The best hitch-hiking story ever!

I am writing this post after waking up at 6.30, standing for hours in the rain, running by the wall in the autobahn, screaming at random people, walking through the dirt, claiming a fence on the bridge (!!) and finally having the best Dutch coffee and a desert with strawberries.  However the day turned out to be like this, the initial plan was to have a wonderful hitch-hiking trip to Frankfurt and spend there a weekend enjoying skyscrapers and wonderful night life. But as proverb says - ‘people make plans and God laughs’. But let me tell you everything from the beginning!

How the dreams break

I  always wanted to travel by hitch-hiking somewhere further than 20 km and finally I found a mate, my German neighbor Moritz, who was ready to do it with me.  Talking about the location, Maastricht is perfect place to travel from, because you can choose from 3 countries – it is on the border with Germany and Belgium and is in the bottom the Netherlands.  I’ve heard from many hitch-hikers, that Germany is a very nice place to hitch-hike – cars stop easily, people are friendly and it is safe. So, inspired by all this advantages, we decided to do a trip from Maastricht to Frankfurt.  We planned to leave on Friday and come back on Sunday, the round trip would make 600km. Weather forecast said there is a possibility of rain, but not too big. Sounds like perfect plan, isn’t it?

German couch – mission impossible

We had a nice plan, I was super excited about seeing Frankfurt, so we started a preparation. Task ‘number one’ was finding a place to sleep for two nights. Moritz used to live in Frankfurt and had some friends there, therefore we were sure we won’t face any difficulties finding accommodation. Oh how wrong were we! None of the friends were able to host us, but there still was a ‘Couch surfing’ option.

 I’ve already couchsurfed in France and Greece and it didn’t take long to find a couch there, so I was sure about the same in Frankfurt. Oh how wrong I was! After sending around 20 super informative and perfectly representative requests I got one positive answer, offering a ‘wonderful ‘ place to stay. The place was an attic with two cats living there and as ‘host’ mentioned, the place is a little stinky and we would have to sleep on the floor. Sounds perfect, but we decided to keep looking and posted in ‘emergency couch’ group, which normally works very fast. Guess if it worked for us? Yes yes, you are right, no one ever answered. When the day to travel finally came, we still didn’t have any options for sleeping, outside it was raining like hell, but we still wanted to go somewhere.  New plan was going to Eindhoven (around 100 km) and the same day coming back.

Hurricanes on the way

At 8 we left  and started hitch-hiking 200 meters from our house (we live just outside the city). Place was good, because it was not forbidden to stop, there was a place to stop and it was not a high-way and not a city. We expected to catch a car, which would bring us outside of Maastricht, so we could start catching a car for reaching Eindhoven. Although it was Saturday morning, there were a lot of cars passing by, however none of them wanted to stop. We tried all tactics –smiling, waving, standing quite, standing with the paper in our hands.  Finally it worked! So, it took only 50 mins to stop the first car. The driver was a Dutch man around 35 years old from the village nearby Maastricht, car was full of children toys and small chairs. By the time he picked us up, it was rain showering crazily. But we were inside the car and we got a motivation back, crazy weather and wind doesn’t matter!

The most stressful 200 meters in my life

The man was going to some place around Maastricht and offered to bring us on the road going to the direction of Eindhoven, where it is very convenient to hitch-hike. In 5 mins we were standing in front of the entrance to a highway. However, there was some reconstruction happening, so in order to reach the highway we had to walk around 200 meters by the wall built along the way. Those 200 meters turned to be the most stressful in my life! Large, super fast cars were passing in the distance of 10 cm and the worst thing that at the same time it was raining and cars started signaling and people were shouting on us from their cars. I was totally stressed, almost running and there was no escape, because we had to reach the highway and we couldn’t go back.  I started to yell on passing cars as well and it brought some relief actually J

No hitch-hiker soul found

Luckily we didn’t die on the highway and police didn’t come to pick us up. Finally we were standing in front of the sign ‘Eindhoven’, we had paper with the same word in our hands and despite the wind and rain really good mood. However all our motivation to hitch-hike was gone in around one hour. We were cold and wet and annoyed by people. At the moment when we started to yell at every car passing and stopping I realized that we are the worst hitch-hikers ever. We started giving up to fast and we were not ready to face difficulties as shitty weather and annoying people.

Escaping

In around an hour I had unstoppable wish to finish this adventure and go back home, but it turned to be a problem as well. There were two ways to leave the place we were standing at – taking away by the wall (which we did already and it was horrible) or crossing all highway. But then we had an idea to escape through all this reconstruction area, which was around. We noticed the bridge, which could take us to the safe road going to the city, although it was blocked by two fences. We claimed the fences, Moritz scratched the hand, and our shoes were all in dirt. We were laughing like crazy, people passing were looking at us, as we would be mad (maybe they were right).

Happy end

To finish the story about the trip, that didn’t happen I have to say that our journey we ended up in a beautiful restaurant with the terrace, having delicious coffee and eating strawberry deserts.  The conclusion of the day was that we definitely are not hitch-hikers and I am never hitch-hiking again. Probably, to travel this way you need to have a real desire to it and don’t give up too soon.  Another thing I have to admit, that after bad couchsurfing experience I am getting my stereotypes about Germans back ( and also getting bad impression about dutch drivers). By the way, when we were back home we got to know, that there was kind of hurricane in Frankfurt, with falling trees and water all around the city, how happy I was we were not there! Anyway, in two weeks we have planned another trip, not hitch-hiking this time, so follow the blog and don’t miss real story J!

Cheers,

Kristina