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'''Préface''': I wrote it to be read by non-hitch-hikers too. You might find some superfluous explications.

My name is Julien; I'm 27 years old; I come from Reunion Island, in the Indian Ocean; I'm of French nationality; I live in Hamburg, Germany and I started hitch-hiking to Paris from Poland on the 4th of August 2008.

There is no need to explain here why I'm from the Indian Ocean, living in Germany with a French passport. But I can tell you that I was in Poland (city of Kostrzyn, right at the German border) for a three days long rock festival that saw a 200 000 people attendance. Three days living between a tent and a stage, with a very fluctuating weather that left me and most of my stuff covered with a thick crust of dust; far away from the nearest shower.

Anyway, back to the road novel. I had so many dirty things that needed to be washed, including my own body, that I stayed two days in Berlin, at a friend's place. Anyway, I had a lot of friends to pay a visit too so I was quite busy there. I think I left with more sleep lack than after the festival.

Going out of a big city takes a bit more than a map. It takes the advices of someone else that have been hitch-hiking out of the city every few days in the past five years. Such a person certainly exists, but I don't know him/her, so the next best thing is called "hitchwiki.org". It's a wiki web page where anyone can go and write about some good spots to go from A to B and that's where I found out how to get out of Berlin in the direction of Hamburg. I wrote down the instructions on my back-pocket-notebook (definitely one of my most precious items) and said goodbye to my friends.

I had a problem: For the 888 project, I had decided that Hamburg would be a stopover city for those coming from Scandinavia. I had organized a little gathering in a local pub, invited the Hamburg people to meet them and set the rally time at 9pm. I got picked up in Berlin at twenty to nine. And it's a 3h drive. The fault was mine, I had not planned enough margins and there was no way I would have been on time. When I arrived at midnight, I went straight home and started sleeping before my head hit the pillow.

Utrecht was the last stopover for anyone coming from anywhere north-east of Paris. There was also a little meeting organized there and I really wanted to get there before 10pm. Last time I had gone there hitch-hiking it had taken me eleven hours. But I had so much stuff to do that I left home at 12. Tight margins again!

The girl I had brought with me (and that goes by the interesting name of "Selma") found the atmosphere to her taste and hang around for a while. The contrary would have surprised me. There is nothing more cheerful than a traveling crowd of travelers. I had no idea where I was going to spend the night but there was some interested local people so I was figuring that one of them would offer me hospitality. I ended up going with Robin to his home in Amsterdam by train, from where we would leave together the next morning.

Robin was one of the most active organizers of the event. We got home at 1:30 but went to bed only at 3:30 after doing some organization related work. Robin is also very active on various hospitality networks and there was a couple of USers already asleep in the attic, one Canadian guy and one German still awake, the German completely stoned.

From the moment the TV crew left till we took off: 40 min.

I can't remember how it started but we were singing songs most of the way. Dutch, French and Creol (Reunion Island language) songs. Possibly because the radio was broken. A short but very nice ride.

We were hungry by then but, as usual, I was a bit stressed to miss the one perfect ride if we took a break so I started hitch-hiking again straight. Robin started taking pictures.

It was a long but quick ride. Just a small break for food. The guy happened to be working in the same building block Robin was working in. They'll probably meet again often for coffee.

Their destination was "Pont de l'Alma" so they dropped us in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was 5:20pm, 7h20 after the departure of the TV crew, no more than 8h from home. Great score.

I thought we would be the first to arrive. Heck! There was already a crowd of around 30 people sitting on the Champs de Mars, half of them playing Ultimate Frisbee. There was nobody I knew from previous travels and travelers-gatherings. I dropped the bag and jumped on the field to join the game.

When the lights started dimming, the alcohol was already flowing. It is my personal opinion that unless we recalibrate strongly the social philosophy of such events, we'll have to choose between stopping to attend or die young from liver disease. I don't have what it takes to go against the social pressure and I doubt many have. How about we make the next one drug-free?

"Clean everything, pull down the tents, and if we see you again, you all get fined". I translated to English, folded my stuff, grabbed a plastic bag and started to pick up the trash.

"This is unacceptable! You're not going to clean everything on your own! Why are they not helping you! If you clean one minute more, I'm fining everyone! Tell them that." Hmm, they do have some sense of justice after all...

Once the tents were down we could go back to sleep; it might actually have saved all of us some hours of sleep if I had decided to have the tents pulled down before going to bed, another blink to my anti-authority readers.

It's a hospitality network that started around the idea of sharing what we have and learning about other cultures but turns out to be a great business venture. As usual, the end-user have little hints about what is behind the nice looking webpage so we heard the testimonial of former volunteers.