Mind Your Elephant

When I left Berlin it took me three rides to get going. I met with an interesting Swedish girl who was on her “European Squat Tour”. She proved to be an excellent travel partner and didn’t mind experienced hitching company. She was hungry so I shared whatever little I had and she did the same with me: we became friends quickly and had great conversations. We didn’t mind waiting. After being stranded on a service station for a couple of hours we got an amazing ride with a French fellow, his Volkswagen van and the sweetest dog called Shiva. I could have gone with them all the way to Clermont-Ferrand, France, but I had agreed to meet a Couch Surfer in Stuttgart. It was a bit of a pain to get into the city but the 20KM sign saved me (again!) and finally I got a ride with an amazing Danish family, all the way to Stuttgart railway station.

There I met my near-future travel buddy who wanted to join my trip. She gave me chocolate and multivitamin juice to get my energy level back up – but it could never reach the heights of her super-pepper Duracel bunny drive. I’ll give more details later but let’s just say that the easy hitch to Lyon never happened. Instead we ended up in Zürich, Nancy and next to Paris. Wish me luck.