#and she drove like 30 minutes in the wrong direction and wouldnt listen to me and tried to blame it on me

[lavender---sunshine]

i am so deep in my feelings right now, i both sad and mad enough that i cannot sleep

[thesmite-blog1]

Swingers Club

I walked down the Tischbeinstrasse after waking up all my flatmates, who after a long night and an early and rough awakening, found it hard to show emotions, not to blame. I decided to go meet Cualè directly at his place, but on the phone he claimed he was somewhere else. Still we said we would meet there, so I walked slowly over the snow, proud of my brand new second hand 2 euro boots, that later happened to be pretty uncomfortable and not so warm as I thought. After a quick meal and some ridiculous planning, we decided to look for cars at the cross by Papierfabrik, in Kaufungen. We tried a couple of spots not long before we started losing our hope way to soon. But its always like that, I thought, specially when youre not that experienced with this hitchiking thing. Our first car was a group of three nice ladies, who thought they could find us a better place to do it, but it turned out they were wrong. We jumped in the car with our bags which are almost as big as us, and packed ourselves like sardines to a point where I personally could only see my own bag. A girl on my left being sandwiched against the door said her name was Vanessa. The other two in the front also said their names but the sound couldn't pass through my backpack. Six minutes later they dropped us out in a gas station away from the highway, we thanked them and almost immediately looked for the train that took us to Papierfabrik, once again. We occupied our little strategic hitchhiking position once more, and after an hour aproximately a car called us from far away, opening his automatic doors as an invitation to jump in. His name is Woitek, a polish guy who lives in Germany with his family. He showed himself incredibly friendly, offering to drive us to a much better better place by the highway. After thanking him for his kindness we found a new carboard box where we wrote "FRANKFURT". Walking around the gas station bored of waiting I found a yellow ball which I kicked in Cualès direction. I didnt even get him, but he turned around confused holding a package of 1 kg of musli. We started munching musli, placing our Frankfurt sign on the floor, and after a couple of minutes Tobias, a nice family guy from Mannheim, aproached us and said he could drive us even further than Frankfurt to a gas station where we could reach the A-5 easily. Tobias only warned us that he loved listening to metal in the car. We couldnt be happier. Tobias told us he has a nice family with two kids (a young youtuber and a younger painter), a succesful scale construction business and a passion for ac/dc and grindcore. We saw a beautiful sunset from his car as we arrived in Mannheim, where he drove us to his business/work place, and showed us a collection of vintage scales of his own. He parked his work car and moved us to a smaller private car with which he took us to a gas station not far from Mannheim. We felt sad to leave his car, apart from the warmth and the metal, because he was a great person and a better talk. We waited at the gas station for about 40 minutes, 10 of which I spent watching out for my phone that was connected to a power plug inside the store, and hidden between 2 Little Ponies and under a DIY bracelet set. Minutes later I aproached a customer named Jean, a young German guy who was friendly as the first sun of spring in Kassel. He claimed he could take us anywhere on his way to Tübingen where aparently he was being expected by his dad. His car (also a work car) though small held me and Cualè plus our 2 bags and a fancy bar chair inside. Jean was supposed to transport that chair and its twin partner, but decided to leave one at the station just to fit us inside. Faith in humanity restored. A great conversation we had, so much so that we missed the spot where we had planned to bail out, but still got driven to a big stop station by the highway, where after a cigarette he drove away. Jean even gave us 4 small bottles of mineral water that later saved our thirst. As a scottish friend would say, what a nice cunt. Some minutes after that I realised I had left my small hand bag in his car, where my sketchbook, my camera, all my drawing pens and my phone charger were. As a scottish friend would say, what a stupid cunt. Luckily we had just exchanged contacts over facebook. I wrote him already and he said he will send me the bag. Gotta love this guy. We aproached to the gas station with yet another carboard sign that read "STRASSbourg". I aproached as much people as possible but it wouldnt work. We tried in intervals of 30 minutes, until the -6 degrees made us stay for the night in the cafeteria, where we could sit and stay, but not sleep, enterprise policy, I guess. We started sketching portraits of each other, playing ukelele and observing a man with a serious addiction to fruit machines, but slowly our eyes started to close on their own. We slept 10, 20, 30, 5 minutes, the whole time nervous because it was forbidden, sleeping on a seat with people passing by and our bags unwatched. We did it from 00:30 to 6 in the morning, it wasnt pleasant at all. We fed ourselves with the musli all night and part of the morning, until Dee, a lovely girl from Louisiana accepted to drive us to Karlsruhe. We had a great talk in the car, where after a night of freezing, we felt like at home. Dee seemed to be new in germany where she is visiting some friends and learning german. It was a wonderful way to wake up. At around 8:30 we reached karlsruhe, and Dee drove us all the way into the city to the park lot of a Lidl. We jumped out and thanked her endlessly for her hospitality and huge heart. We decided to make a strategic stop in Lidl to buy some decent food and maybe a fucking charger for my phone, where we pretty much planned every single step thanks to the GPS. We found the food but not the charger, so after eating out on the street as the sun took place up in the blue sky, we walked looking for a Media Markt that a grandpa recommended me. With little sleep behind us, walking around with huge bags became lastrous but we managed to find the place, where for only 14,99 I adquired a brand new charger. I charged the phone up to 15 percent and then we left following Google's indications, looking for the exit of Karlsruhe that took us around 40 minutes of exhausting walk, finally arriving to a spot where we didnt expect at all to stop a car, since we just threw our bags and placed the sign that read "STRASboug A-5" on the floor, just to have a rest and smoke a fag. After 4-5 minutes a car parked right in front of us on the sidewalk. A young guy named Nils came out to take us up to the highway exit in the A-5 where we could find a lift to Strasbourg. He fit the kid's seat along with our bags in the trunk, before driving us away. The car was cozy and warm and so was Nils. Not cozy, but damn was he warm. He comes from Karlsruhe, where he met his peruvian wife. We had a nice conversation about languages, and australian points of interest. Nils showed himself close and very friendly, almost familiar, making our day. When we reached our destination, he jumped out and gave us his business card wirh his contact information, wishing us a great trip and giving us a warming honest hug. He had hitchhiked before, he knew the struggle. Thats why he saw our sign and drove around to pick us up. He also showed interest in a documentation of our trip, to which I gave him the adress of this blog. If you're reading this Nils, we love you, youre great. You too Jean! We went for a piss and unfolded our "STRASbourg A-5" sign, and started walking a bit backwards willing to give cars a better chance to stop. I asked Cualè why he had wrote bourg in small letters and he claimed drivers would find it interesting. I laughed and said that the location would be tricky. No joke, 3 seconds later I looked back and a big truck had stopped about 40 meters away from us. I doubted it was for us but it was. We runned for our bags and jumped in, where Edic was looking at us with a rather cute psychopatic look. He couldnt speak much german, but a bit of a very funny english with an interesting accent. I sat in the back and after getting lost and translation a couple of times, decided to let him us drive through Strasbourg up to Nancy, where we can probably hitchhike better to lyon. And here I am, still writing, still in Edic's truck. He just said theres 10 km left so I'd better charge my phone with my new cable. Hope to write again soon. Sorry for the mistakes but writing on the road ain't easy!