Germany to Morocco Sept. 08

I contemplated our VW. It was a sweety. Including reverse it came with five whole gears, a stylish tape deck, and a painfully apparent lack of power steering. Normally I am not one to complain. Amenities are just that. Little extras. But I had to confess that this was not the way I envisioned traveling on the German Autobahn. The car would have made me slightly apprehensive in most situations, but traveling in a vehicle that could hardly hit 60 MPH on a highway notorious for its lack of speed limits; well that gave me the fear.

Tine (German girl who is the best travel partner on the planet) and I were traveling south from Lunenburg ( a college town that is a suburb of Hamburg) to Frankfurt where we had plane tickets to the Moroccan city Fez. We had managed to score the VW of question from one of her flat mates and another friend had volunteered to drive us to the rest stop where we could hitch the rest of the way.

From our haven in the right lane of traffic, the car shook like a small boat in choppy water every time another vehicle catapulted past us moving at Mach 3. After my initial anxiety the drive was almost disappointingly easy. It wasn't long before I found myself in a battle between manners and jet lag dozing off in the front seat.

Once at the rest stop Tine went to work politicking with people in the parking lot trying to arrange a ride while I sketched out the words of our final destination on a piece of card board. It wasn't long before I found myself in the back seat of BMW watching the speedometer climb and dilapidated VWs in the right lane of traffic rocking back and fourth from our jet stream. This was the Autobahn I imagined. When our speed maxed out at 210 KPH I decided it was for the best that I couldn't figure out how many miles per hour that worked out to. Our driver, a handsome Acme Brand human, muttered "Eesh normal en Germany" from the front seat.

We never had to wait more than an hour for a ride. On two occasions we were offered seats before we even had the chance to ask. One woman who drove us worked in finance and was into role playing games. On one occasion things went sour and the game turned into a confused battle with the police who, as it turned out, were actually police and not part of the game. Another woman was a former student in the states. She had done all sorts of good hearted volunteer work in Nepal and did not seem too interested in much besides doing well by the planet. I was most surprised by the business men in fine European automobiles who were willing to give scruffy twenty something year olds rides. They did not even blink at the prospect.

Each ride and experience distanced the horror stories of hitch hiking, the warnings against it from family members, and the stereotypes of people who pick up strangers. Some people who were headed in the wrong direction would pause for a conversation, just relieved from a break in the monotony of the road.

Our final ride was from a rest stop just a matter of a few kilometers from our final destination. The highway split, one direction to Mainz, the other to Frankfurt. The sun had all ready gone down and the process was getting a bit arduous. It had all ready been a few hours but losing a sense of humor was not an option. Tine had gotten all of our rides and I was sick of using the language barrier as an excuse for being so useless. I hung onto my sign but started to test the international language of yelling and being friendly.

A couple that looked to be in their seventies walked by and started speaking to me in German. I smiled and explained in English that while I had no idea what he was saying, I still appreciated the good energy. His switch to English was seamless and his accent gave away that not only was he was a native speaker but also American.

The couple offered us a ride to the air port where we could easily pick up a train into the city and hoof it to Tine's old apartment. Grateful for the ride we took them up on it and found our selves in the back of a mini van listening to their story.

The man had gone to Germany on business in 1971. While he was there he shyly asked the woman working at his hotel out on a date. His story was one about stumbling through accents and languages trying to communicate subtleties that were often lost in translation. As it turned out, he never left Germany. It was a story one had to experience themselves to truly appreciate.

In a blurt that probably would have been best left in my head I let everyone in the van know the entire arrangement sounded extremely dangerous to me. They were all polite enough to ignore my comment.

Less than an hour later we were on off of a train and in the city and at Tine's old flat, recharging for the next day's flight to Fez.