August 01, 2003
Last day in Biella
Ok, here we go again! I have not really much to write today, just a few lines. Last two days have been really relaxing. Yesterday I did basicly nothing; got up by 9 or 9.30, had some breakfast. After that Andra's father took me up the mountains to an old monastery of the Black Madonna, Oropa. It was very nice, calm and quite, and the air was cold and fresh. But, as everywhere else, restaurants and souvenir shops all over the place.
After this we went home to have some dinner, and then I went in to the town to play some Internet and watch some guys playing a strange game of "Biliardo Italiano". Quite impressive really.
In the evening there were some more food eaten, and some reaxing music played and we did some chatting.
I think today is even more relaxing, at 10.30 I went to the town, sat at a café reading "Moby Dick" and watching odd people from Italy :)
And right now I'm at the University of Biella... He... It's compleatly empty, but I asked a woman in the reception if there was a computer I could play with for a while... And she opened a room for me and let me in... no registration - no password... just for free (last days I payed €10 for 2h :)
So, tonight me and Andrea will go out and have a "real italian pizza" (with kebab and B�arnaise sauce???) - and some "real italian ice cream"... :) And so I hope that he can drive me to some good place tomorrow so that I can get a lift up north, through France hopefully...
Yepp, so that's how it seems right now. And I hope that I now will get hope to Sweden before the 9 of August, to the wedding... :)
Posted by tubbe at 14:21
Dag 12: Biella - Geneve
Posted by tubbe at 23:59
August 02, 2003
Hitchhiker in terrible traffic accident
Last night an accident occured just northwest of Geneva, Switzerland. This accident is thought to be caused by a hitchhiker trying to get a lift at a traffic light near the highway. Nobody is reported to be injured, but great damages were made to the both vehicles.
Said by the hitchhiker, two cars came from the city center. The second car was distracted by the hitchhiker when the first car stopped, and the accident was inevitable.
The first car had two passanger and the second three, of witch one a one year old boy. Nobody, including the hitchhiker, recieved any physical injuries, and it is reported the the child did not even wake up at the time of the accident.
The hitchhiker says that he will think a second thought next time he chooses his location of hitchhiking.
Posted by tubbe at 09:00 | Comments (1)
Dag 13: Genéve - Strassbourgh
Posted by tubbe at 23:59
August 03, 2003
Dag 14: Strassbourgh - Eindhoven
Posted by tubbe at 23:59
August 05, 2003
Starting to loose faith...
Writing from Eindhoven.... Yes, that's correct, I got there... but not by hitchhiking really... Got from Strasbourgh to here by train... :(
It all really started in Italy.. Maybe I should have realised it already then...
Andrea dropped me of at a gas station by Saturday noon... After some one and a half hour I saw a swedish car stopping, so I - with a big smile on my lips - went towards the car... On the way there I saw first two people getting out - and then just after two more... NOOO.... It was a family from Tjorn (an island on the west coast of Sweden). Unfortunatley they had no space for me.
I stood there for an hour and a half more until a guy stopped. And he took me over the boarder to Franc, and under the mountain of Mont Blanc, to the town of Chamonix. There he dropped me off! And it was good, cause I had to buy some bread and water. Then I started to walk out of town to the main road.
Some 30 seconds after finishing writeing "Geneve" on an piece of paper, a car stopped... :) The guy was from Great Brittain, and he had gone to Chamonix just over the day to look for a hotel on a later (and longer) stay. So in 24 hours he got from home (I think London) to Geneva, rented a car and drove to Chamonix, ran up a montain and down again just to go back to Geneva and sleep at a hotel, and then go back the next morning..... SO COOL!!!
He took me to Geneva and dropped me in the middle of the town. Since I did not now what the town looked like, I thought that this was the best decision. Now I think it would have been better if he had taken me toward the airport instead. So, from the middle of the town I walked out toward the highways towards Lausanne and France.
On that evening, when trying to hitchhike, I suppose that I caused an accident (read more in previous entry). After this I started to look for a place to sleep, at eleven or prehapps midnight. Walking a bit I finaly found a school yard that looked deserted enough, and found there a nice bench that I thought would be excelent for me to sleep on. And so I did for some hours.
Then, early the following morning I walked back to the main road and continued my look for nice people! A young couple took me some kilometer to a better place to stand to get to France, and from there a guy took me some eight kilometers futher down the road. Some minutes passed and the color of my bare skin turned even more red, before a lady going to Bourdaux stopped and picked me up.
After this I got a ride with some different people for some short distances, and ended up in Lyon, by half past five or something. So I started to check for check for cars and trucks going up to Paris and found a truck from the Netherlands. "Tjohoo" I said to myself - but when the driver arrived, he was just going some kilometers and up back home not sooner than two weeks later :( Just my usual luck!
So I went back to the gates where you pay for driving on the freeway and held my thumb and sign up high for everybody to see. And as soon as there was a truck passing, I tried to speak to him... And all of a sudden there is a truck going to Strasbourgh that evening.
And this driver is really cool. He's some 30 yrs old, black and christian. He studied english some ten years ago in school, and hadn't been talking english to anybody for a year, but still he's really good. So we talk for a while, and then he buys be a supper (ham and Freedom Fries, cake and coffee!! :) After this we continue to a small village some 20km south of Strasbourgh. There he dropps me off cause he has to sleep and I start to walk towards the city, looking for a place to sleep. After half an hour or so I found a place in the middle of the next village, a place covered from the street by a wall. And as long as not too many people would pass it would be ok. So I put up my tent, at half past two in the morning. And I got some hours of good sleep.
But early the next morning I thought that it was best if I got up quite early so that not a lot of people would disturb me :) Said and done! I get up early to take the train to Strasbourgh. And the first thing I did there was to ask how much a train ticket to Eindhoven would cost - €70! With this in mind I went to the highway to to hithchhike. But I could not find a good place here either, the highway started just in the middle of the town, and there was too much traffic for a car to stop, so I had some breakfast and went back to the trainstation and there I bought a ticket to Luxemburgh - €20.
Arriving to Luxemburgh some hours later and I ate at McDonald's (for the second time). Really not too bad! And then I started to walk out from the city, through the city center, out towards the highways up north. On the way I met and talked to two other hitchhikers form Czech republic. They were trying to hitch up north to Scandinavia, and of course I invided them to Link&oulm;ping if they would pass through. They didn't seems to be so lucky them either. And I had the same problem as in Luxemburgh - too much traffic and no place for cars to stop. So in the afternoon I decided to get back to the train station and bought a ticket to Eindhoven for €30.... well, I was tired and would really want to get there because I had to get home on thursday... really...
Got to Eindhoven at 00.12 and met Nienke some minutes later! Had a shower and slept really good!!!
Posted by tubbe at 19:26
August 06, 2003
Take me home to the paradise city...
Yepp, heading back for Sweden tomorrow... hope to get there pretty soon....
So mother, I will be home soon.
Posted by tubbe at 11:27 | Comments (1)
"I have seen it all"
Yesterday we first went for a walk to see downtown Eindhoven and the campus, and later we went for a bike tour to see the gigantic forests and wilderness of the Netherlands :)
Later in the evening we and some friends of Nienke went to the amusement park and had some strange things to eat... :)
Today I went to a museum here sponsored and named after Philips... He's quite famous around here... but it really was a cool museum though there was no guided tour in english. But after talking some to the guy in the counter (who apparently had been working at DAF, later bought by Volvo - manufacturing Volvo 460!) he guided me in private for an hour or so :) Really great guy! Then I went to the fair and "won" a small puppy or something like that... well that's it for now..
Posted by tubbe at 18:24
August 07, 2003
Dag 17: Eindhoven - Berlin
Posted by tubbe at 23:59
August 08, 2003
Dag 18: Berlin - Lund
Posted by tubbe at 23:59
August 09, 2003
Finaly back in Sweden...
Yepp... Almost home... Got to Trelleborg by 8 pm today, and thought that I'd try to hitchhike home - a very bad idea! So at 10 pm I took a train to Malmö to try to get home to Jönköping, but the last train and bus had already left a few hours ago...
So now I'm at my brother's place and will sleep some few hours before I take the train home at 6.28 tomorrow morning :)
[I will finish this text later]
But I guess this is in the spirit of, at least the last part of the trip; yesterday morning I left Eindhoven, by first walking to a roundabout which was supposed to be a good place to hitchhike from, and so it was. Got to [somewhere] with a photographer who was to shoot something in the south of The Netherlands. He dropped me off at a gas station.
After a while I managed to ask a driver if he was going to Sweden, or Germany, and so he was... Germany. I wanted to jump off somewhere before Hannover, but he thought it was a bad idea, so I continued to [somewhere else].
After perhaps half an hour I, more or less by accident, asked a quite young guy if I could get a ride in his BMW - and he really said yes... Black Metal guy, but a very skillfull driver.... Drove from 104km outside Berlin to the center of the town in less than 55 minutes ;) WROOOM!!!!
So now I was in Berlin.... and had no idea where to go. So I tried to get in touch with Alex, so that he perhaps could ask Hagen what I should do. So after a while I got Hagen's phone number and could call him, and later to sleep at his place!! ;)
Woke by 6.45 and tried to hitch from Berlin, in a good place, but really wanted to go by train to be sure to get somewhere. Had no money though... Arrived at the trainstation by 10.05 and the train left 10.06 :)
Walked for some 4 hours in Rostock to get to the harbour, and came about 10 minutes before it was too late to the terminal, and got a ticket and went home to Sweden.... and here I am now.... stuck!
Posted by tubbe at 00:06
Home, Sweet Home
Arrived at Jönköping Central Station at 10.34. That's it...
Posted by tubbe at 13:23
Dag 19: Lund - Jönköping
Posted by tubbe at 23:59