Hitching across Germany and trains with internet

A way overdue update.

There's so much to write here that I don't even know how I'm going to do it without making everyone bored.

So since CzechSurfing....

I did the most amazing hitch-hike I've ever done. Some of the places I will mention here are not famous enough to know where they are, so please, go to Google Maps to find out!!

My total journey was Dresden to Niederselters on Wednesday. Nearly 500km. The reason why is a girl called Alexandra who I met at Klöden Camp and again at CzechSurfing in Prague. She wanted me to visit her, and I needed to get my act together and clean Stefan's apartment and get out of Dresden. Still, I had no idea if I'd be able to make it right over to the west in one day.

10:50: Begin hitch-hike from Dresden

Lift 1: Dresden to Chemnitz - 60km or so, and I was picked up by a WOMAN for the very first time (apart from two married couples. First woman on her own.)

Standing at a petrol station in Chemnitz, my passport was checked by two plain clothes policemen in an unmarked car. Of course, when they pulled over for me, I thought they were normal people who I could hitch-hike with.

Lift 2: Chemnitz to Limburg an der Lahn - this is the one I'm so stoked about, because it is around 401km in the one car, extremely lucky, knocked off most of the journey for me. And it was a woman on her own again! What is this world coming to?

Lift 3: Limburg an der Lahn to Bad Camberg - an army man took me this short distance

Lift 4: Bad Camberg to Niederselters - a small town to an even smaller town, only around 6km, but oh my gosh I was so happy to be picked up by the man who had a lisp.

17:50: arrive in Niederselters directly on Alexandra's doorstep as the world's happiest guy.

I spent three nights at Alexandra's place. Maybe it would have been more, but the day after I left she had to move to London. Go figure.

My next destination was Heidelberg, where I visited my friend Jacqueline, a fellow Lattitude volunteer who I began e-mailing around a year ago after finding out we were both going to Germany. She's from Brisbane and so is Annie, the other girl doing the placement there. I spent three nights there and can only say that Heidelberg is a beautiful city. We happened to catch an outdoor André Rieu concert.

Are you bored yet?

Tuesday afternoon, I left Jacquie and hitch-hiked north to Darmstadt, one of the only cities in the world with an element of the periodic table named after it. I stayed a couple of nights with Graham, another guy I met at Klöden Camp and CzechSurfing. He's a New Zealander, but also really cool (rare, I know). We went partying Tuesday night at a student club and last night we played poker with four more guys, I survived quite a while before finishing in 4th place, money-wise.

This morning I got up early and left Darmstadt with a train. In Frankfurt I changed to an InterCityExpress train, and that's where I'm sitting at this very moment, because the train has wireless internet. Fancy. My destination is Belgium, where I hope to visit Alice, and Jack, who is staying with her right now. Jack and I are then going to spend a few nights in Brussels, cause we felt like it. I was getting pretty tense because I'd sent out several CouchSurfing requests to people near Alice and people in Brussels and didn't have any positive responses yet, but just now, when I checked CouchSurfing in the train, I found I have places to stay in both cities!

One more piece of news: I've set a date to bring an end to this trip by booking a flight with QANTAS. Departing Frankfurt am Main on January the 14th and arriving in Melbourne on January the 16th with a stopover in Singapore. But I don't want to think about going home just yet...

Well then, that's all for now!

My gosh it's rather foggy outside...

CzechSurfingwastotallyawesome

I spent a wicked weekend in Prague.

I returned to Dresden on Thursday for a day of rest after Leipzig, Klöden Camp, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Frelsdorf, Hanover, Rostock and Berlin. I drove down to Prague in a guy's car with three more Dresden friends.

The reason?

Czech Surfing 2009 - a big CouchSurfing meeting. Like Berlin Beach Camp and Klöden Camp, except this one was in the middle of the city. There were probably 300 people there, most of them not from the Czech Republic.

After arriving at our CouchSurfing host, we spent Friday evening first drinking at a bar, then drunkenly walking around the city on a night tour, then finally going crazy at the Cross Club.

Saturday was the biggest day. I chose to go on the beer-garden-and-city tour, which was a long walk all around the beautiful city of Prague, visiting some beer gardens on the way. I met tons of new people who made the walk that much more fun.

Saturday evening was the biggest event of all - a party for which we had an entire hotel basement (which was a bar) booked out for CouchSurfers. Lots of alcohol and food was consumed, lots of music was played and lots of fun was had.

Actually I drank too much and was sick for the last bit.

I blame the price of beer. 25Kč for a 500mL glass, that's less than one euro, and about one third the price of beer in some bars here in Dresden. It meant I'd finish one beer, then buy a new one straight away. I did that maybe six or seven times and then joined the crowd dancing to a DJ before everything went downhill.

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. We had a picnic in the park followed by a FREE HUGS campaign where we gathered in the busy main square and gave out free hugs. This thing has gone world-wide now and was started by one guy in Sydney via a YouTube video.

I also gave out FREE CHOCOLATE.

Unfortunately, my ride was leaving Sunday afternoon, otherwise I would have stayed a bit longer. Maria, Xenia, Sunhild and I drove back to Dresden with Peter and the awesomeness came to a quiet end.

I really have no plans right now. I'm thinking I'll head to the very west of Germany and then onwards from there, coming back briefly for the world cup of beer, Oktoberfest.

57

My first video upload!

If you are reading this on Facebook: you won't be able to see the video below. To see it, you could a) go to the original blog at www.patrickneasey.blogspot.com or b) go to my profile where I've uploaded and posted it.

I took this video with my camera at 8:46pm, on Friday 28/08/09, standing on a highway north of Leipzig.

The scenario is described in my previous post, I just thought I'd do something different and add a video to the words!

Despite how it looks, I swear I wasn't crying.

Patrick.

P.S. In response to something I say in the video, yeah, I can now look back at this one with a grin!

I am a hitch-hiking machine.

So. I spent last week at Maria's place. It was jolly nice of her to have me. We had a pancake party for lots of CouchSurfers on Wednesday. On Thursday, I uploaded several photo albums to Facebook.

On Friday, I got out. I packed some stuff into my big backpack and small backpack, and set off, with my guitar as well, destination Klöden - a very small down in Saxony-Anhalt, where there was to be a camp held for CouchSurfers.

My method of travel was hitch-hiking. I made it to Leipzig really really easily. I then took a bus out to the Autobahn 9 and it went downhill from there. I stood for 3 hours and had no success in finding a lift. I had to turn around and hitch-hike back into Leipzig city centre, then I made it up to the minor highway north of the city and tried hitching from there for a while. But it got cold and dark and the chance of getting picked up all but disappeared.

At 9:30pm, 5.5 hours after I originally attempted to hitch-hike out of Leipzig, I gave up for the day. I was supposed to be getting drunk with fellow CouchSurfers but I ended up sleeping on the grass under a tree, with my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, just like I'd done once before in Munich.

On Saturday morning I had more luck. Using 3 different drivers, I made it from Leipzig through Wittenberg to the small town of Klöden and met up with the others, including Maria, who'd left with her boyfriend a few hours after I left and managed to arrive on the same day.

The camp was great fun. We went swimming in the lake, played volleyball, made ratatouille and baked pizza, visited the church tower, watched a fire show, and the rest of the time was spent getting drunk and having fun. I met people from Slovenia, Latvia, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Lithuania, Netherlands, Italy, England, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany. 

It came to an end for me yesterday (Monday) with views ahead to visitng friends in Uelzen once again. This plan changed to Hamburg when I found nobody was available for the day/evening in Uelzen. I hitch-hiked away from the Klöden camp, over the Autobahn on the minor highway all the way to Magdeburg, capital city of Saxony-Anhalt. When I got to the train station, my plans still weren't sure because I couldn't find a bed in Hamburg either.

With neither Uelzen or Hamburg to head to, it seemed I was about to spend yet another night in some random grassy area. I hung around being a homeless person in the station until sometime after 1, when I got on a bus and just rode until I saw a suitable place out the window. It ended up being an area in front of an abandoned broken apartment building, shielded from the street by bushes. I slept quite well, on the plus-side.

This morning (Tuesday) I finally found a couple of friends and a bed in Hamburg so I ditched hitch-hiking for the moment and took a train up there. I first spent a few hours with Larissa, a girl who came to Friends' School in the first half of 2007. We got some awesome ice-creams and falafel and basically walked and talked about everything we'd done in the time between then and now.

Larissa then had to head to work, and I met up with another friend called Nele, who I met at the Berlin Beach Camp earlier this year. She was about the greatest thing that had happened to me in the past few days. I was able to go with her to her apartment where I could finally have a rest from carrying all my stuff, and better still, she offered me a place to stay for the night. This is where I'm writing from - Nele's nice cosy room with nice cosy internet.

Today was much much more enjoyable than yesterday, although hitch-hiking is genuinely quite fun when you haven't been waiting for 3 hours already. I enjoy making eye-contact with each driver, attitude cheerful, hopes high. Some drivers give you a kind of expression and gesture that says "sorry, I'd take you, but I'm not going where you're going" or "sorry, but look, I've already got 4 passengers and a bootload of stuff". Some of them stare straight ahead, pretending you're not there, and rather than losing hope, I find it kind of amusing. It's really a nice break from the regular rush of life and that's aside from the obvious reason you do it - free transport.

I hope to see you all soon,

Patrick