Changes

I could tell my sign was not a hit when I had people squinting through the windshield. I had made constructed my sign using a cereal box, white paper and clear tape. However, I think the this first sign was too small. Also, I was also a bit shy standing on the side of the road alone. I made only the vaguest attempt at eye contact. After two hours of waiting and one car headed toward the wrong town, I walked back for an hour toward to the bus stop where I first got off.

Near the bus stop, after munching on some sort of wurstwürst, I talked briefly with a guy working at the gas station. I told him I was headed to Dresden and was wondering where I could hitch a ride. He told me the area in front of the station would probably work fine. I stood there for about half an hour, before giving up and leaving for the train station.

The next morning, I got up and checked the [[Dresden]] website. This time I copied down the information word-for-word. I still had my a size-too-small sign but was still optimistic about my prospectsI overlooked this fact at the time. I got to the hitchspot at noon and waited for the next two and a half hours with no luck. At this point, I was frustrated and a bit confused on what to do next. After wandering around the center of town, feeling a bit down, I went and bought a A4 notepad and marker. Not wanting to pay for another hosteland wanting to be unreasonable, I found a random place in the woods to pitch my tent.

The time in the woods was the turning point of my so-far-failed-experiment. After passing a bunch of Verboten verboten signs and unsure exactly what I was doing, I ended up alone in the woods. Once it got dark, all my fears set in. Every sound I heard sounded like a footstep, eminent death and every change in light appeared to be flash felt like a person. There, I managed to willed myself unconscious after a few hours of paranoia. I woke up at 6 in the morning and felt like a new person. What I imagined to be threatening in pitch-black darkness, turned out to be a bunch of squirrels and birds. I also found that I would have had a choice in couches to stay in Dresden, but so it goes.

I tried the same location in Dresden again, and this time 15 minutes in and I had a ride halfway to the German/Polish border. A succession of signs led me through [[Wroclaw]], [[Katowice]] and [[Krakow]]. At the rest stops, I waited no more than 5 minutes for the next ride. Overall, the day was glorious...I was speeding down the Autobahnautobahn, talking to business men and truckers and state attorneys and couples and leftist-magazine editors.