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...
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