Utrecht was the last stopover for anyone coming from anywhere north-east of Paris. There was also a little meeting organized there and I really wanted to get there before 10pm. Last time I had gone there hitch-hiking it had taken me eleven hours. But I had so much stuff to do that I left home at 12. Tight margins again!
To hitch south from Hamburg there is a really cool spot. You can ride the S-bahn and the bus to a far suburb and then actually walk to a motorway gas station that sees a lot of traffic. As usual, I got the tip from hitchwiki.org. When I got there there were already four hitch-hikers waiting.
The common sense philosophy when you reach an already occupied spot is to walk to the holder of the grounds and introduce yourself and see if your going the same way. If yes, the two (or more) would then join their effort and try to get a ride together. If the driver would take only one person, the one that had been waiting the longest would get it. But it has happened often to me that the other person would see me as an invader (if he was there first) or as a parasite (if I was) and try to compete with me. Which I find truly stupid and I hope you do as well.
Three of the ones that were there were on their way to Utrecht as well, for the same reason as me; one was going to Hanover; so we were not interested in the same drivers. I got out of there after 40 minutes waiting, which is a pretty good score according to my past experience. A truck driver with the tattoo of a bald eagle standing in front of the flag of the USA with the word "AMERICA" printed under. I refrained a giggle.
He was going quite far on my way but had to stop 70 kilometers later to clean the truck. Which was going to take him around 2 hours. I asked him to drop me off at the nearest gas station. A short but fun ride since the guy was really cheerful.
On my next gas station, I noticed the weather was getting really hot. My previous sign said "Bremen" and I was hoping to get the next ride past it. So I took off my shirt, sat down in the grass and started working on another one: "Osnabrück / Utrecht". I had seen a couple of dutch cars and I had a small hope to get a direct ride to the Netherlands. Once my sign over, I put my T-shirt back on, raised it and in 3 minutes, a parked truck gave me a honk. Quick one.
Indeed I had been inspired. The guy was driving to Rotterdam, which is past Utrecht. I could go all the way but the last "into the city" ride with him. And he turned out to be the nicest truck-driver I had ridden with since ages. First he put a pack of cigarettes in front of me with a lighter and the instructions to use it as if mine. Then he proved to be very talkative and on interesting subjects (I'm not very prolific on football, cars and girls).
My only problem with him was that he was not really in a hurry and I was somehow. He kept on stopping for coffee, or little pauses, or food, or shopping, buying me stuff all the time, which made the little stressed businessman-in-me completely frantic. So far he was shut down by the rastafari-in-me that decided to enjoy the moment, that was indeed very enjoyable:
At the trucker's rest area where he ordered his meal, there was an harmonious blond woman serving the food (that was more in his age-range). He convinced her to take a break at our table, which got us a free round of soda.
At the Dutch border he stopped to shop some food. The little supermarket had a little booth selling plastic jewelry and other accessories. He walked into that and scrutinized the earrings long enough for the shopkeeper to come up to him (another one of those blond things). They discussed jewelry for a while but it turned out they didn't have the type of earrings he was keen on wearing but still left with a wristband, leaving a tip that was around the value of the purchase.
I believe that there was actually no "blond factor", that he's just a really nice guy, and that it was just incidental that both cases involved an harmonious blond person of female gender. he told me the following on the way back to the truck: "There no difference really between you french guy, me and that girl from Romania (talking about the jewelry girl). We're all just human and this is how I relate to her." Though he had told me an hour before that "there are two types of people on this planet: the humans and the assholes". But I'm suppose there is a way to combine the two without being inconsistent.
He dropped me into the latest gas station before Utrecht, that was seeing almost no traffic. Even given the proximity and the popularity of my destination (Utrecht is a big town), it took me another hour of smiling, waving and holding my sign near the pumps before someone unstranded me.
I was still in luck, the guy was another brand of "nicest guy on Earth". He took me into the heart of Utrecht, quite departing from his route, so that I'd save on the bus ticket. Another warm thanks later, I was standing on the side of the Oude Gracht, which truly must be the most beautiful canal of the world; a fading smile on my face. It was 9:30pm.
Right after securing my pack on my back, I reached for my back-pocket-notebook where I had written the address of the rally point; and scanned the street for nice local helpers. The first person that crossed my path was a pretty young girl that turned out to speak 7 languages or something and didn't know where the bar I was looking for was. So she took me under her arm and off we went looking for it together.
She actually walked me to the very entrance door of the pub, I invited her for a beer. It was 9:57pm, I love to be on time.
Already sitting there around a table were a group of 10 noisy and smiley people, that obviously had some fresh adventures to tell the assembly and couldn't wait to. My friend Robin was also there and I couldn't keep myself from jumping on him in a big laugh. After I had dropped my 14 kg bag, that is.
The girl I had brought with me (and that goes by the interesting name of "Selma") found the atmosphere to her taste and hang around for a while. The contrary would have surprised me. There is nothing more cheerful than a traveling crowd of travelers. I had no idea where I was going to spend the night but there was some interested local people so I was figuring that one of them would offer me hospitality. I ended up going with Robin to his home in Amsterdam by train, from where we would leave together the next morning.
