A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Albania - Day 2
February 16th, 2008, by Hilko
One of the most interesting things about hitchhiking is the different mindset you have as soon as you are on the road. An example of this is sleep. This is what happened…
Yesterday, we were dropped off in a small town in Germany. We soon discovered that there were no youth hostels here, and that at this hour most people were either asleep, or mortally afraid of two strange guys knocking at their door!
We went to a local church, where someone took pity on us and brought us to a youth correctional facility. Once there, after a long conversation in broken German with the caretaker, we were told that they couldn’t allow visitors to sleep on the premise. Them’s the rules. Befehl ist befehl. We did get some pity bananas.
We decided to give up looking, and returned to a half-finished building that we had noticed when we scouted the area. One of the doors was open, and we settled down on a dusty, concrete floor, next building materials and old pieces of newspaper.
We didn’t want the neighbours to wake the police, so we tried to make as little light and noise as possible. This was a bit difficult. Imagine being quiet while unpacking your backpack, taking out contacts, making sure you don’t settle in some sticky substance - and all this in the dark!
We spent the first hour lying awake, ready to scramble every time the small room was illuminated by the headlights of a car, or when one stopped nearby. It was a miracle that our “shhh. Don’t turn in your sleeping back so quickly,” and “get your knee out of my back,” didn’t give us away. I discovered that sleeping on concrete with nothing but a sleeping back is a painful endeavor. Buying a bedroll became item number one on my ‘to-do’ list, bumping ‘get a Whopper menu’ and ‘learn proper German’ to second and third place, respectively.
The next morning we got up early to avoid potential workers, and returned to the tank station nearby. A guy in a weird giraffe-car brought us to Kassel, where we were picked up by a truck-driver. This guy conformed to every stereotype I had about German truck drivers, with the exception of a stack of really raunchy porn. I saw none, which was a bit relieving, considering that there were large amounts of used tissues scattered around the cabin.
While our driver ate ‘currywurst’, and smoked vanilla-flavored ‘Moods’ cigars, we took turns sleeping. When we had to wait for two hours at an industrial area near Funda for the truck to load new cargo, we went to a dingy wooden diner right in between the shiny office-buildings and storage areas. The food was good, but when the truck driver came in for some food I was afraid the whole structure would collapse under his weight. Still, this was a lot nicer than the McDonald’s one usually finds in industrial areas in Holland.
Next, a young mother took us to a large tank station in the general direction of Munich. There, we were picked up by one of the most interesting persons I’ve ever come across…