Winter exodus
Hitch-hiking? Why (not)?
That was my (second) reply when my "hippy-leaning" friends invited me to get a lift with them all the way to Italy.
I'm too old and scruffy for that! And drivers will never pick up the whole trio of us.. You'll end up abandoning me like a dog.. not wanted anymore once the masters leave for holidays...
I admit having entertained those thoughts for more than a minute, as my twitchy eyes were regularly checking bus connections day after day...
But, since hearing that peculiar proposal, I was under a spell. Seats on night buses then started becoming scarce..
My attentive friends must have noticed the tide was turning and decided to play their last card to win my last shadow of doubt: "we are leaving on Wednesday". "erm..But..."...no snappy reply came out of my astonished mouth, when faced with this new looming decision deadline. That was a low, but effective shot: my mind was set on the much later date of Saturday!
Reminescent of my mantra of old times (when I used to be roving the world like a jackal) "flexibility is my best (and only) asset",I made it a matter of honor to live up to my founding values. The jackal never misses opportunities...whatever they are.
Only 36 hours to take a shower before departure... and still looking like a scarecrow.
An opportunity to learn a life lesson, experience something new, spend some surreal times with my funny and anti-conformist friends. Curious to see where we would end up.. since I had never hitched for more than a few dozen of kilometers at once before. Despite being in their prime youth, my travel companions were seasoned thumb-pulling masters, eager to show me their tricks on how to travel on the wasted space created by our fast-moving industrial society.
No food can rot in bins without the shadows of the righteous sniffing around for it... no cars can be left with an empty seat without facing our smiling and insistent proposals..no discussion with drivers could terminate without planting in their minds the "seeds of doubt"...
Upon setting foot out of our door we were already one hour late! 7.15am... then started to walk (already desperately, in my case) along Avenue de la Couronne. Our destination, the nearest highway junction, nowhere in sight. Mr A and miss G already in action, warming up their thumbs without too many expectations...
Then all of a sudden when walking on an insignificant road, someone stops, and (incredible coincidence!), he's really going in the right direction! We meet the first environmental engineer of the day, who revealed his double identity of "serial hitch-hiker in Uccle"... Such activity in the poshest area in town granted him even an interview on a mayor newspaper!
Having being left in a service station just before Namur, I barely have time to put my feet on the ground that my friends have already flagged down the next driver.... a silent man at the gas station who did not understand what was happening and just said "come in". So we were speeding now towards the border and meeting the second engineer of the day. As a retired engineer, I was now feeling proud of being part of such a generous bunch of professionals.
We were left at the highway exit before Arlon.. in the middle of nowhere on a fast moving lane. Time to pee and probably get ready to eat. Stranded, but still in Belgium, worst case scenario - if we can walk out the road alive - is barely a 3-hour train ride back to Brussels...
Then I turn around, Mr A had stopped a car in the middle of a dangerous turn and was in full negotiation with the driver, while Miss G was busy in directing my attention... Whoop, we were running again! Time to get on the car - squeezed between a baby seat and some bags..This time it was a lady and a non-engineer.. commuting every day across the border to Luxembourg and working with refugees. Conversation was just starting to get interesting and -voilà- here's the next service area in the middle of hostile Luxembourg.
Where hitching is outright forbidden. In virtue of my rebellious temper I don't shy off when civil disobedience actions are required, but for hitching you need to be two! The passengers... and the driver. How to convince conscientious citizens to disobey the law of their country? What rethorical tools, postures, narratives...
We split around the area, with Mr M roaming around the gas station and Miss G coming with me on the back parking. Some long minutes passed under a warm sun..only a few unfriendly-looking truck drivers passing by. Then a smart professional with a cup of coffee and a pack of belgian beers comes out of the bar and Miss G heads straight to him, while I also approach from the front slowly and avoiding any brisk movement. Basically trying to do as little damage as I could to our noble cause.
A dozen of seconds later the deal was struck - we were saved from the luxemborgese jails and speeding off towards Metz enjoying some lovely banter..with someone probably part of the startup nation, but driving us for a little way! The only unconvenience was the utter lack of service areas in that portion of highway (not enough MacDonalds in the startup nation!), so that Mr A had to pull out some effective bullets from his empathy arsenal to obtain a slight modification of our transportation contract. Our driver went a little further than planned on the highway and left us in an service area near Metz. We are so afraid to ask and receive in this society, I was thinking, that I definitely need to train on that to reach the skill level of my travel companions.
In Metz, reality started to kick in: my feet touched the ground for real for the first time and hunger was now real. Miss G and I undulged on our lunchboxes whilst Mr A was on an all-day working timetimeble. For the first time I was now attempting doing something useful, like speaking to people. Hello, Monsieur, lovely daay? are you going south? yes, sir, thank you sir..But the most useful action was certainly starting lunch..right when in the middle of it (Murphy's law), Mr A came back running to us! We were now again frantically packing the food back into our tupperwares and dashing to the next car.
Clean padded white seats! Luckily we had no more food in our grubby hands. Our host was a very distinguished agro-ecology practitioner who lectured us (in a good sense) about his innovative and applied research. After getting to the next stop (Nancy) we were still sitting for 5 good minutes glued to his seats, listening to his stories.
So far, so good...
How right were my companions, most people travel alone, hitching works!Come on? where's our next car? whoop whoop...
5 then 10, 15, 20 minutes pass... while we are slowly becoming part of the landscape, like some human size flies running around the place. One refusal after the other, reality starts kicking in.. A couple of dutch people is willing to take us but they're unflexible on the max number of passengers:2. I am ready to be sacrificed in the name of the bigger cause. Another nice guy asks me "what can I do for you?" but then it turns out he's going to switzerland... a Tesla drivers declares not to pickup hitchihikers..come on Sir, with your ecological car that would be the least you could do!
Long story (2 hours) short, when we least we expected it (as usual), Mr A waves at us declaring "wanna go to Lyon?".. we just found a medicine student driving all alone to Aix and willing to drive us the 400 km still separating us from Lyon, our final destination for the day. The bells were striking 4.30pm and we were there. Splendid.
Similar patterns the following day, with a late departure, some rocambolesque moments and some nice chilly mountain stretches... and everyone got to their final destination by sunset. I at home and my friends at their mountain house. Definitely an unusual way to get home! Highly recommended!
