Was nice to have met you, Mr Tweek

Was nice to have met you, Mr Tweek. I haven't spoken Platschki though :). Any next time.

We gathered with six at the station of Liège-Bressoux. Skip (hc: skip2938) came to my place the day before and teamed up with him after work, so we could share a good meal, some hiking around, drinking a couple of beers and story telling… Next morning we hitched from Bemelen to Maastricht and attempted for half an hour to find a driver towards Liège ~ in vain. As we wouldn’t want to arrive late in Liège we hiked to the station and teamed up with my friend Matthijs (not hc yet) who had a close connection for the train. We got out at Bressoux and waited a couple of minutes before the train from Brussels would arrive with Hatim… He didn’t get out of that train though. Aga (hc: agagajownik) and Alejandro (hc: dunno) were on their way. They had come by stop from Paris the day before and stayed overnight at the place of Caroline (hc: carosima). Caroline offered to bring us all to a nearby motorway service area and so we got there… first Aga, Alejandro and Matthijs… while me and Skip were at station Bressoux we got a call from Hatim, who was going to be one hour later as he took a wrong train and had to change once. When Caroline returned some twenty minutes of that hour were left. We chatted during that time in the shade of a not that attractive station building.

Finally all together on the motorway service area, made up three teams; Aga and Matthijs as team A, me and Skip as team B and Hatim and Alejandro as team C. We started to wander around, asking rides. It took some ten requests to find a driver going towards Hannover ~ a somewhat older couple in a Mercedes mobile home and we went along with them. Team A had left by then in a completely yellow truck. After some time we also got on the road after having enjoyed a lunch. We were not going fast at about 55 to 60 miles per hour. What we had was a lot of space and good company. Skip did his first hitchhiking since 1974 and speaking Alaskan with the couple from UK made it a very pleasant experience for him. On the way we heard something on our set of walkie-talkies, apparently words from team A. Later we knew we were ahead of the others, as we exchanged some text messages. We got struck in a massive four hour traffic jam and had a forced detour around the city of Hagen, as the motorway was blocked as a truck had been burned out there.

At diner time we got out of the jam so we offered our drivers a meal at a Burger King on service area Lichtenbusch. Allan was decided to get on and they started to aim for getting to the parking next to the beach of Grünau, where we would be on our place and where they would enjoy a night at the parking in their mobile home, between the river and the beach and the woods behind. So, it took one ride from Liège to Berlin-Grünau, or 680 kilometers, arrived 2 at night, 14 hours after departure. That was not particularly fast, but we still beat team B (arriving 3 hours later; they had a fast ride for almost the whole way and enjoyed a six hours wait in a beautiful place in Sauerland region) and team C (who made slow progress and waited a couple of hours at the Garbsen service area near Hannover, until they met up there with Caroline accidentally, who was in a ride with Eurolines to Berlin). They went on by Eurolines and paid a small sum for that.

The way back the others had gone back by train, were going else or had found a ride with people from HC. Also Nadine (hc: laroca) from Brussels had found a ride at least to start going towards Dortmund and I found I was gonna hitch back on my own. Took the tram and U-bahn to Schoeneweide (which I shared with Salvatore, hc: salvo and a few other members leaving the camp) and hiked to the B96 road with the two petrol stations. Two Polish females were hitchhiking there using a sign “Frankfurt an Oder”. I suggested them to use a sign A10 only and a couple of minutes after they made that they got a ride. Didn’t hurry and got a ride in a small mobile home to rest area Michendorf, 50 km on the way. There I was looking around a bit, watching for Dutch and Belgian plates. One hitchhiker arrived and I found him a ride to Halle, a ride which wasn’t useful for me. Another hitchhiker was waiting at the service area; he had arranged a ride share online, so wasn’t talking with people. One driver going to Frankfurt am Mainz in a Peugeot 407 would take me, though he considered the way over Hannover better. Had my thoughts about that ~ the speedy ride which I imagined would compensate the longer journey. After something like 40 minutes a man asked me where I was going to: Köln? Indeed, Köln and a bit further… he was going to Vaals, just across the Dutch border, some 22 kilometers from my place. So the next 7 hours were spent in a red small van with Hans. Could pull down the chair and went to sleep for a couple of hours (missed a bit of that on the bathroom block party, beach dancing and welcoming the sun the night before). Arrived before dawn and hitched on a spot that is simply good. Got away in some 7 minutes for a 15 km ride on the national road from Vaals to Maastricht, up to Margraten, place of the town hall of my municipality. At the traffic lights in Margraten I posed my question one time and got in a car with two friendly young people ~ one good looking girl and the radio playing one of my favourite songs in the Limburgian language. I got out six kilometres later, just before Maastricht-Heer. At the spot the Nightingale was singing, as it does more often there and as I hope there will always be. I hiked the last fifteen kilometres over slightly muddy trails. The weather was much cooler than over the last days. Way back, four rides of 50, 599, 15 and 6 kilometers, time of the journey about 10 hours.

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