There is not a lot of sun in Germany so when the weather starts getting better there is always something going on in the city. Beerfests, winefests… it does not really matter, they are just excuses to go out of home!

My lovely apartment and my friends stayed in Würzburg. I spent my last days in the city saying goodbye to the city and the people and just having plain fun. It has been another hard goodbye, leaving the city when I felt most comfortable. I will always remember the places, the smiles, the people, the jokes and the amazing good times I had there.

The next time I will be in the country I will be just a tourist. This is a weird feeling for me because I really think of Würzburg as my home. Thanks everybody for making it possible.

CS brunch at behiche’s place.

Couchsurfing Beach Camp - This is my favorite picture of the summer

Jumping at Berlin Wall

I only visited Berlin for a couple of days and I didn’t have time to experience everything but I like it. It’s clearly an international center, full of interesting people with initiative and ideas. I like Berlin for the same reasons I like Barcelona. In both cities there are lots of open mind people sharing a common same space.

I did the standard sightseeying. Holocaust Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Alexander Platz. I also did an alternative sightseeing tour were we visited some squats and some areas in the city that still look like they were before the fall of the wall. This alternative tour is completely worth it. The river  helps divide the new and old towns. The best part of the visit was walking a few kilometers along the Original wall.

Berlin doesn’t look like the cities in the south, in fact it does look like a completely different country. In Germany, as also happens in Spain and Italy, there is a massive difference between north and south, in social and economical levels but also in culture and lifestyle.

Another great shot at the beach camp

Free hugs event at AlexanderPlatz

Berlin is a young, cheap city, it has an fascinating (very recent!) history, an amazing public transportation system, a lot of amazing sights everybody knows because movies and a fantastic nightlife. I hope to visit this city with more time soon!

Brandenburg gate

The trip to Cologne was my first hitchhiking experience ever. My host was Barbara, a German girl able to mix flawlessly Spanish and South American slang. She speaks better Spanish than me!. In Cologne I visited the cathedral. It’s massive, it looks big from outside and it’s huge once you are inside. The cathedral was full of tourists so it was not such an amazing experience. I miss the Hindu temples in India were only locals are on the temple instead of tourists taking pictures!

In the top of the biggest cathedral in Germany (Ulm cathedral was taller!)

With Barbara, my CS host in Köln and Cataldo, the espontaneous surfer

My hitchhiking sign to Frankfurt (The original idea was Frankfurt-Strasbourg but I did Frankfurt-Köln)

Köln massive cathedral

More interesting than the overhyped cathedral was the Chocolate Museum. It has a tropical section with real cocoa trees and a very nice exposition about how cocoa was used in America as food and currency before the Spanish arrived and how cocoa is nowadays cultivated in tropical areas all over the world. The best part of the museum is the small factory where they make their own chocolate bars and chocolate candy!

Munich

I went to Munich for a visit to the Spanish consulate. I hitchhiked to Munich on a bus full of Tamil people that went to Munich for a demonstration to raise awareness about the Sri Lankan war. How random is that? I must have a strange connection with that country. It was fun to say “hello” “my name is david” and “thank you” in Tamil, this people were not used to europeans speaking their language and it was very interesting to see their reactions.

Frankfurt

I went to Frankfurt to play a scavenger hunt game on the city. It was a lot of fun because the task list forced us to move around downtown with concrete objetives: Locate the naked man, make a human chain from this statue to the other… It was nice to walk around downtown Frankfurt paying attention to the street and the people. I really want to organize a similar game in Würzburg!

Jumping in Leipzig

In Leipzig I met  Carolin and together we practiced tightrope walking on a park. It was my first experience doing this stuff and I need to say that it was a lot of fun, but I still need to practice a lot more: I could barely stay longer than 2 seconds on the rope before falling!

First time doing tightrope walking

Goth girls

First of all I needed a place to go. My objective was to reach Salzburg in France, around 300km away from Würzburg. Hitchhiking in 2009  it’s a lot easier than 20 years ago because the technology make it easy for everybody. There are lots of pages on the Internet describing tips and tricks, what to do to get lifts, how to dress and the correct spots in each city to get lifts. I spend a couple of days researching all of this documentation. I also researched the best hitchhike route which meant going to Strasbourg via Stuttgart. I even prepared at home the sign I was going to use. Here it is.

Amateur hitchhiker sign

So I went to the best spot in Würzburg, the big gas station on the A3 highway. Once there I asked a couple what was the correct direction to go to Stuttgart. I was in the incorrect side so I needed to cross the highway.  20 minutes later I reached the correct big gas station. It looked perfect, with a huge rest area with lots people and a constant flow of cars entering the station.

So I started asking the people with a big smile in my face. The people smile me back happily but all of them rejected me. It was a huge failure. No one seemed to go to Stuttgart, all the people in the station was heading to Frankfurt. Once I finished asking all the people in the rest area one guy told me he was coming from Stuttgatt so I should be asking the people on the other side of the highway.

That was the reason! I went back to the gas station at the other side of the highway and I started asking the people with renovated energies. The reaction was the same, all the people was smiling me back but all of them were going to Munich. After some minutes a girl came to me and told me she was coming from Stuttgart so I should be on the other side of the highway.

I was screwed. There was not consensus! People were coming from Stuttgart from both directions!

It was a bad spot to get a ride to Stuttgart. I decided to change the plan. In the first station everybody seemed to go to Frankfurt so I decided to go to Frankfurt instead of Stuttgart and then figure out how to go to Strasbourg from Frankfurt. I went back to the first gas station and I prepared a new sign.

Semi-pro hitchhiker sign

There are important improvements over the first sign. It was difficult for the people to read the coloured bubble letters even at 2 meters of distance so I decided to draw clear black lines in this new version.

I was convinced that finding a ride to Frankfurt was going to be easy as cake this time. I started asking the people on the station, with a huge smile in my face. Most of the people give me back a smile but all of them rejected me. Some of them told me “Frankfurt? No, I’m heading to Stuttgart” so I answered “Stuttgart is fine also” while showing the original sign. This people were screw. This is a tip, if you don’t want to take a hitchhiker don’t say you are going to other place because the hitchhiker CAN also want to go there and you will feel really stupid telling him “NO” anyway.

After 20 minutes asking people I decided to change my strategy.  I decided to be more emotional on the banner. I looked like a perfect hitchhiker and I was convinced I only needed to let the people feel sorry for me. The best way I could think was to let them think I was travelling in Europe and my home was far, far away. I drew a new sign.

Hitchhiker sign

Don’t ask my why did I draw the flower, maybe to give the impression I am a peaceful guy and I was not going to slaughter anybody. I turned around and I start people again.  The third guy I asked gave me a lift. It took 15 seconds.

I founded the key. I was a hitchhiker!

The guy was actually heading to Belgium so I told him to drop me in Cologne instead of Frankfurt . I love it, I was changing the plans on the fly. I was not going to Strasbourg after all, my destiny was guiding me to Cologne. Once we got close to Cologne the guy drop me in a Gas Station. This was a novice error. Yes, I was in Cologne, but very far from downtown. No problem, we are in 2009 and I had technology support. I used Google Mapson my cell to locate a train station at walking distance. 20 minutes later I was in Cologne, in front of the biggest German cathedral. Wohoooo!