Part 28
It was nearly midnight, when I was dropped off just before the Yugoslavian border. That was not good. Motorists do not like picking up hitchhikers there, because you never know what contraband or state-hate someone might carry in his rucksack. You do realise that international customs hold the driver responsible for cargo, including passengers. But even if you realise this as an experienced hitchhiker, it is, like all that on-the-road know-how, an insight that is sacrificed light-heartedly for the Great Forward. Moreover long distance hitchhiking is an exceptional ‘here and now’ experience: the past has been added and the future is postponed until the ‘now’ arrives.
As if sent and stopped by Heaven, an Ugly Duck arrived. I got in and the driver, a French student, explained to me that he was going to Graz in Austria, ‘très non-stop’. By all means he had to stay awake, and I and a carton of Gauloises that was lying on the back-seat were responsible for this task. It became my absolute personal hitch-hiking record: 1200 km. We alternately spoke French, German and English, told each other the craziest stories and did not feel a moment of boredom.
I stepped back into the modern world exhausted. I got a lift from boys and a girl, who must have put me into bed as well. Woke up with breakfast and sudden haste: I was more than halfway to Karen. Panoramas, hairpin curves, Salzburg, Munich, Regensburg, which was more than a credit to its name and so I stood at the Autobahn and looked at myself: worn out sneakers tied together with pieces of shoestring, corduroy trousers with frayed ends, one leg torn off above the knee, grubby army jacket from sleeping in and on so many times, sweater of indefinable colour, loose and torn, and hair entangled down to the shoulders. It was April and bitterly cold, but I was already sitting at Karen’s with one leg around the stove.
Jan Ploeg
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