, though, and picked a couple pretty flowers along the way.

When we got back we asked around again, then headed out to the freeway entrance. By this time it was nearly 10am. We got a ride just a few minutes later from a kindly older gentleman. He dropped us off at 10:52am near Worthington, MN. At 11:11am (chicken feet!), John picked us up. John is a heavy equipment operator who has been working on windmills for the past six years. He travels all around MN for his work and was on his way home for the weekend. He'd gotten off early that day because the thunderstorms prevented work on the windmills. Speaking of thunderstorms, the one that woke us up in the morning was moving east, but thankfully the frequency with which we got rides kept us ahead of it the rest of the day.

John dropped us off at 12:20pm near Blue Earth, MN. We walked over to a nearby gas station to use the restroom. Earlier, just before the kindly older gentleman picked us up, we noticed a couple of recreational trailers pass us by. Then, just before John picked us up, we saw the very same two trailers get back on the freeway. Now, as we were headed to the gas station, we saw them a third time! They were also using the restrooms, and they noted that we were keeping right up with them. We tried to use the conversation opportunity to show them we are good people and that they should give us a ride east, but they declined. Too bad, because they were going all the way to Chicago.

No matter. At 12:42pm we got a ride with Abdi Gani. He was a nice guy, but inclined to try and convert us to Islam. It was interesting how similar his attempts were to Christian conversion attempts. He asked us to look at the sky, the heavens, look at our own miraculous bodies--how can we not believe in a creator when we see such evidence? It's a weak argument, and when we continued to tell him that that doesn't make us believe in God, he gave us the names of some great Muslim debaters we should check out on Youtube.

Abdi Gani dropped us off at 1:10pm by the turnoff for Albert Lea, and at 1:15pm we got a short ride from Brad. Brad wasn't going far, just to the junction of 35, where he would head south to visit his mother. He wondered if he should have dropped us off at one exit he had already passed, because then he was at his exit and it wasn't really an off and on-again spot. It was really two highways meeting each other, and the spot where we ended up standing to get our next ride was kind of scary. It was a lane to get from 35 to 90, but cars were going fast and it wasn't really an exit, so it was probably illegal for us to stand there. Thankfully, we got a ride pretty quickly.

At 1:35pm Ginny and her college-age daughter, Mandy, picked us up. They were going all the way to Wisconsin and could drop us off near Tomah. They were headed to a wedding and we joked that it was really our wedding they were coming for. Ginny did say that we reminded her of her niece and soon-to-be nephew in-law who were getting married. We talked with Ginny and Mandy about politics and agreed that capitalism is not working. Ginny told us how she writes a lot of letter to her local representatives about how important it is to focus on environmental problems and that they always kind of blow off her concerns. She thinks they're worried about losing their monetary support from big businesses, but this infuriates her because (I'm paraphrasing) the economy is meaningless in the face of a dying planet.

They dropped us off at 3:51pm along I-94 and we crossed over from the west entrance to the east one. A few people stopped who were going to get onto I-90 west, but then Curtis stopped at 4:28pm and was headed towards Madison. Curtis was a super-nice and interesting guy. He's from Alaska, but lives in Madison now with his wife and six kids because he and his wife are both getting graduate degrees there. He is studying Psychology to become a counselor and wants to open his own counseling office someday. I felt really inspired by him. He was, by his own admission, not a great student. He wanted to quit high school and get right to working, and had only recently finished his undergrad degree. But he had the guts to apply to graduate school and he got in and now he's doing it, while raising six kids. I think that's amazing.

He dropped us off at 5:30pm where 94 meets 33, and at this point we got off the freeway so we could follow a more direct route to Brendan's parents' place. Our hope was to get all the way to their door. At 5:40pm we got a ride with a ranger from Devil Lake who took us to Portage. He dropped us off at 5:50pm and we got a ride immediately with Crystal, Dotty, and Princess Sasha Fuzzybutt (the latter is a dog). Crystal and Dotty are Wiccans who were preparing for the 13th Annual Pagan Pride Days in Madison. They were really nice and Dotty offered us each a bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red as a wedding present.

Crystal and Dotty dropped us off at 6:20pm by the intersection for 73, and at 6:30pm we had a ride with Christina and her four adorable children, who were on their way back from a day at Wisconsin Dells. She dropped us off at 6:37pm in Fox Lake, and at 6:52pm we got a ride from a teenage boy named Donovan, who took us to a Kwik Trip gas station in Beaver Dam. By this time it was starting to get dark, and we were pretty tired, so we called Brendan's parents and asked them to pick us up there (about a 45 mile drive from their house). We bought a bag of sale donuts and sat down to eat and wait and they picked us up there at about 8:30pm. Turns out there are a couple of Kwik Trips in Beaver Dam, so it took them a little longer to get to us, but it gave them a chance to buy their own bag of sale donuts.

4 days, 3 nights, 17 rides (counting my sister and Brendan's parents, and not counting the bus driver), 1973 miles. This trip, like all our others, has reminded me how wonderful and generous people are. I think everyone should hitchhike, just to be reminded of that, or perhaps to experience it for the first time.

Day 3 - Seattle to West Bend

Our completely out in the open stealth camping at a campsite worked out problem-free. Brendan even got to take a shower because the men's restroom was unlocked. I used the restroom, but couldn't bring myself to strip and shower in case someone walked in. I settled for washing the top of my head in the sink.

We got up the next morning at 5:32am, much to my dismay and protests. Once I stood up, though, I felt a little more awake and ready to deal with the early-morning world. Plus, we wanted to get out of there before anyone woke up. We succeeded. We used the restrooms in the truck stop, then asked around to see if we could get a nice long ride with a trucker again. No go, so we made our way out to the I-90 east entrance and were standing there by 6:35am.

At 6:41am we got a ride with a nice guy named Dusty. He wasn't going far, but he could take us to the truck stop on the other side of Billings. Dusty was our age and was very interested in traveling. He got the bug when he was 18 years old and won a trip to Australia from a Powerade bottle. Now he is married and has a 17 month old son, so he thinks it will be more difficult. We told him about couchsurfing and about our friends who braved the seas to live in Germany with their two-year old daughter (okay, so they flew across the ocean). He seemed pretty interested, so I hope he follows through on traveling more.

It was about 7am when he dropped us off at the truck stop. We went into a McDonald's there so I could get a cup of coffee and while I was paying for it, Brendan was being offered a pair of nice hiking boots from a trucker. The tape on Brendan's shoes attracts a lot of attention. Brendan assured the trucker that he was happy with the shoes he had, and that he had more shoes at home.

There's a shoe under all that tape

We asked several truckers for a ride, but they were either going the wrong direction, or said they couldn't take us because of company policy. So, again, we made our way out to the I-90 east entrance and were standing there by 7:27am. The spot we were at seemed to be well-frequented by hitchhikers, and here's how we know:

It says "Husband + pregnant wife" in the corner

We borrowed this sign for a short while, then decided it was repetitious since we were standing at an I-90 east entrance

Can you spot "www.andjuggling.com"?

At 8am, a big rig stopped for us. Success! Our ride was with Roy and Jeff and Asia. Roy and Jeff were the truckers, Asia was the adorable rottweiler puppy. Roy and Jeff were hauling vehicles and were going all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before heading south. That's 717 miles! And they were willing to share their already crowded cab for that entire distance. This made an amazing third day for us. We enjoyed our ride with them. They were both nice guys and the only trouble was my voice got tired from talking over the noise of the truck. Jeff and his family are interested in moving to Seattle one day, so we told him to keep in touch so we can introduce him and his family to all our friends there.

Our long-distance Thursday ride

They dropped us off at a Love's truck stop around 10pm that night. Jeff told us there was a big field just on the other side of where a bunch of trucks were parked, so we headed over there after a halfhearted effort to get a nighttime ride. The field was great. There was lots of tall grass at the edge of it, plus all the big rigs parked up next to the edge of it, so we felt well-secluded. It was even pretty peaceful sounding with cicadas all around us, once we got used to the squealing and screeching pig noises coming from a nearby trailer. That is, it was great until the surprise thunderstorm the next morning, but that's another day and another blog post, my friends. Do come back.

P.S. I almost forgot to show you these pictures from the Love's. We considered asking for rides here because someone probably would have offered us one...but we didn't want to disturb.

He's got all the big rigs, in his hands

Day 2 - Seattle to West Bend

So it's 4AM and we're back at the free way entrance. Middle of the night, a couple cars every 15 minutes. There are 2 eastbound i-90 freeway entrances. One for people coming from the truck stop, one for people coming from other parts of Spokane. We chose a spot on the median between the two. Around 4:30, a cop pulls up and tells us to move to the sidewalk. So we did.
Around 5:15AM the clouds caught the first edge of sunlight, and by 5:45AM it was light enough to read by.
At 6:35AM we caught a ride with Frank about 30 miles to Post Falls, ID. He let us off at a rest stop where we freshened up and then started in earnest around 7:33AM. We asked a few truckers and moved on to the rest stop exit.
At 10:18 we got a ride from Steve. He's trucking with his Silkie Terrier, Shadow, to Billing, MT, a good 500 miles away.

Steve had some crazy stories to share. He's been a thousand different places and worked a dozen different jobs. Everything from Vietnam Sniper to Cowboy to Animal Rescue, Firefighter, Horse Trainer, etc, etc...

He let us out just before Billings, and we spent the night at the campgrounds near the truck stop. A sheriff stopped to talk to us, and suggested that we sneak into the campgrounds and leave before anybody else woke up.... silly law enforcers. So we did.

And that was day 2.

Wedding Note, and Our Latest Hitchhiking Trip, Part I

See the kittens, hiding on my lap?

We are in Wisconsin now, at Brendan's parents' farm (there are kittens here!), and the day is drawing near. Soon this place will be decked out in who-knows-what (ribbon? pumpkins? fall leaves? your smiling faces?) and we will be gettin' hitched. And as we are preparing for the day, we've been talking more about what we want it to be like. So there's this thing we just decided, that you should know. Instead of simply having toasts at our reception and putting just a few people on-the-spot, we'd like to turn the traditional toasting time into an open mic session. If you want to toast, great, but you could also sing a song, play an instrument, read a poem, read something else, perform a comedy routine, whatever you like! It will be your chance to offer us a little gift of yourself, expressed however you like. It won't be mandatory, but please consider sharing something.

Now, to tell the story, or rather, many stories, of our latest hitchhiking journey. As many of you know, we were most recently in Everett and Seattle, catching up with family and friends there. But we needed to get back to Wisconsin to prepare for the wedding. In the past, we've taken the bus or the train to get to Wisconsin (we've never flown there, though, which I find kind of funny), but this time we wanted to save money, and we wanted to flex our hitchhiking muscles. So we thumbed it.

Our first ride of the day on Tuesday, September 7, was from my sister Amelie. She had the day off and offered to get us started, and we accepted. She took us to Vantage, WA, we ate lunch together, then she dropped us off at the I-90 east on ramp. It was pretty dead, so were worried we would get stuck there, but within just a few minutes a woman who was just coming off the freeway asked where we were headed. We said east and she said she could take us as far as Moses Lake. We said that would be great, then she asked if we could chip in some gas money. That kind of put us off. We hesitated, but then said yeah, we had just a couple bucks. We were worried about the spot, remember. She said okay, she was going to fill up and then be back to pick us up. As soon as she left we talked about how it made us uncomfortable that she'd asked us for money and that we'd agreed to pay her. It's not hitchhiking if money is involved, it's ridesharing. But still, it was only two bucks, and it would get us out of the bad spot. But it must not have been such a bad spot, because before she even came back, we had another ride, and this one was going all the way to Spokane.

Russ was a nice guy who told us all about his travels in Europe and in the US. He went on a trip east once and started out by bus in Montana. When he left it was 30 degrees, and when he arrived somewhere in North Dakota, it was 30 below, and this was where he started hitchhiking. He said he could see ice in the air, and at one point he slipped and fell back into a covey of quails. He thought he just kept on falling, then realized it was just that all the birds were flying up around him. He didn't say how long it took him to get a ride, but it must have been pretty quick because, well, he obviously didn't freeze to death. He dropped us off at a Flying J, where we were greeted by this:

Aww, thanks for the welcome!

We decided to ask the employees, anyway. Just because they have a sign like that doesn't mean the people on duty care much about it, right? So we approached the two guys behind the counter and said, "Excuse me, but we saw the sign about hitchhiking outside, and were wondering, is that very strictly enforced?" We try to be polite. And they politely said yes, we would have to step foot off the gas station grounds before we stuck out our thumbs. Well, it was dark by this time anyway, so we asked them if they knew of any place around where we might be able to set up our tent for the night. One of them said he thought there was kind of a field near some warehouses further up the road, so we headed that way.

We didn't find anything much, though, at least nothing that was free of big chain-link fences, so we kept walking. We came to a little residential area, and turned down a street with some homes. At one house that had a nice big front yard with plenty of room for our little bitty tent, we saw the home-dweller walking from his backyard to his driveway. We said to each other, "It doesn't hurt to ask" and approached him. We greeted him and he responded "Hello, WHAT?" as in, what do you want? So we asked if we could set up our tent in his yard. He responded "No frickin' way," but upon noting that we did not seem drug-crazed, he recommended we set up tent in the nearby schoolyard. If the police came, he reasoned, we had nothing to hide.

We followed his advice, even though this was a much more open spot than we normally feel comfortable with when we're trying to stealth-camp. It seemed to be the best we could find, though, so we just tried to find the most hidden spot possible, and we set our alarm for 5:30am so we could get out of there before anyone showed up for school the next day. But who needs an alarm when there's a built-in wake-up call right there in the field? Around 2:45am I woke up and thought I heard falling water, but then convinced myself it was wind. Wind that seemed to come and go in a regular pattern, but hey, how awake are you at 2:45am? I went back to sleep. About 3:15am, the "wind" had started up right by our tent, and was actually sprinklers. They rotated, at least, so we had some dry moments to get out of the tent and pull it to a dry spot. But that was it for sleep for the night, so we packed everything up and headed back to the freeway. That is the end of Installment I, folks. Installment II comes tomorrow.

Spain and Portugal - Across the Peninsula in One Day

Hello, May

I promised my sister-in-law a blog post by Friday.

I almost kept it. If you are up very, very late on Friday night in Washington state, you might read this before you consider it Saturday, even though it technically is Saturday.

Sorry, Naomi. Better late than not at all, though, right?

Also, sorry April. Even when we are lax in the blogging department, we usually manage one a month. So what happened during April that kept us away from our blog?

At the end of March, just after back-to-back visits from my sister, Amelie, and Brendan's dad, Wes, we hosted some couchsurfers for two nights. When they left, we just breathed. It was delightful and busy and socially and mentally engaging and just . . . like home, having Amelie and Wes come to visit. I wished Amelie could have stayed just a little bit longer, because the weather got warm the day, the very day, she left. Ergh.

Here's a post to come: Visit with Amelie, and pictures.

Another: Visit with Wes, and pictures.

And then we took a trip. We hitchhiked to Kampen, the Netherlands and visited our friend Anna, whom Brendan met at university. We stayed with her four nights, then hitchhiked Düsseldorf, to visit our couchsurfing friends Anja and Tini. We stayed with them two nights, then took a Schöneswochenende ticket back to Magdeburg. That's another post to come, in which we detail some of the happy happenings and dumb decisions that come along with hitchhiking.

We got home and breathed some more.

I've dedicated myself to writing. For long years I've considered myself a writer, but I haven't produced much. Well, that's just silly. So now I'm writing every day. I'm currently following Stephen King's advice in On Writing and meeting a word count every day. I started with 1000 words, what he recommends for the beginning writer, upped it two weeks later to 1500 words, and starting tomorrow won't stop writing until I've hit 2000. That's what Stephen King says is his target limit for each day. So, wow! I'll be writing as much as Stephen King!

Brendan discovered a new love while we were in Kampen: animating. Here are the videos he made in two days of working in Anna's studio:




We're working on getting the materials and space he needs to continue animating here in Magdeburg.

Thanks for reading, family and friends, and thanks for the bugs to write more. It lets us know you are reading. Promised posts soon to come. Promise.

With Special Guest Star, Wes WEINHOLD!!!

Solo Stina

My desire to see my sister as soon as possible when she arrived at Tegel airport in Berlin did not outweigh my budget concerns about spending 25 euros each way to get there and back. It did, however, outweigh any apprehension I felt about hitchhiking alone. I knew the apprehension was illogical, anyway, based on all the conversations we've had with solo female hitchhikers, yet it was still there. The best way to get over it was just to do it, hitchhike alone, and yesterday I had a really good reason to try. I figured if I could get to Tegel for free, it wouldn't be so bad to spend 25 euros on the return trip since it meant I got to spend that much more time with Amelie.

I set out from home around 7:45am and took the #5 tram to Opernhaus, then the #9 tram to a stop at the north end of town, Krähenstieg. I was trying to get to an Aral gas station where Brendan and I had once tried to hitchhike to Hannover. We gave up that time after waiting for two hours and being offered several rides to Berlin but none to Hannover. I figured this was the perfect spot to hitch at yesterday since Berlin was exactly where I was trying to go.

The only trouble was finding the gas station. I took a wrong turn and wasted about 20 minutes wandering up and down the wrong street before I found the right one. By 8:45am, though, I'd made it to my spot, sporting a thumb on one hand and this nifty sign in the other:


As soon as I was standing there in that familiar position any remaining anxiety disappeared. Cars passed me by and the people in them looked just as friendly and safe as they do when I'm hitchhiking with Brendan. Ten minutes later I had a ride with an on-the-younger-side-of-middle-aged man. He said he needed to make one short stop on the way, but after that he was going into Berlin.

We talked only in German and I was really proud of myself for what I was able to communicate to him and what I understood. He told me he had a twenty year old son and that he would like to travel to the US with him, but he wanted to improve his English first. I offered to speak English with him so he could practice, but he said "Überlegen und fahren geht nicht," which means "Thinking and driving don't mix."

I asked him at one point which city in Germany he thought was the most beautiful and had a little embarrassing moment where I didn't understand his response.
"Essen?" I asked.
"Nein, __________." (I still didn't understand.)
"Ezden?"
"Dresden."
"Oh, Dresden!"
Then we talked a little about Dresden.

He dropped me off at an U-Bahn station in Berlin around 10:30am. I didn't know to get from there to the airport, so I approached a young man and asked him, in German, what to do. He gave me clear instructions, I got a ticket, and hopped on the next subway.

The subway ride was long. So long, I worried I might miss Amelie's 11:10am arrival. I had to switch from the subway to a bus and by that time it was already 11:10am, so when I got to airport it was 11:25am. Thankfully her flight was a little late and had just landed at 11:19am. I asked at Information where I could find her, and got to the spot where everyone was waiting just five minutes before she came through the doors.

Together we navigated the bus to the train station and the train back to Magdeburg and now have an exciting week of visiting and sightseeing ahead of us.

Visiting a Castle and Friends!

Prague

Brendan speaking here. As you may or may not know, Stina is in Hamburg for the week training for her new job with the Berlitz in Magdeburg. While I was disappointed not to be offered a position as well, I am quite pleased that it allows me the opportunity to participate in Grand Prix - Prague, a major sanctioned Magic: the Gathering tournament with a top prize of $3,500 and an invitation to Pro-Tour Austin, which has a top prize of $40,000. So wish me luck and enjoy my adventures:
I got to the hitchhiking stop that Hitchwiki suggests from Hamburg headed south, and the directions are good. Follow the road in the same direction as the bus, and after about 50 meters, you will indeed start to hear the Autobahn. The road curves to the left, but there´s a smaller paved area that´ll lead you to the gas station. First, though, note the supermarket across the road. That´s where I bought a yogurt and two bananas for my breakfast. I ate the yogurt and one banana while I walked to a place under a tree by the exit, because just as I got there, it started to rain. The tree did its job well, and I was surprised to find that I was pretty excited to be on the road again. The challenge of getting from there to here with only my wits and little else was exciting to me. I think the fact that I felt entirely well returned much of the exuberance that´s been flagging for the past several weeks. My first ride was a delightful ride from an Indian man who, like all other German speakers, was shocked that I spoke German.
Take that as a given for all my interactions, and I won´t mention it again. He gave me a ride out of the rain about 50 km down the road.
Then I got a ride from a German who wanted to practice his English. He was older, but a fit bike rider and he´d recently gone to Görlitz which he wanted me to go to as well as it´s kind of on the way to Prague. Next time, I promised him. He likes to practice languages. He worked at an American army base for many years as a dishwasher, and he learned his English there from the soldiers, by reading articles about the same topic in German and English newspapers, and by listening to the news on the American radio station from the base and the regular German news radio stations. He said his English was so bad that his English teacher wouldn´t let him talk in class. His English was excellent. Quite meticulous, even. He spoke very carefully and slowly, and asked me to do the same. When I did, his comprehension was complete, and his vocabulary was extensive. He also practices Dutch with a friend of his from the Netherlands. They´re penpals, and they pretend they are the Dutch queen´s marshall and Germany´s ambassador to the Netherlands. He said his friend just wrote to him that he has retired from his marshallry,
more´s the pity.
He was going to west of Hannover, and, as you know, the route from Hannover to Prague takes one east. We looked on the map, and saw that there was a Raststätte not too far along the western route. I knew I didn´t want to run across six lanes of 100mph traffic again, but we found an underpass leading from the westbound side to the eastbound side. I walked the wrong way for a while, and thought what a nice autumn day it was for a walk with a loved one, as I saw two people pushing two other people in wheelchairs along the sidewalk next to a very autumnal copse of trees. Then I realized my mistake, and turned to follow them.
There I waited 3 hours. I made several mistakes which probably cost me some of those hours, but even so, it seemed there were fewer people willing to pick me up than the volume of traffic should have suggested. Of course many were just going into Hannover, but there were plenty of other license plates, notably Polish, Czech, MD and Berlin. My major mistake was believing people who said that they were going to Berlin but not through Magdeburg... okay, okay, I suppose they don´t go THROUGH Magdeburg, but they come darn close to it, so I
eventually cornered a Ukrainian guy - and by cornered, I mean he stopped for me, despite initially shrugging apologetically and seeming he would continue. My gaze and fierce thumbing halted him. He was going to Berlin and dropped me at the Tankstelle I told him to.
I waited there only a few dozen minutes before a Czech guy stopped and took me all the way here. This country is gorgeous. If it weren´t for all our other plans, I would say we should buy a place in the countryside here and raise those sheep immediately. What a lovely drive. I borrowed my driver´s cell phone to let my couchsurfing host know I´d get there a day early. She said it was fine, but she was out with friends and wouldn´t be home until 1130. I said okay even though I got to her house at 8, but I went to a Chinese restaurant and got some fried rice for 59czk and a half liter beer for 30czk. In all, I had a full sit down restaurant meal for less than 4 euros ($5.70). I started writing in my journal, but then everybody left the restaurant, including my waitress. I started to think that they were closing so I finished quickly and left. When I got out, I saw that they would be open until 11 and it was only 9, so I kicked myself and went in search of an internet cafe. I didn´t find one, so I wrote while sitting in front of a very old church. By the time I looked up, it was 1030 - close enough to 1130, right? I walked up to my host´s front door and plopped down on my bag to wait. I had barely written a sentence before she showed up with a "contemplating Magic strategy?" I greeted her, and she led me to here. She has a tremendous flat, about which she keeps apologizing for the mess. The mess, however, is not particularly dirty, but rather is made up of glorious books. Some of them are in English, and this morning I claimed one and am now 128 pages in. The reason for my progress (despite all of the other opportunities Prague has to offer) is that there were 2 other Couchsurfers here as well, a very nice couple originally from Bavaria but now studying in Salzburg. They were out late at a jazz club last night, and so didn´t get up until noon. Despite my being awake, I didn´t want to go anywhere or do anything noisy and didn´t have the key, so I searched amongst the books and read. Tonight: Registration. Tomorrow: DAY ONE!

A whole new world

My goodness, here we are indeed. We've had a whirlwind of a time this past almost a year, and It's not quite settled down yet, but the net stage of our trip is in sight.
Stina and I will begin living in Magdeburg, Deutschland within the next two weeks, and we intend to stay there for a good long while.
What's that you say? I need to catch you up? You have no idea what I'm talking about, or if you do, you don't know how we got from there to here 'cause we haven't blogged in a while? Well, here goes then:
Before we left Saarbrücken, We checked our emails once again. Lo and behold, Stina's email had in it a job offer from the Magdeburg Berlitz! We redid the budgets, figured out we could just squeak by if only Stina is employed and she gets enough hours, and accepted the position on the spot! After evaluating our many travel options, we decided to head to the places we had the greatest concentration friends (northwestern Germany) so I could bask in their warm glow on my birthday.
We tried to leave Saarbrücken by tramping (hitchhiking). It was a hot day, and we trudged about 2 miles from the Studentenwohnheim where we were staying with our couchsurfing host. (and where I discovered that Bulgarians play a much funner card game of BS than the American version and that Stephen King really is a good writer - Lisey's Story grabbed me. I'm on page 375. I had to leave the book with our host.) After that 2 mile trudge, we saw that our spot looked kind of dead, but we waited faithfully anyways until a lady from across the street hollered at us that no one was going anywhere from where we were standing. She invited us to her shady backyard and gave us sparkling water and then drove us to a bus stop near the freeway entrance. We waited for about an hour and a half, then gave up, took the tram back to the Hauptbahnhof, and got our quer durchs ticket. We rode the train to Bonn where we got to relax again with the most pleasant of people. We headed the next morning by train (can you tell we're tired?) to Düsseldorf and to our Magic friend's door. We couch hopped for the week in Düsseldorf, staying a few nights with each of several friends we had made before, making new friends, and indulging our passion for relaxion. My birthday was particularly relaxing, as we spent most of it lounging around a park and eating the pasta salad I had made that morning.
We hitched pretty easily from Düsseldorf to Hannover, now fully refreshed from our long stay in Düsseldorf. Our final Düsseldorf couchsurfing hosts accompanied us to the gas station in Oberhausen, 'cause they were on their way to do some geocaching out there, too. It took us 2 rides, and our last ride, a buddhist priest who wrote a book on relationships and generosity with his girlfriend, dropped us right in front of our hosts' door. In Hannover we stayed with friends of Stina's from her bible school days. They, too were game enthusiasts (like attracts like), and we spent a rollicking 2 days with them. We ate plenty of good vegetarian food, and discovered trampolines and centrifugal force and mini golf in various parks. After our stay, we hitched the most efficient hitch ever - I stuck out my thumb for the first car, he pulled over like magic and took us all the way to the central station in Hamburg. We took the Sbahn to Veddel, walked 5 minutes and arrived at our current couchsurfer's home. Now Stina's spending her days in unpaid training for Berlitz, and I'm trying to figure out what happens next. I'm researching for this weekend's Magic Grand Prix in Prague, and will be hitchhing there on Thursday. Wish me luck!

How we got from there to here, part 2--leaving Oslo

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.

How we got from there to here, part 1

It's been awhile since I've done one of these posts, a post that recounts the journey. In the past two weeks we have traveled approximately 2,261 kilometers, or 1,405 miles. This leg of our hitchhiking journey began in Christiansand, Norway on Thursday, July 30. From Karmoy Island we had traveled with my cousin Unni and her husband Sven Erik to Sven Erik's family's cabin about an hour or so away from Christiansand. We spent one night there and the next day Unni and Sven Erik kindly drove us into Christiansand. At this point we had decided to try and get to Germany as quickly as possible because of our new life plan, so we planned to take the ferry from Christiansand to Denmark.

New life plan? What's this we talk about? Since arriving in Germany, and really, quite a while before then, we've realized how much we want to settle down again for awhile and have a home of our own. When we were in Seattle we applied for jobs and seriously planned to shorten our trip and move back if we got a good offer. We didn't. In Germany we learned about the possibility to become English teachers with a company called Berlitz and started forming all sorts of new dreams.

While in Norway we converted our resumes to the Curriculam Vitae (CV) format and sent them to every single Berlitz location in Germany. We got a lot of "Thank you for submitting your CV, but we are not currently hiring..." and, thankfully, a few offers to come and interview. We scheduled interviews as soon as possible because we want to settle down as soon as possible, so off we headed to the ferry terminal.

We found out that tickets would cost $75 per person. We had heard from Sven Erik's family that there are two ferries going to Denmark from Christiansand, a fast one and a slow one. We wanted to take the slow (read: cheaper) ferry, but it turns out they canceled it some years ago and the only option was the fast one. Tickets were that expensive because we did not book in advance and those were the only seats left. Since you recently read about our budget, you know $75 per person for a ferry ride is way outside it. Plus, the next available ferry was the next morning. So we set out to hitchhike.

Feeling a little forlorn, we went the grocery store first and bought some comfort food (this is where that cheap chicken was bought, and chocolate for me), ate some of it, then walked to an entrance to E-18 to head to Oslo. We had sent a few couchsurfing requests to Oslo before making the plans to take the ferry so we just hoped that we could find internet when we arrived in Oslo and that someone would be able to host us.

After about 45 minutes of holding out our thumbs, and just as we started talking about how maybe we should bite the bullet and just take the ferry to Denmark, we got a ride at 2:53pm. Stefan was not going far, but he said he could put us at a better hitchhiking spot. He had hitchhiked a lot in the past, so he picks up hitchhikers now. He dropped us off at a bus stop just off of the E-18 where we could thumb and be visible to all traffic along the E-18.

It was indeed a good spot. Five minutes later we had a ride with Helge, who shared cold cokes with us. He was on his way to Lillesand to pick up his son for the weekend. He had a funny conversation with his Polish friend while we were in the car with him. From our end we heard "I cannot understand you. Are you drunk?" He dropped us off at about 3:30pm.

It started raining. It rained, I think, every single day that we were in Norway, so this was no surprise, but unpleasant all the same. Just after getting thoroughly wet, we got got a ride with Johnny. He also wasn't going far, but he said he could take us to a gas station where at least we would have some cover. We took a bathroom break, then walked out to the road where, thankfully, there was another bus stop with a shelter. I sat under the shelter while Brendan thumbed, protected as you can see.



At 4:30pm we had a ride with Tor Magne, another man on his way to pick up his son for the weekend. He was going quite far along our way so we had plenty of time to dry off and sit back and relax. Tor Magne is a plumber who is hoping to get a job at a college because the pay is good and he would get all the right time off for holidays. His son lives in Tonsburg and he used to also and would like to move back there. He grew up in Christiansand and his parents live there still, but his extended family and all his friends are in Tonsburg.

He dropped us off at 7:30pm at a gas station just off the E-18. He drove at least another 20 minutes out of his way just to put us at a good spot. The weather that day hated us. It started raining again just after he dropped us off (by the way, Tor Magne told me that Norway has had its rainiest summer in over 100 years), rained just long enough to drench us, then stopped raining.

At 8:05pm we got a ride with a man who is living in Norway but is from Poland. His holidays had just started and he was on his way to Oslo with his son and the next day would fly to Krakow to visit. (Brendan thinks the son had been visiting his dad in Norway and was now headed back home on a plan... slightly different understandings of speakers of English as a second language are not uncommon to us. Two days ago Jan (of Elke and Jan, you'll learn about them soon) said that he just couldn't sleep if one of his friends was snorkeling in the room.) We were with him not quite long enough to dry out all the way, but at least it was warm and comfortable in his car, and he was listening to some fun music (take my breath away, bum bum, bum bum, bum bum). He dropped us off at a metro stop and told us we could take the metro into the city center.

We got on the metro and got some further instructions from the driver about where to get off and where to find an internet cafe. I was feeling pretty miserable by this point. Wet and cold and hungry and I could only really solve one of those problems. So when we got to the central station, after finding that toilet in the pizza place, I sat down to eat some beans while Brendan got started checking our couchsurfing messages. I felt a lot better after that, and Brendan had some good news.

One couchsurfer had responded with a yes, so we called her and explained that we were at the central station and could we please come to her place right now? She said of course, and we happily made our way there on the metro. By this time it was dark outside and around 10pm or so. When we got off at her stop, we walked in what we thought was the right direction and just before we had the chance to get really lost, a car pulled up by us. A woman poked her head out the window and said, are you Stina and Brendan the couchsurfers? Yes, we are! It was Mia-Simone, our hitchhiking-couchsurfer-host, whom you know from the interview-video. There wasn't room in the car for us, but we could follow it right to her doorstep.

Mia-Simone showed us where we would sleep, we changed out of our disgusting wet clothes, then joined her for hot tea. It is the greatest relief in the world to be relieved of physical discomfort and know that you will sleep in a warm bed. This post will have to be continued because we must do a little shopping so we can look nice for our interviews tomorrow at the Berlitz in Magdeburg, Germany. Wish us luck!

Greetz from Oslo!

Quickest blog post in the west

Brendan at the campsite in Kinsarvik

Waiting for three hours makes us desperate!

Where we slept in Kinsarvik

The tent we slept in at the medieval festival


Brendan in medieval garb


Me in medieval garb


Some belly dancers at the medieval festival

Or at least it will try to be. I've been meaning every day to write this blog post, but every day seems to get filled up so fast that there has been no time. Blogging requires one to be a little bit anti-social, and that is difficult when surrounded by so many family members. Therefore, I will try to write a long blog very quickly.

We left Copenhagen on the 15th of July. We took the Metro to what was supposed to be outside the city but before the airport, but turned out to be the airport. I wasn't happy about this because it is often difficult to navigate away from an airport via hitchhiking, but thankfully that wasn't the case at Copenhagen Airport. We were able to follow signs leading to a highway entrance and stand by a bus stop to hitchhike. Just using our thumbs, within 15 minutes we had a ride to Sweden. We'd gotten a late start, so it was already 6pm.

Mats, an avid hang-glider, drove us across the bride into Sweden. He lives in Sweden and works in Copenhagen. It is cheaper to live in Sweden and he makes more money in Denmark, so it is a good deal for him. Mats dropped us off at 6:30pm.

Almost instantly we had another ride, this time from two Danish women heading to the summer home of one of them to do some home improvements. They needed to stop at a home improvement store to pick up some materials, and then could take us a fair distance.

At 7:35pm they dropped us off and we got a ride right away from a man named Christian, who was just going a short ways down the road. I think by now we were around Halmstad, Sweden, but honestly I wasn't keeping very good track of where we were exactly so long as we were still on the correct highway (the E-6/E-20).

(From Brendan: at some point in our travels through Sweden, a ride pulled up as we were still getting our gear out of our last ride. I don't have the notebook in front of me, so I'm not sure which ride this was, but that was very thrilling to us.)

Christian was a man with young daughters who seemed convinced the world is becoming a much worse place that will not be as safe for his daughters as it was for him growing up. Christian dropped us off at a truck stop that he said was not a very busy spot, but where we could probably get a nice long ride. It was around 8pm when he dropped us off, and we were not able to get another ride that night. We did, however, have some wonderful wild raspberries and a fun camping night.

The next day, July 16th, we got a ride at 1:10pm with Jasper down the road a little ways. Even thought it was a short ride, it was enough to get us out of a tough hitchhiking spot. Our next ride was with Jerker, pronounced with a soft J sound and much nicer sounding than it looks. He took us another 30 minutes down the road to a gas station.

After a food break, we were hitching again by 3:15pm. An hour and half later, we had a ride with Johann. He dropped us off at 4:40pm at a gas station. Now we were nearly to Göteborg. Our next ride came at 5:45pm from a man named Johan and it turned out to be our last ride of the day, because he took us to the medieval festival in Kungälv, north of Göteborg. He even let us borrow some medieval-looking clothing so we wouldn't feel out of place.

We had a great time at the festival, and I think I'll save the details for another post. The next day, Friday the 17th, we left the festival in the evening to see if we could make it a little ways further while it was still light out. We got a ride at 7:10pm with a lovely family literally just going to the next exit. There we saw another hitchhiker and spoke to him to make sure we weren't invading his space. Turned out he was coming from Oslo and making his way back to Italy, where he was from. He said he'd been having good luck hitchhiking.

Our luck was a little better than his that evening, at least, because we got a ride first. It was another short ride, but our next one was a little longer. We camped near a gas station and woke up the next morning when it started to rain.

By 9:30am the next morning (Saturday the 18th) we were back out there with our thumbs well-rested. We got a ride an hour later with Benny, who didn't speak as much English as many of the younger people we'd been getting rides with, but who was a really nice guy on his way to work. He dropped us off at a fairly dead spot, so we were worried we would have a hard time getting a ride. We needn't have! We had a ride five minutes later with Jobst.

Jobst was on his way to pick up his son, who'd been on a sailing trip. He was kind and offered to share his breakfast with us, but we weren't hungry again yet. He picked us up at 10:40am and dropped us off at 11:10am. Where he dropped us, the E-6 had changed from a 4-lane to a 2-lane highway with a lower speed limit, so we felt safe standing just on the shoulder of the road near a truck pull-out. We stuck out our thumbs there in the pouring rain.

At 11:45 we got a ride with Katarina, who was going to Oslo! We decided to go all the way into the city center with her rather than try to take another tunnel-highway that also headed the direction we wanted to go, in the hopes that there would be more people leaving the city. Katarina was really nice and took us on a 15 minutes tour around Oslo before dropping us off at a gas station on the edge of the city. The gas station was ideally located by a grocery store, so we were able to stock up on some bread and fruit.

We then had a ride with Bernt, a kind older man who told us how people in Norway are wary of picking up hitchhikers because of some recent news stories where people posing as stranded motorists had in fact been thieves preying on the kindness of strangers. He gave us the contact info for one of his sons who lives in Germany when he heard we would be returning there. He also gave us his contact info in case we ran into any trouble and needed to contact him for help. He dropped us off by an entrance for the E-134, which crosses the mountains and ends in Haugesund, near where my relatives live.

Our next ride, though, came from a man who was going quite far, but not on the E-134. His name is Botolv, and he would be taking a highway that also runs west, but north of the E-134. He was going very far, though, so we decided to go all the way with him even though it meant taking a different route. He was a very interesting man to talk to. He is a linguist who works in Oslo at the university. He specializes in place names and is a part of a committee of experts on geographical names for the United Nations. He's moderately famous in that of the one couple we told about him one of them had seen him on TV. We also got to listen to a little bit of The Hobbit on CD in German.

We camped that night in the most beautiful spot. It was near Kinsarvik by a fjord and it was so incredibly lovely. It was raining all night, but we stayed mostly dry in our tent with a tarp on top and another beneath us. The next day, though, even though the spot was so nice to stand at, we were frustrated that it took us three hours to get a ride. Our ride came, finally, from some German tourists who'd been stopped nearby fishing and took pity on us, I think, because they had seen us trying to get a ride the whole hour or so they were parked there.

They dropped us off back on the E-134 and we got a ride within 10 minutes from Ole, a sheep farmer. He drove us into Haugesund even though he wasn't planning to go that far, and let us use his cell phone to reach Heidi and Dag Terje. We couldn't through on their cell phone, so he did some sort of text message search for their home number and we got through. He dropped us off at the bus station there, and Heidi and Dag Terje picked us up and took us to Karmøy Island! Phew.

1st European Vlog!

Just to brag a little, that's the t-shirt I won for coming in 2nd at the M2010 Prerelease. Now I have FOUR t-shirts! (And two of them are Magic: the Gathering-related...)

Travels from Hannover to Copenhagen

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!

Hitchhiking and New York City Pictures

This is where we best like to hitchhike. In FRONT of no thumbing it signs.

Just like that! Beautiful!

Ooooo... Dan, I have to go to the bathroom, too!

I got your nose!

Muskrat along the road - found at an "Oasis" (See earlier post)

That's really us with Anne Hathaway, I'm not kidding.

And there's Nic!

Isn't Stina an elegant architectural photographer?

New Jersey across the Hudson at Sunset


Goodbye, New York City

Sorry there are not more words in this post, but we're frantically doing all our errands before we go get our plane.