Hitchhiking out of a big city takes a bit more than a map. It takes the advices of someone else that have been hitch-hiking out of the city every few days in the past five years. Such a person certainly exists, but I don't know him/her, so the next best thing is called "hitchwiki.org".
It's a wiki web page where anyone can go and write about some good spots to go from A to B and that's where I found out how to get out of Berlin in the direction of Hamburg. I wrote down the instructions on my back-pocket-notebook (definitely one of my most precious items) and said goodbye to my friends. On the road again. The spot I was heading to turned out to be impracticable because of road works.
I had been inspired enough to write down the instructions to an alternative point of departure so I went back into the S-bahn and lost 1h of precious hitch-hiking time.
The alternative spot turned out to be pretty shitty. As it is for any big city. Most of the driver getting on the motorway are actually going to the near suburbs and are of no help to me. When hitching the motorway, one must be very wary of where a driver will drop him out before he steps into the car. The best transit spots are the gas stations along the road. Being dropped anywhere else can lead to serious delays.
In my case, nobody stopped in two hours. My sign said: "A24 / Hamburg", A24 being the one motorway that is just out of Berlin, in the direction of Hamburg and has a gas station, according to my map. In that time, I saw only three cars from Hamburg (in Germany, you can tell by reading the identification plate). The third one slowed down hesitantly but there was already 4 people in it and they gave me waves and smiles instead. That still helps.
Half an hour later they were back and took me in. They probably realized that there was actually enough space for me a bit too late, drove to the next exit, turned around, drove back and turned again.
This has happened to me already 3 times and, despite the thousands of drivers that acted as if I was translucent while passing me, it revives for a while the agonizing humanist that used to drive most of my thoughts.
They were pretty young, one of them around 15 years old, the others around 18. Including one of the blond-harmonious types described above; I locked my hands in my pockets and my eyes on the road.
I speak German on an acceptable conversational level so we could speak somehow. But as many people of this wonderful country, they were fluent in English. I wonder what's wrong, that in my country almost nobody does...
I had a problem: For the 888 project, I had offered that Hamburg would be a stopover city for those coming from Scandinavia. I had organized a little gathering in a local pub, invited the Hamburg people to meet them and set the rally time at 9pm. But I got picked up in Berlin at twenty to nine. And it's a 3h drive. The fault was mine, I had not planned enough margins and there was no way I would have been on time.
When I arrived at midnight, I went straight home and started sleeping before my head hit the pillow.
