Hithchiking Across Germany!

Now, like most people in the US, I associate hitchhiking with ghost stories, chainsaw murders, and unsolved mysteries...but after talking to travellers throughout Eurpoe I began to see it as a legitimate travel form. And, more importantly, as an ADVENTURE! And I can NEVER say no to an ADVENTURE!

So a few weeks ago, Jessica and I headed off on a journey to hitchhike to Nuremberg!

Being great planners, we had no idea where to start, or what to bring, so the first hour (until about 7:30 pm) was spent wandering around, buying markers to make signs and snacks to eat, and asking passerby's the best place to start form to catch someone going the right direction. Everyone was nice (cars would stop and talk to us and offer advice, but none were going where we were), but we had no luck until one man told us a better u-Bahn stop to go to. And in ADDITION, he went with us there, and walked to the on-ramp, where Murphy's law slapped us in the face with a GIANT construction site and closed roads! Our helper said he's go find some maps for us to find somewhere else to start, and wandered off. We didn't really expect him to come back, but sure enough, half an hour later he came back with FIVE pages of color google maps, both street and satellite view, explained to us exactly where to go, and apologized he couldn't take us there in person! And then he strolled off into the sunset, not even giving us time to thank him, as if taking an hour of his day to help two novice hitchhikers was so ordinary that no special thanks was required.

So we get to the next onramp around 10pm, and once again find ourselves in a position of not many cars going our way...which is fine, because we have Poi, Snickers, Wine, and Biscuits to occupy us! Not to mention most cars that weren't going our way would stop to wish us luck, chat, or just wave nicely. We continued to wait, holding a flashlight on our sign and hiding the wine bottle when cars came, until finally a few hours in someone offered to take us to a rest stop near Nuremberg. There we waited once again until a nice person picked us up, plugged the address we were going to into his navigation system and dropped us directly off- after a nice conversation he even told me to drop him a line if I wanted an internship at his Electrical Engineering company!

Nuremberg itself was FANTASTIC- after a scavenger hunt that involved lots of playing on playgrounds, a free outdoor concert of the Nurembger Symphpony, we went to a crazy party and danced like mad people to music from all over the world (largely Balkan), then all sang and made kick lines and other group-frenzy dances to Abba and Queen, and more or less had a BLAST until the trams started to run again at 5am.

To hitchhike back, we took the subway to a small town just outside Nuremberg, then started looking fora ride to the rest station we had been at before. Of course, like one would in any small town in Southern Germany, we got picked up and driven 20 minute sout of the town by two nice people who had only intended to go out for coffee, and said "eh, its a Sunday!" when we asked if it was too inconvenient, and then proceeded to play Bob Marley the whole way over! Once there we quicly got picked up by an old lady and her dog, who was content to let us sleep in the back seat all the way home.