A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Albania - Day 1
December 15th, 2007, by Hilko
After half a day of travel, we have arrived in Germany. A ‘convoy’ of Polish guys with three cars just agreed to take us along. There’s something unsettling about them, though; perhaps it’s because their cars are a bit too fancy, or maybe it’s because they are quite obviously talking about us - in Polish. I bet wondering how much money we’re carrying, or how much our livers would be worth on the black market. Since my mastery of the Polish language is limited to the word ‘ousta’ (meaning ‘lip’, thank you Veggie Tales), I couldn’t make much sense of it. Still, I had been craving for some more excitement, so I can’t complain.
Our journey so far has been a bit tame. After a short stay with my travel-buddy’s cousin,
We waited for about thirty minutes under a bridge near a highway, next to a traffic stop. Every time the cars lined up next to us, we waved our ‘Hengelo’ sign at them, raised our thumbs, and smiled kindly.
Thanks to my innocent, friendly smile we got a ride to Zwolle, then a ride in the direction of Hengelo, and finally two more rides to the German border.
During these short rides, we shared the fears and anticipations of a young couple that had moved from Amsterdam to a rural area, for their future kids. We learned what it was like for a very talkative and very assertive Dutch woman to marry an Iranian man, to marry into Iranian culture. I remembered again that this was why I liked hitchhiking so much; the stories. These were all a bit mundane, though.
But now that we’re in Germany, things are getting more interesting. I think the nervous gut feeling I have is a good sign of things to come. The Polish mafiosi are still chatting about us, but it doesn’t seem quite as sinister now that we’ve managed to communicate a little in broken German.
They dropped off near Osnabrück, and from there we got two more rides. I had my first ‘Albania connection’ during one of these rides. A Turkish man in a run-down car with dog-hair on the backseat heard of our destination, and promptly mentioned Enver Hoxha, Albania’s paranoid communist dictator who had the country shut tighter than any other country for forty long years. I mentioned this ‘fact’ to the man, and to my surprise he turned to me, raised his voice sternly, and gave me a lecture on the wonder that was Albania. Hoxha was no dictator! He was a great leader, Albania was a shining example of successful communism and a great effort against das Grosskapital, and did he mention Hoxha was a great leader!
I nodded in agreement. To disagree would be rude, right? At least it was fun to talk about Albania for a bit.
He dropped us off at a petrol station near the small town of Bielefeld. It was night, and it had stopped raining. We decided to call it a day, and find a place to sleep. At 11 PM in a small German town, this turned out to be a surprisingly difficult endeavor.
To be continued…