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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.
==Kostrzin Kostrzyn - Berlin / the basics of hitch-hiking==
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 KostrzinKostrzyn, 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.
But the reason why I was heading to Paris hitch-hiking it makes sense to present to you: A small group of enthusiast travelers had decided to organize the first European Hitch-hiking Week. Or was it the first "International ..." I'm not sure, and I suspect that the organizers don't know for sure as well, and actually don't care. The aim was to give one location and one time for a rally, and broadcast it to all the hitch-hikers of the world. The place was decided to be the "Champs de Mars" in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; and the time 10pm on the 08/08/08, hence the name of "Project 888".
The homeless came back after three minutes with a fridge on a trolley. I helped him to unload it near the van and he went back with the trolley... only to come back with another fridge. I figured that some help might be needed over there so I followed him this time. Total, we loaded eight fridges in the van before taking off again. I had no idea why and I didn't really care to know. Their business.
We arrived in Berlin before 3pm. He dropped me near a S-bahn station (the "tube" of Berlin) and wrote down all his coordinate in my back-pocket-notebook, in case I would come back to Kostjin Kostrzyn one day. I warmly thanked him and his homeless friend and took off feeling a bit shitty because even if I would eventually go back to KostjinKostrzyn, Calling him is pretty unlikely to be on top of my list.
People call me names very often for buying into stereotypes all the time. But I do believe that there are, sadly. About this type of guy, my friend Paul that is even more outrageous than me said: "Those types, they would give away their life for a complete stranger like you. They have no culture, no education, just a big heart". Then I started calling him names. But of course he's right and the world is far from that cool place of liberty, equality and fraternity that I sometimes think it is.
