It is a very high-risk, all-in move to try and hitchhike to an airport with a non-refundable flight ticket, but I have done it quite a few times before, and my hubris/moxie/chutzpah knows no bounds in these matters. I successfully hitched to Weeze airport in uber-rural Germany again today, but I couldn’t have cut it any closer nor been luckier.
A friend left me at a highway gas station just south of Arnhem, but the Dutch don’t patronize their highway rest areas like the Germans do, and traffic was predictably light. I really should have gone a different route. It was suicide to negotiate two highway changes and to hitch through backwater roads on a Sunday.
Two old Armenians(!) listening to loud techno music(!) drove me about 70km to Venray, only 30km or so away from Weeze. They were the first to save me. Next was a priest(!) driving a PT Cruiser(!!!) listening to chamber music. Third was a German guy who drove me to the Weeze turnoff where I discovered I was just about out of time but a pedestrian told me I was only 2 or 3 km away. I might strangle him next time we cross paths. It was at least 10km, but I started walking anyway. I was getting in a panic, which isn’t a good look conducive to getting rides.
Just as my luck was running out and I was faced with a long hitch to Budapest, missing tonight’s Brazil/Ivory Coast match, a man stopped for me, drove several km out of his way and shuttled me straight to the airport. I don’t know his name or anything about him, but he really saved me. My gift of a postcard of Yosemite Park was so inadequate to express my gratitude, I felt bad giving it.
No one was in line at the Wizzair check-in desk, just two agents chatting, and when they saw me running through the airport to them they sighed in perturbation (is that a word?) at having to deal with me so close to the gate closing time. I really had only seconds to spare.
When I got dropped off by the Armenians, several policemen on motorcycles aggressively stopped traffic and told everyone to wait five minutes for this bike race to pass.
The girl working at tourist information in Budapest’s ancient terminal one, I knew I was back in Hungary when I saw her. I just can’t imagine many other countries where such a girl in such clothes would be working as the face of tourism. That’s all I’m going to say. I have to go back to the airport Tuesday to pick my friend up. Maybe I can finagle a photo.
