Return of the Marmite

I'd travelled by train and hitchhiking from Vienna, to a small town in Switzerland. I'd spent the weekend in Aargburg and then stayed the night in Freiburg in Germany. I'd hitchhiked from Freiburg to Friedrichshafen, had a wee adventure, but managed to get to Munich. Decided to stay the night at Munich central train station (Hauptbahnhof) before heading out to hitchhike towards Vienna in the morning.

So, apart from taking a selfie on my laptop of me with the Marmite, and trying to catch a nap here and there in the waiting area, I walked around the entirety of the Hauptbahhof, both above ground and below; and I walked around the neighbourhood, just to fill in the time. I also used the free wifi to look up things on the internet, to chat to Lisa and to do other internet stuff. When it finally got to dawn, I started walking, making my way to the city limits. I was standing just after a bus stop, not a perfect position but I had made a pretty large sign that said "Austria / Österreich". Being so early in the morning, the traffic was not very heavy and I did have to wait for an hour or so. A van stopped, an electrician on his way to work or something. He didn't speak English, but my German was good enough to ascertain that although he was going to Austria, he was going to or through Innsbruck, whereas it would be more convenient for me to go to Salzburg for getting to Vienna. He offered to either take me to Innsbruck or would drop me off somewhere on the way. I agreed to get dropped off on the way and hopped in.

Just as we were about to leave, some other hitchhikers had got off a bus at the bus stop and had come up to the van to inquire about getting a ride. I believe they were Austrians and wanted to get to Salzburg. There wasn't enough room, and to be honest, I was pretty glad. If they were trying to get to Salzburg as well, we'd probably get dropped off at the same spot and then either try to hitchhike together, which as three people would severely limit the possible rides we could get, or we'd be competing or have to take turns, which would really suck.

On the way, I made some small talk with my driver: he was from Croatia but had been in Germany for around 20 years. We had a look at the GPS while he was driving and we decided that the Raststätte at Irschenberg would be a good place to drop me off, and it was the last stop before he went one way to Innsbruck and I would turn off to Vienna; moreover, I had read about it on hitchwiki.org as a good place to get to if you were hitchhiking out of Munich.

He dropped me off, and I quickly figured out the best place to position myself to get all the outgoing traffic, where they'd have enough time to see me and have enough room to stop. I got my laptop out and took a selfie of myself, with my Marmite and my "Austria / Österreich" sign.

Absolutely perfect weather!

As I was putting my laptop back into my backpack, I noticed a guy walking over from the petrol station. As he got closer, I noticed he had a gun, and pretty much then, he announced himself as a police officer, and pulled out some ID. He asked me for my passport, so I gave it to him as well as my Swedish residency card. His colleague drove over in an unmarked car, and came out and had a look at my passport as well...they noticed my Austrian and German visas and asked if I spoke German, and I said I spoke a bit. I'm happy to say that I managed to answer everything in German, except the odd word that I didn't know here and there. While the colleague took my passport away to check it on the radio or whatever it is they do in the car, the original cop started asking me questions. How long had I been in Europe? (About 2 years) Where was I coming from and where was I going to? (I'd come from Switzerland, had a weekend meeting friends, I was heading to Vienna, and then eventually heading up to Berlin, then to Sweden). Do I have any drugs or illegal items? (No). He didn't seem to believe me, asking if I was sure I didn't have any drugs and started asking me if I had individual drugs...hashish? MDMA? Cocaine? After a couple of these, I told him that I had I was trying to hitchhike over borders and taking drugs would be too risky...luckily he found that pretty funny. He asked to look through my wallet, which I acquiesced to, because I didn't have anything to hide and just wanted to get on with my hitchhiking. He didn't find anything interesting, and asked if I could begin emptying my backpack. It was a bit annoying, but I started to do it anyway, answering his questions, and after a just a few seconds of taking stuff out, his colleague came back with my passport and said everything was fine with it. As the stuff I had taken out was literally sleeping bag and a couple of t-shirts, the cop told me that I could stop emptying my bag, and they pretty abruptly got back into their car and drove off.

Only about 10 minutes later, a car stopped, with a young couple. They asked where in Austria I wanted to go and I said Vienna. They were going to Vienna as well, and they would take me the whole way if I wanted. I couldn't believe it, a ride the whole way to Vienna from just 50km or so out of Munich. They were a young couple from Slovakia originally, but living now in Vienna. We made some small talk, and I tried to stay awake, but it was really warm, and I was really tired, and I fell asleep before Salzburg, and pretty much slept the whole way to Vienna. I felt a bit guilty, but they didn't seem to mind. When I woke up, we were on the motorway that runs around Vienna, and they wanted to know where they could drop me off. They weren't going near Lisa's apartment, so they decided to drop me off close to a subway stop. They let me out, and I was officially back in Vienna.

Picture of Gasometer I took  off Wikipedia.org
© Bwag/CC-BY-SA-4.0 

Where they dropped me off was at the Gasometer buildings. These are really cool, old gas holders for town gas, that have been converted to apartments, shopping areas and offices. I'd read about them, but hadn't been to see them personally (although I've seen them in the distance a lot), and I thought they were amazing. They gave me a feeling of dystopic, futuristic video-games, areas where the unassuming protagonist will begin their story. I didn't go in, though, I really wanted to get to Lisa's. I took the U-bahn to the closes stop to Lisa's and walked the 5 minutes or so to her apartment. I rang her bell, but nobody was home. As I didn't have my phone, I pulled out my laptop and tried to connect to the apartment's wifi from the street...didn't reach. I could either wait for someone to get home, or try to find some internet. It was a nice day, I didn't feel like walking any further, so I took off my boots, pulled out my book, and sat in the sun, outside her apartment, and eventually, her flatmate came home and let me in.

I messaged Lisa, had a shower, had a nap and then when she came home, we had dinner. After a day or two in Vienna, we took the train back to her parents house, and I finally felt my adventure was at an end. Definitely one of the longest continuous hitchhiking journeys I'd ever undertaken, I'd had a great time, met some great people and hopefully, won some great Marmite. 

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My Marmite adventure continues

I'd successfully taken an overnight train across Austria and hitchhiked into Switzerland. I'd spent a nice weekend in Aarburg, and agreed to stay with the other guys at their dorm in Freiburg. We took a train to Basel; our plan was to take a regional train to Freiburg, but due to a timetabling error on our part, we had missed all but the last one, a few hours later, and that would arrive at Freiburg too late for us. We went to the ICE train (InterCity Express), which are much more expensive, and asked the conductor if we were able to buy tickets on the train, as it was departing soon, and we were told we could.

We boarded and waited dutifully at our seats. Freiburg was the first stop, about 30 minutes away, and we chatted the whole time. As we were pulling into Freiburg, we noticed the conductor finally reaching our carriage, but we were just pulling into the station, he was just waiting at the door of our carriage, to get out onto the platform. We disembarked at Freiburg, having semi-legally avoided the rather pricey ICE ticket. The guys took me to get döner, at their favourite place, and we took a tram to where they live, at the St Alban Haus in Littenweiler, on the outskirts of Freiburg.

On the way to Freiburg, I'd noticed that I'd left my phone somewhere. When I was in the dorm, I connected to the wifi with my laptop and used Google to find my phone's location on Google Maps. It is absolutely crazy how accurate the service is. I had left it where we had stayed for the weekend, and so I emailed somebody to let them know I had left it and to arrange to get it back somehow. I went on to hitchwiki.org to see if anybody had any information about hitchhiking out of Freiburg, and luckily, there was some information. For hitchhiking east towards Munich, the recommended spot was not too far from where I was staying. I was to sleep on a mattress on the floor - I stayed up a bit, checking emails and so on. I really wanted to take a selfie with my Marmite, so in lieu of my phone, I just used my laptop.

Hanging out with my Marmite in Freiburg

I got up fairly early, and got myself ready to leave. I took the tram a couple of stops to Maria-Hilfe-Kirche, and looked around for cardboard. Looking in a side-street, I found that again, it seemed to be collection day and it was no trouble at all to find a cardboard box in a bin on the side of the street. Unusually for me, I took more than one piece of cardboard, as I figured it would be highly unlikely I would get to Vienna in just a single day, and if I had a couple of pieces with me, I could take them with me as necessary, and the incident with "Aarburg via Zürich" had convinced me that it was best to have some spare cardboard with me. I made up a sign that simply said "East/Ost" and tried to find a spot. It wasn't the best, as the highway went into an underground tunnel randomly in the city, with no spots to pull over immediately before it, but a short walk further up the road, toward the city, I found a small spot that I thought would suffice.

I was only there for a couple of minutes (without music, unfortunately, as I had forgotten my phone), when a youngish guy in a small car pulled over. He was heading somewhere else in Germany, to attend a friend's grandmother's funeral, but could drop me off somewhere by the Bodensee (Lake Constance). We got along really well, had some really interesting conversation, and we decided that he would drop me off at Friedrichshafen. To further my goal of taking a photo at every stop I made, I asked him if he could take a photo of me with my Marmite, which he was happy to do, in fact, even taking a selfie together with me and the Marmite. I put my email details into his phone and he said he'd email them to me[although, as of yet, I have not received the photo. It is possible I mistyped the address. His screen was fairly scratched, and it was quite difficult to see the screen properly in the bright sun anyway].

After he left, I headed down to the waterfront to enjoy some lunch. I had some Käsewurst that I'd bought from Vienna, that was a bit suspicious-looking and didn't smell the greatest, but which I ate anyway. I drank all the water I had, and went for a quick swim, as the day was absolutely sweltering. I walked a bit further along the waterfront, and found a public tap from which to fill my water bottle. When my shorts were more or less dry, I went off to start hitchhiking again. I knew that I wanted the highway 31, so I followed some signs for that, until it no longer had a pedestrian area and became more of a motorway. Luckily, this was a great hitchhiking spot, as there was a bit of shade available, and there was plenty of space to pull over, just after a bus stop, not to mention a public carpark next to me as well.

After about 20 minutes or so, I got my first ride. The guy was only going to Kressbronn, only about 20km down the road according to him, but he could drop me off at the gas station next to the highway. This sounded great, so I got in and we took off. It was not such an interesting conversation, mainly because his English wasn't the best and neither is my German, and he seemed to be with a young lady, who I imagine to be his daughter but was possibly old enough to have been a much younger girlfriend, who was a bit shy.

The petrol station was not as great of an area as I'd hoped. A tiny, rural sort of affair, it was a fair way off the highway. I wanted the traffic going back on to the highway, which was in the direction on the opposite side of a roundabout from where I was. The road I was on didn't seem to get a hell of a lot of traffic, and although the other roads seem to go to places and get more traffic, they hardly ever came to the petrol station. I went across the roundabout, despite it clearly not being a pedestrian area, and followed the road a bit. It curved consistently the entire kilometre or so to the highway, where it was even more clearly not a pedestrian area - it didn't really have anywhere for a pedestrian to stand anyway, so it would've been fairly dangerous to wait on the highway itself, not to mention cars were going pretty fast and if I'd been spotted by police, I could imagine having to deal with them (perhaps not getting in any lasting trouble, but I can never be bothered talking to police). The entire curved road was fairly bushy, meaning cars couldn't see me as they were heading towards the highway, the only reasonable place to stand was a slight grassy area immediately after the highway. It was far from ideal, but I only had to wait about 10 minutes before getting a ride, in a fancy Jaguar with a lawyer.

We started off the ride in German, but we soon switched over to English. I was pretty tired from being in the sun all day, but I managed to stay awake for the whole journey. A fairly interesting guy, he was involved with a program bringing students from the Maldives to Germany on student visas. He had plenty to say about the Maldives, not just the threat from climate change, but the intense corruption of the government. He also told me that a number of years ago, he had decided he wanted to something more than just legal work, and with the blessing of his wife, opened a micro-brewery in Munich with some other guys, and now they were looking at building up production capacity and expanding their sales area.

He dropped me off almost directly at the main train station, Hauptbahnhof. I had two options, I could stay the night at Hauptbahnhof, or I could make my way to the area I found on hitchwiki.org for hitchhiking to Austria and try to make it somewhere that night. I decided that I would wait the night at Hauptbahnhof, If I didn't get a ride before dark, I would either have to try to hitchhike at night (which I've done several times before, but it's not ideal), or I'd probably have to make my way back to Hauptbahnhof anyway. Even if I got a ride, realistically, the furthest I'd expect to get would be Salzburg, which would not be hugely closer to Vienna than Munich, but I had no idea if the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof was open 24 hours or where I could stay.

Munich Hauptbahnhof with my Marmite

So I stayed the night in Munich Hauptbahnhof, mainly trying to sleep in the waiting area. But it's not very comfortable in there, there's a faint but constant hum; too quiet to complain about but loud enough to annoy all but the most deaf. The security is not particularly keen on people staying there who don't have train tickets, and despite that, it managed to only be populated by the strange or the impoverished - myself included. There was a super-drunk Asian professional, who was dressed like a lawyer or something, and sat in his chair, moaning, retching and even vomiting a little bit; the crazy old homeless guy, with a large beard, mumbling to himself with periods of angry whispers and even the occasional shout; a weird, young kid, looked like a street kid, who was hanging around the ride-on cleaning machine suspiciously, and whenever I went out and come back, he'd be investigating something on the machine and then jump away when he noticed me.

So, the story will wrap up in the next post...what was that kid doing? Did I ever find out? #bleedpurple 

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To Switzerland...with Marmite

The route I ended up taking

I had a weekend planned in Switzerland - meeting people I know and some people I didn't know in the small town of Aarburg, in Aargau. I had to be there at a fairly specific time, but had no schedule for returning. So I formulated a bit of a plan: I would take a cheap overnight train from Vienna, in the very east of Austria, to Bregenz, in the state of Vorarlberg, in the very west, pretty much at the border of Switzerland. I would try to hitchhike from there to Aarburg (which on Google Maps was around a 2-hour drive), spend the weekend, then hitchhike back to Vienna, taking as long as necessary.

Just before I'd left, I'd been alerted by my girlfriend, Lisa, to a ongoing promotion by Marmite (the delicious New Zealand kind, not the inferior British kind...also, if you don't know what Marmite is, you can read about it here), whereby people could take photos of themselves overseas with their jar of Marmite, tag it with the hashtag #MarmiteNZ on Instagram, and they would select one person every month, and send them some Marmite. Lisa and I both really like Marmite, and we have a smaller and a larger jar here in Europe but the smaller jar is almost completely empty.

At the Vienna central train
with my Marmite

So, I figured, if I took the Marmite with me, and took a selfie at every place I stopped on my journey, then made them into a collage, and uploaded it to Instagram then I'd be certain to win the competition for the month. I took the smaller, emptier Marmite jar, in case I lost it, or fell into a volcano, or misplaced it in some other fashion. Lisa took the first photo of me, at Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna main train station), and I boarded the train, ready for the long journey ahead.

In winter, I had travelled from Zürich to Vienna on an overnight train, and the train had been very empty on the way, I'd had an entire compartment to myself almost the entire trip. Unfortunately, this time, it was surprisingly busy. I had bought my laptop and had hoped to do some work on it, perhaps play some casual games I have on Steam, but it was so crowded in the compartment, I didn't feel like disturbing people that much, especially considering how large and unwieldy my laptop is. So I read a bit of my book (I was reading Canterbury Tales...not the easiest of reads) but mostly just sat quietly, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep upright, without accidentally touching anybody else (pretty much an impossible task) or looking out of the window (which wasn't that interesting in the middle of the night).

A big mushroom! In Bregenz

I arrived in Bregenz at around 8.30am, as scheduled. Lisa had told me about a large mushroom-shaped kiosk which sells milk products, such as milkshakes, and I had decided that it would be the site for my next selfie. It was a bit more difficult to get it than I thought, as I'd forgotten to bring my selfie-stick (something that I was utterly opposed to before being given one by someone on one of my tours, and now I'm a fan) and the lighting was somehow being very difficult. After getting the photo, however, it was definitely time to try to start getting a ride towards Switzerland.

I was following the road-signs for the highway into Switzerland, and on the way, keeping an eye out for cardboard and for a marker. Often-times, I have found cardboard collection bins on the street or behind businesses to be excellent places to get cardboard, and if you're respectful, stay off majorly private property (I mean, the back of a supermarket or petrol station is usually private property, but not really) and clean up any mess you make, I think it's unlikely anybody would make a big deal out of it...certainly, I've never had anyone say anything to me. On the way, I went past a cardboard bin for an entire apartment building, on the street, awaiting collection. It was a matter of a few seconds to find a suitable piece of cardboard and to make sure all the other cardboard was back in the bin, ready for collection.

I continued along the way and spotted a supermarket. In a very Austrian, and specifically, a very alpine Austrian way, they had a barbecue going in the carpark, with sausages, beer and a crappy (or in my opinion, awesome) local duo playing all the favourite Schlager, Austro-pop and Volksmusik hits, all at about 10 in the morning. Moreover, there were already a handful of (mostly older) local people, getting drunk, eating meat and singing along. I went in to the supermarket, bought a decent but cheap permanent marker, sat outside and made my sign, then continued on down the road. Failing to see any spots that I felt were particularly good for hitchhiking, and not feeling the need to stop anywhere anyway, I kept walking to the next small town/village, named Hard. I wasn't in the centre of it, I could've turned off and checked it out, but I kept walking down the side of the highway (there was a bike and pedestrian lane), until there was a junction, with both ways going to Switzerland but at different points, on different highways. I figured that for getting to Switzerland, my best bet was to stand somewhere before the junction, with my sign that said "Switzerland/Schweiz", so I could get people who were driving to Switzerland in either direction.

I found a spot just after a bridge, with plenty of space to pull over, and held out my sign and my thumb. I had my headphones in, listening to music, the weather was absolutely fantastic and I was happy to stand in the sun for however long it took. But a car pulled up within 5 minutes. A young couple from Augsburg, Raphael and Sara, and they were going to Switzerland for a birthday party. They didn't take the main highways, so they could avoid the tolls, so we took a more winding route through rural Switzerland, driving through amazing alpine villages and brightly-coloured little towns and past hilly fields full of cows with bells, like we were in a movie. I almost always prefer travelling on smaller roads and highways for this reason, just seeing more of the landscape and the country.

After driving together for an hour or so, they dropped me off at a very small town called Pfäffikon, which is at the very south-western end of the big lake by Zürich, where Zürich is on the very north-west. I wasn't actually sure how big Aarburg was (because I am terrible with researching where I'm going), but figured that because it's in the state Aargau, with a name like Aarburg, if it wasn't the capital, then it was probably a main town at least. I went to the train station to use the free wifi, and looked on Google Maps, and figured the easiest way to get to Aarburg was through Zürich.

Not the best selfie ever

I made a new sign on the back of my old one, that just said "Aarburg". I had to get to Aarburg around 6.00, so I figured I'd try hitchiking until about 4.30, and if it didn't work, I'd take a train to Aarburg. From the train station, the road signs for a highway to Zürich were pointing to the right, but on Google Maps, it showed the most direct route to Zürich as being to the left. I followed Google's instructions, finding the on-ramp to the highway and finally a road-sign that said "Zürich". I had a great site for hitchhiking, with a large, open carpark for a kind of tavern/pub in front of me, with a bus stop slightly behind me. I took another selfie with my Marmite, put in my headphones and got to waiting again.

In hindsight, and by examining the map a bit more carefully, I think perhaps following the signs for Zürich to the other end of town might have been better - although not as direct a route as on the motorway, it would have been toll-free, so more local cars might have taken it. Not to mention, I would've been travelling next to the lake the entire way, and would undoubtedly have had amazing views the whole time. Also, Aarburg, although historically fairly important, is not particularly big or significant now, and probably not that well-known amongst the Swiss, let alone foreigners. And lastly, after an hour or so with no ride, I added "via Zürich" to my sign, but I realise now that it cluttered the sign and made it harder to read. I realise now that I should have gone about hitchhiking out of Pfäffikon differently, but hindsight is 20/20. If I wasn't on a schedule, I probably would've made a new sign that only said "Zürich" and might have checked out the other route.

But time was pressing, so I caved and took a train, and arrived in Aarburg at almost exactly 6. I spent the weekend, as planned, had a great time and all that, but then came time to say goodbye. Some of the other guys that were there were American students, studying abroad in Freiburg. We were sitting around, having some beers in the afternoon and I was preparing to start hitchhiking back to Vienna, but they invited to come and stay a night at their dorm, which I thought sounded pretty cool...

So, the story will continue in the next post...will I survive? Will I get back to Vienna? If you want, you can subscribe by email on the right side of the page here, or follow me on Instagram or Facebook.