Hitchhiking can be too much of an adventure. I don’t know how I handle it sometimes.
I got a late start from Paris and took the RER suburban train way north to Survilliers-Fosses. Are you aware of hitchhiking websites that suggest where you should stand? No? Well, wait for my website relaunch in 2017 and be impressed with the details. There is some argument about good places, which is why I checked out Porte de la Chapelle.
I thought I had a good spot to stand but I got turned around by some signs at a roundabout and when an Algerian guy gave me a ride, we were discussing soccer and the game our countries will play soon in the World Cup that I wasn’t paying attention and the short of it is that I got taken back south to Charles de Gaulle airport. I don’t mind making that mistake except that it was a tough place to get another ride. I don’t know how I got an Air France ground staff guy to take me. I thought that might be the toughest part of the day, but it was barely Top Three.

Some more slowness to creep my way up to Belgium, and by 7pm I was just south of Brussels. Already way too late to get to my friends in Holland that I boldly predicted I would arrive by 7pm, but still manageable. No less than 25 cars stopped for me in the next two hours, all of them going into Brussels, not one going farther north. That’s frustrating, but it nice to know that some people from 100 meters away can see I am a great conversationalist.

Finally someone drove me to just before Antwerp, and then in the increasing darkness I had to go into gas station hustle mode. I don’t like approaching people and asking for rides, but I will if necessary, and it can be effective if I can get them to listen to my quick spiel. Even if they can’t/don’t want to take me, most people are bemused by my presence. (“You are really an American?”) An Arabic-speaking guy (I can tell the difference between Arabic and Turkish; Turkish doesn’t have the phlegmish sounds Arabic does. Get it? Phlegmish/Flemish? I really should be charging people to view this blog) wanted to take me, but his car-mates voted him down.

I got someone to drive me up to the Netherlands border, a wary guy who had never taken a hitchhiker before, but it turned out he had once lived in the town I grew up in, and then suddenly he’s my best friend, talking my head off. Two more Arabic-speaking guys at the border gas station were thinking about taking me, but one wanted to goad me first. He motioned with his head to my backpack, “How do we know you don’t have a bomb?”
I said, “Come on! Americans dont have bombs!” He was unsurprisingly unpersuaded, yet would have taken me anyway until we checked his GPS and I saw wasn’t going far enough north for me.

Then, by midnight, after a lot of fruitless hustling, a young gay Moroccan agreed to take me. Muslims always ask about my family situation as one of their first questions, and they are always thrown by why I’m not married with children by now. Not this guy. He said he didn’t like women and made a face. Then he made a phone call to a friend to tell about me in his car. Then he drove at an average of about 160kmh, maxing out at 175kmh as he looked ready to doze off, to just before Utrecht, so close to my destination that the goal felt near, but a different highway. I was going to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse to get him to drive me out of his way to the Zeist exit, money, but he was too tired and refused.

I was left at a near-empty gas station with one only car getting gas. A Romanian guy appeared from nowhere to make small talk. He could help me, but he was waiting for friends to arrive. I’m telling you, it’s another world late at night on the roads, and it belongs to the non-natives.

Somehow, another miracle materialized and a kind man, again surprised that an American was hustling him for a ride, said he would take me, and he decided to go a little out of his way to leave me at the Zeist exit. I made it.
It was at least a 40 minute walk down a deserted road and then a long, spooky, dark country lane and at 2:22am I walked in the back door.