So yesterday I experienced something both formative and exciting—I hitchhiked from Munich to Nuremberg, my first taste of what I hope to become a regular mode of transportation! After wanting to try out hitchhiking for quite some time now coupled the encouragement and inspiration from one of my best friends, I finally got down to it. I chose a short distance for my first attempt (100 miles/160km), so that I wouldn’t have too long to go in case I encountered unforeseen problems.
The adventure went quite well, much better than I expected. To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to work, so that any success I might receive would have been fantastic in my eyes. And indeed, that is the perspective of the hitchhiker: laidback and humble demeanor, being grateful for any help received. Because that’s exactly what hitchhiking is: getting help from strangers. There’s no guarantee you will get any (not immediately, at any rate), and you can’t be picky when you do. It humbles you greatly, since traveling in this fashion is completely out of your hands; you have zero control over whether any car will stop for you.
So with that in mind, I set off to a spot highly suitable to hitchhiking, which I had previously found through online research. I used hitchwiki.org to search for potential pickup spots, and hitchbase.com to see which ones were the most effective. And indeed my chosen spot was highly effective: it was a long on-ramp for the A9, the highway that connects Munich and Nuremberg, with a shoulder as wide as the lane next to it, perfect for cars to stop in. At this spot, the road went straight for 100m, giving cars optimal visibility and time enough to decide whether to stop or not. The weather, despite the cold, was also as good as I could have hoped for during the dead of winter, the sun shining brightly in a clear blue sky warming my freezing body.
I had made a sign marked ‘NÜRNBERG’ for the occasion. Upon arrival to the pickup spot, I checked out where would be best to stand (luckily there was a footbridge that passed over the on-ramp that made this task perfectly easy), and stuck out my thumb. Traffic was moderate, with about 10-15 cars passing every minute. I waited for several minutes, my optimism never flagging, slightly smiling and hoping it would work. Honestly, it felt rather surreal, having only seen hitchhiking in the movies and I didn’t entirely believe that people would recognize my thumb as the hitchhiking symbol. It was one of those moments, which we’ve all experienced, in which we doubt even the most apparent and certain of facts. So I tried meditating for a little bit, not focusing on what I was doing or whether or not a car would stop, but just allowing whatever was going to happen to happen, letting the noise of the traffic couple with the warm rays of the sun wash over my being. This led me to ignore the truck that had stopped 50m or so beyond where I was standing (presumably to pick me up) until he started pull away after waiting for a bit for me. Though I was a bit frustrated for not being observant enough to look behind me every once and a while, it taught me a good lesson to not do it again. After a brief 25 minutes total, my hands and feet quite cold, a car finally stopped.
My first driver was a 25-year-old student, on his way back home from a night of partying in Munich. He wasn’t sure whether I wanted to get in or not, since he was driving 40km, only a quarter of the way to Nuremberg. But since my extremities were getting numb I jumped in, deciding that warming up and finding a ride later (in a potentially worse spot than where I was standing) was preferable to continuing to wait in the cold. We had an awesome chat, and he dropped me off just before the on-ramp to the A9 at a park-n-ride. It was near a tiny town in the Bavarian countryside, with much less traffic (2-3 cars a minute), but literally after two minutes of waiting, another driver stopped for me.
This one was a 50-year-old man on his way to pay his mother a visit some 30km away. He told me that though he wasn’t going far at all, he picked me up so that he could drop me off at the next rest stop, where he figured I’d have a better chance of finding a ride to Nuremberg. I couldn’t believe his generosity! After another amazing chat, (including a little explanation that the area we were driving through produced the most hops in the world, and him point out how they are grown) we stopped in the rest-stop store and continued our chat over a quick coffee, until he was on his way.
At this point, I couldn’t believe the quick luck I had been having, but my luck was about to slow down—dramatically so. To scout for a good spot, I quickly walked around the rest stop and decided to position myself just before the on-ramp, since there were many drives among the parking lots which all converged just before the highway. I walked into the woods to briefly relieve myself and returned to the road flaunting my sign and my thumb. I waited for quite some time (about twenty minutes) before getting too cold, so I walked back to the store to warm up for a couple of minutes. I had noticed that most of the cars leaving the rest stop were driven either by families with young children or foreigners (heaps of Dutch people for some reason) on their way back home from a ski-trip, the backseat heavily laden with equipment—people either with a good reason not to pick up a stranger or without enough space for one. Trying what I considered the best strategy for finding a ride, I looked for lone drivers at the gas pumps, and asked them whether they were going to Nuremberg. Failing at that, I returned to the on-ramp, asking the truck drivers on the way whether they’d take me. I had a few conversations in broken German and English with a few Eastern European truckers, and then waited some more with my thumb extended at the on-ramp. As cars continued to rush by, I observed the various reactions drivers had to my presence: if they didn’t ignore me completely, they either looked in astonishment or curiosity or shrugged at me as if to say ‘I’d love to, but sorry, buddy.’ What the hell those people who shrugged at me were trying to convey, I’ll never really understand. So I waited.
Just as my optimism was beginning to falter and the sun getting ever lower in the sky, a red car that appeared to be approaching too fast to bother stopping came to a halt just past where I was standing. He was driving past Nuremberg, but not into the city itself, and so with my hopes renewed, I hopped in. He was a 60-something auto mechanic, who appeared to maintain the accoutrements of a free-wheeling hippy. With rounded Lennon sunglasses and his well-grayed hair pulled back into a short pony tail, we puttered along the highway in his old car. He explained to me that he drove a car that was 22 years old because back then cars weren’t made with complex computers, making them much, much easier to repair. Along the way, he was feeling especially generous, and ended up driving into the city itself, dropping me off one bus stop away from the main train station.
All told, it took me just over three and a half hours to make the 100 mile distance. Though I could have made the distance in just under two hours for only 5€ had I taken the regional train, I didn’t hitchhike to save money. It was for the experience—to not only prove to myself that I could do it, but also to work out the kinks for when I make longer trips. I also was eager for the social interaction along the way, which is much harder to get when taking the train. I shared some cool stories and learned some interesting facts about German culture.
The most surprising observation I learned from my drivers was something they all shared with me: that they have seen far fewer hitchhikers in Germany as compared with only ten years ago. Although hitchhiking is fully legal in Germany—not to mention it’s the best place in Europe to do it, what with its excellent highway system and central location on the continent—the popularity of hitchhiking has declined. I’m really interested to figure out possible causes of this: perhaps the advent of cheap online alternatives to the trains, such as mitfahrgelegenheit.de, a ride share site, or more fear-mongering news than before? The general make-up of people and their outlook on the world can’t possibly have changed that much since then, so what’s different?
Despite this change, I was pleased to find that hitchhiking can still be done. I’ll continue to solve this riddle throughout the remainder of my stay in Europe (and once I return to the States), as I plan to hitchhike as my default mode of transport, whenever I have time enough to do so. My next journey will be from Munich to Cologne on Wednesday, a considerably farther distance (580km or 360miles), but a challenge I eagerly await. The logistics involved are much more complex, but I’ll prepare a bit more for the adventure by buying a road map of Germany tomorrow and doing heaps more research. I’ll write up a post later in the week to tell about how successful my journey was! Wish me luck!
