First time hitchhiking/Quarim

I was deliberating about hitchhiking a long time. It all began in 2005 as I spotted a couple of hitchhikers on a service station in Germany and talked with them. They were really nice. Since this day I was deliberating. What a nice way of travel long distances for free, but I thought I am not brave enough to do it. At least I already did it for some km from school to home in 1999. In 2007 I was ready to give it a try. I prepared very well and read everything I found in the Internet. So my first time hitchhiking on a long distance started in summer 2007. I wanted to hitchhike over 400km from Wolfenbüttel to Bonn.

I took the bus the end of the town and raised my thumb. It was exciting. Like a first date with a very nice girl. I asked myself "What will happen to me now?" and my knees were shaking a little bit. After 10 minutes a car stopped. A young guy opened the trunk which was full with closed plastic boxes. I put my backpack on these boxes. In the car we had a very nice conversation and I asked: "What do you have in all these plastic boxes?" He smiled to me and told me: "You won't believe it but they are full of baby pythons, I will go with them to a fair to sell them." I was shocked, as I am totally afraid of snakes. But he was so nice and tooked away my fear. "Nothing will happen, because they are really babies and the boxes a locked", he said. He dropped my a service station, I thanked him and waited nearly 3 hours for my next lift, I was doing some of the novice hitchhiker mistakes, standing with a sign of a town to far away and in the wrong direction. Some nice guy picked me up and drove my to another spot were it was absolutely easy to get away. A journalist picked my up and we had a wonderful conversion all the way to Bonn.

It was an exciting day, I had a nice adventure and didn't spend money for the expensive train ticket to Bonn. I was addicted.