« Dag 14: Strassbourgh - Eindhoven | Main | Take me home to the paradise city... »

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 August 5, 2003 07:26 PM