55 hours, 5 countries and a lot of money

With midterms finally over, it was time to party to mark the start of fall break and a week of what we hoped would be fun and relaxing. Fun, yes. Relaxing, far from it. My unitmate, Maurits, and I had decided to join the university hitchhiking trip to Zaragoza, Spain. We aimed to arrive before the dinner on Monday at 8:30pm, it was only 1500km, how hard could it be? We had our route all planned out, Antwerp, to Gent, to Paris, to Bordeaux, and into Spain – turns out hitchhiking is not easily planned as it all depends on luck, which more often than not was not on our side.

Our eventual route

Our first lift was off a lovely medical student from Utrecht University who took us to a gas station just outside Venlo, completely in the opposite direction to what we planned but at least we were getting somewhere! We waited at that gas station for probably about 3 hours for another lift who took us in the direction of Maastricht but as they were heading to Germany they couldn’t take us all the way – bless them though they moved all their luggage around in their car to fit us in though. It definitely would have been easier to hitchhike East than South I think. The gas station we were dropped at though was fairly quiet but eventually we managed to persuade one man to take us to the next gas station, a grand total of a 7 minute drive – but this was great because this gas station had loads of truckers and within 15 minutes we were on our way to France via Luxembourg!

Anywhere South of the Netherlands please

Around 6 hours (2am) and 2 movies later we safely arrived in Metz, France – which in itself is a miracle as half the journey I am convinced he didn’t have either of his hands on the steering wheel and was watching films. As we arrived in the middle of the night we resigned ourselves to not getting a lift until morning, fortunately we were allowed to sleep (or attempt to) in the closed gas station restaurant. After about a 4 hour wait in the cold the next morning a British couple gave us a lift to Dijon – all the way through the beautiful French countryside to avoid toll roads. Turns out they had come from Amsterdam – if only they had seen us when they were leaving on the Saturday…

Sunday was actually going pretty seamlessly with lifts after that wait – only about 30 minutes in Dijon to get to Lyon with some boy racers, 15 minutes wait to get to Montelimar with a French couple who spoke no English, and then it all started to go wrong. We managed to persuade a couple to give us a lift from Montelimar to Montpellier which was ideal, we could definitely make it to Spain by that evening since we would arrive in Montpellier at around 6:30/7. We didn’t. After agreeing to drop us at a gas station on the highway, they instead decided to drop us at a roundabout at a highway junction where we had almost no way of getting back onto the highway bar walking down the side of it to the next gas station (around 10k away) which looked terrifying especially in the dark. So we waited with our sign out asking for us to be taken to the next service station – only one couple picked us up who ended up having an argument in French in the front of the car and stopping the car in the middle of the road, turns out the man just wanted the driver to kick us out the car in the middle of the road but she was refusing. Determined to continue hitchhiking we called a cab to get us back onto the highway, but at the cost of €120 it was definitely not worth it, all the closest gas stations off the highway were also closed, so I made the decision to go to the train station and get the next train that would take us towards Spain. And thus, we were on our way to Perpignan with me texting my Dad asking him to find us the closest hostel to the train station – worst hitchhikers ever.

Perpignan however is really lovely, so I’d recommend a visit.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and dreading another day of hitchhiking, but like the martyrs we are we persevered against our better judgement. Our first ride took us onto the highway crammed into the back of a car with a sleeping toddler, leaving us at a peage/toll station. Apparently this is a good spot for hitchhiking, our experiences would argue otherwise, but eventually we were picked up due to our “lovely faces” and the fact that we probably looked about 16. In all honesty though, I would rather they had just left us as our next (and final) ride took us only to the next highway exit near a toll station and abandoned us with little warning. Queue us walking alongside the side of a highway with no layby and having to run across highway lanes – absolutely terrifying. Fortunately there was a parking spot on the otherside of the peage, where we waited and waited and waited to no avail only laughs from passers-by. Safe to say I did not deal well with this and sobbed for about an hour and a half. We did secretly hope my emotional distress would improve our chances, it did not – not even when we asked for help from the police but some ladies who worked at the toll station took pity on us and told us where to go to get a bus back to Perpignan where we had decided we would get the train.

The Pyrenees

Well that bus journey was quite the adventure as there was a gang fight on the bus with people armed with screwdrivers – very Orange is the New Black. No one was injured but it was all very exciting and made for a fantastic story when we arrived in Zaragoza.

3 trains and €82 later we arrived in Zaragoza. €70 of which went on the one highspeed train from Girona to Zaragoza which didn’t even have WiFi or power sockets – east coast does better than that!

At least we managed to make an entrance though, bursting in an hour late to dinner to rounds of applause – we had arrived and I could not have been happier.

However much we might have hated hitchhiking at times, when it was good it was very very good and when it was bad it was horrid. The good times, the lovely people and the time spent in Zaragoza definitely made up for all the bad – I would do it again but don’t ask me for at least a few months and definitely do not ask me to return to the South of France ever.