What better way to intimately and romantically celebrate the beginning of your life together than with fifty thousand Germans?!? Oh, and the best man from the wedding......aaaaand the maid of honour......and Helen's sister. So there we were, Jarrod, Helen, Rosy, Helen's sister Jayne, and myself. Sure, it made the honeymoon suite a tad cramped, but it just added to the atmosphere. Helen may disagree, but it's kind of funny that this ended up happening. A few years before, Jarrod had hosted a whole bunch of our friends at his house for a lairy weekend. This was just after he had proposed to Helen, and the two of them were just starting to go through planning the wedding and honeymoon. In an off the cuff remark, Jarrod commented about how fun it was having everyone at his house that weekend, and that it would be cool if we could all come on their honeymoon with them. Naturally he meant this more as a complement to his enjoyment of the present company, and seeing the horror struck in Helen's eyes at this comment I immediately diffused the situation by saying 'That's a brilliant idea!'. From that moment it went from being 'their' honeymoon, to 'our' honeymoon. Obviously I originally only meant it as a joke, but obviously Inception is possible without guns, Leo DiCaprio, dream invasion, and sexy fight scenes, because I'll be damned if their honeymoon hadn't become a group tour.
'But Caedyn', I hear you say. 'How the hell can you crash your best friends' honeymoon. Isn't it about time you gave him and his lovely new bride some space to enjoy such a special time in their lives?' Yeh, yeh. I use a lot of poetic license in this blog and I've exaggerated this a lot, but I guess there is some truth behind every joke. This is a pretty big milestone for Jarrod and me, as well as for Helen and Jarrod. When those that we love find love with others, we need to respect that and honour that decision. I guess you just have to realise that right after the wedding, when that person you love and care for, goes off on their honeymoon, that they've now moved onto the next level of their life, and that in a small way, they've made a choice; a choice that you should respect.
Luckily for me, Jarrod chose to spend the days immediately after the wedding with me in Brisbane, going to see a punk concert on what was our first honeymoon. So really if anything Helen was the honeymoon crasher, and my shrink was totally wrong about me having a possesive erotomanic borderline personality complex.
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| As this photo from our first honeymoon of Jarrod carrying me over the threshold shows, I clearly have no deep seeded emotional issues. |
I had been especially looking forward to this part of my trip because for the first time I would be combining the perk of being surrounded by old friends, with a crazy Euro festival. I had been a bit worried that the festival might be overrun by drunken Aussie bogans, but luckily this wasn't the case. It was overrun with derelicts from all corners of the world! Actually even this is a lie. Refreshingly the festival was predominantly filled with Germans, at least in the tents that we frequented. The whole festival is a bizarre mix of the Easter show in Australia (our spring harvest show with rides and farming demonstrations - for my foreign friends), Spring break, and a touristy German restaurant. The whole event is set up in a massive flat showground with dozens of freshly set up beer tents. When I'd had it described to me before going, I was imagining the kind of tents you would get in a travelling circus, but these were formidable wooden structures that put most town halls to shame. The Germans are supposed to be efficient people, so I won't second guess them on this, but apparently the beer halls take about 3 months to put up, and about the same to take down. Given that a majority of the time surrounding this construction period is winter, when the whole area is under snow, I have no idea why they don't just make them permanent, but far be it from me question a Kraut on engineering.
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| Ja, es ist biggish......I guess |
The halls are all decked out in Disneylandesque representations of cliche German scenes, and the whole place feels very Vegasy, but as I've mentioned before, I love Vegas, and the place really has a fun feel to it. I know a lot of Germans I've met despise the festival, and I can see where they're coming from, but I can assure you the locals that do come lap it up and take it all very toungue in cheek. They are also unbelievably welcoming of the tourists who flock to the event, and are extremely tolerant of said tourists wearing traditional Bavarian dress. In fact they actively encourage it.
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| I wonder why.... |
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| ...though it does turn men into this. |
But as much fun as it was wandering around the rides and and enjoying the beautiful weather that Germany had turned on for us, we were here for one reason: hedonistic gluttonous consumption of amber fluids. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that every beer I had at Oktoberfest was the best beer EVER! The beer they serve here is magical, a pure testament to the strict recipe Bavarian beer makers must follow. The taste is a perfect balance of hopsyness and bitterness; despite the fact you're drinking from pints the beer never gets warm, and no matter how much you drink, you never feel sick and you don't get a hangover! OK, maybe everyone just says that because they're caught up in the festivities. Perhaps the beer doesn't get warm because we were all drinking it at such a rate that it didn't have a chance to, and by the time we finally slowed down to a pace where warm beer might've been a possibility we were spilling as much as we were drinking. And maybe we didn't get hangovers because you have to become sober for those to occur, and we were hitting the steins for breakfast. And, sacrilege of all sacrileges, maybe the beer was merely excellent, and the pomp and ceremony surrounding it accounted for the slurred 5 star ratings we gave it the whole time we were there. But my god, was it fun.
Each day at the festival was essentially the same, with the only difference being the clear heads we had going into the first day. Actually, even that didn't happen. After having not seen each other for the better part of half a year, the first night we all met up was spent drinking up a storm in our AirBnB accommodation. We had in fact intended to go out and see the city, but after grabbing a small brewery's worth of local beers, we only ended up making it as far from our place as the nearest kebab store, located about thirty metres up the road. But armed with stomachs already lined with kebab meat and last nights regret we were ready to tackle Oktoberfest head on. Each day started about the same, with the first beer feeling like it took an eternity to get through. With steins you really need to build momentum, but once you get going they really start to roll (this only works until you hit the wall, at which point the beers don't go down so sweetly).
It's a weird vibe in the morning at Oktoberfest. You have to get there early, because most of the seats are taken by midday, and even then most of those seats are reserved for after 5pm. So you get a lot of people coming in early and getting their first beer a little before they would normally prefer. This means the first hour or so is quite sedate, despite the oom-pa bands playing in the background, and most people just sit around chatting. Once the early afternoon approaches, and everyone is onto their second or third beer, the place loosens up a little, and you get the first blokes standing on their chairs and downing whole beers in one go. As someone who struggles to even neck a regular beer, I am definitely in awe of those who attempted this, yet this in no way prevented me from joining the choruses of boo's that greeted anyone who failed, even by a few sips, to finish the entire beer in one go... even when they were girls (it'd be sexist NOT to boo!). As the day progressed, the number of guys standing and attempting the skoll increased, and without fail the punishment for failing grew greater, with projectiles (including a stein at one point) raining down upon anyone who failed to honour their duty to finish.
Another activity that grew more and more fun through the day was the singing of the official beer drinking song. I had this taught to me about fifty times during my days in the tents, but all I can remember is the following:
Ein Prooooooo Set, Ein Proooooo Set,
mmmm mmmm mmm mm mmmm mmmmmmmm,
Ein Prooooooo Set, Ein ProoOOOOOO Set,
Dem Lieb Ber Keit!
This song was sung, with everyone standing and toasting one another, at regular occurrences, although I seem to remember it happening with increasing frequency towards the end of the evening. This is possibly due to the fact that the band got too pissed to play anything else.
Around about 5pm, there was a massive change in pace of the festival. Prior to this everyone had been just sitting around eating, drinking, and being merry, and occasionally singing Ein Proset. At 5pm however, the people who had reserved tables entered and kicked out those who had been sitting there all day. Reserving a table is quite expensive, and definitely out of the price range of the average festival goer, and so there was more than just a little class warfare undertone that occurred during the change over, as the plebs made way for the high rollers. Once we'd been kicked out, the rush was on to find another tent where we could find a spare seat, although usually we had to settle for sitting outside until much later in the evening when we could finally get a seat inside. This is not to say that this wasn't a fun part of the day, in fact some of our best memories were made outside mingling with the locals, talking a lot of smack, and allowing Jarrod to catch a bit of a snooze.
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| Rosy Goodrick, really lapping up the whole mingling thing. Typical xenophobic Tory. |
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| The mountie girls, talking smack |
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| Jarrod resting his eyes, and some random gypsy trying to touch them. |
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| Jayne doing her Jarrod impersonation. |
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| Me taking a picture with my waterproof camera from inside my stein, this made a German man very angry. They take the beer ingredient rules very seriously here 'Nein! No Cameras. Only Hops, Barley, and Yeast!' |
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| Happy times (and fogging of the lens due to the previous photo) |
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| Jarrod deciding his routine from the first day served him well. |
Luckily for us, we managed to get into the tents and onto a table every night. This was usually done by getting one of the girls up onto a single spare spot on a table and then having her gradually shimmy her way down the bench until there was room for another. We'd then repeat this until we'd sequentially taken over the table. By the end of the night everyone in the hall is standing on the seats, and everyone is dancing with steins in hands, and singing along to horrendous 80s music. Apparently David Hasselhoff was not a one off, the German's really do give terrible English and American singers a place to prosper. But luckily by this time even the pickiest music snob is drunk enough to sing along to Bon Jovi and Robbie Williams, and all the English speakers are willing to try and sing along to 99 Luft Balloons.
After dancing till we were sore, and singing until our voices were gone, we ventured out and made our slow way home. This part of the night was always pretty blurry, but we do have photographic proof of us going on a carnival ride:
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| Two things I remember were Jarrod panicking about his glasses and shoes coming off, and Rosy refusing to ride without holding on. |
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| Your guess is as good as ours. |
Our time in Munich wasn't just drunken debauchery. We were on Jarrod and Helen's honeymoon after all. So one day we did what every newly married couple does, and visited a Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. I'm all for experiencing the full spectrum of emotions while traveling, but maybe going Oktoberfest/Holocaust Memorial/Oktoberfest was a bit off. Having said that, I'm glad we went, and it really is an amazing memorial. The crimes that were committed there were truly horrendous, and the fact that the site was kept so well is a real testament to the US army who discovered it. It's easy to remember the US military for their recent insensitivities (American flag on the statue of Saddam, naked pile of prisoners, declaring the war won before it had even really begun...wait that was the President), but the US showed amazing composure when it came to uncovering Dachau. Apparently they made every resident of the nearby town of Dachau walk through the untouched camp and witness the bodies, the crematoriums, and the woeful conditions, to ensure what happened would never be forgotten. This isn't to say the German's haven't played their own part in ensuring this horrendous event is memorialised and remembered appropriately. I actually think that Germans have dealt with their history better than any other culture in the world. You could make the argument that Australia, England, and the US, have all committed their own genocides during their histories, it's just we don't like to remember it. Hell, it took Australia about one hundred years just to say sorry. But the Germans are very up front about their past and have confronted their demons as a nation, and as a result the current generation can live with minimal weight of their ancestor's mistakes bearing down on them. While undeniably one of humanities lowest points, I do wonder whether we view it as so much worse than other acts of ethnic cleansing thanks to the transparency the Germans have allowed the world to view it with, and the fact that instead of defending it with either propaganda or by burying it, the nation as a whole has presented it as an example to the world, allowing them to own their history while simultaneously distancing themselves from it. I think this healthy and honest approach to such an implausibly despicable crime came about as a direct result of what the US started by exposing the atrocities that occurred here. As a result of this, despite the site leaving you with a very heavy feeling, and despair at the depravity that man is capable of, you still are left with a feeling that mankind is good, despite our failings.
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| No man's land, where the prisoners had to cross if they wanted to escape, and more often than not, the area where prisoners would commit suicide. |
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| The Jewish memorial |
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| #Post-WWII problems? |
The next morning (OK, maybe early afternoon), I got up and set off on my first ever attempt at hitchhiking. Having now done it once, I feel I am an expert on the matter, and so I present to you:
The Ranting Pikey's Guide to Executive Hitch-hiking:
So you want to jump into a complete stranger's car, and travel with them to your desired destination and not pay a cent for it? Easy. Anyone can hitchhike, and if you wait in one spot for long enough you're bound to eventually get a ride from someone. But what if you don't want to ride with a bunch of dirty hippies, or you're one of those choosy bastards who doesn't want to ride with serial killers. This guide is for the truly discerning budget traveler, who rathers Audi's over Kombi's, Beemers over pick-up truck bays. Sadly, like many things in life, this task discriminates between the two sexes, meaning I will need two separate guides:
Hitchhiking for Girls:
If you are a girl you need to do the following:
*Stand by the road with your thumb out and smile.
*Wait two minutes (give or take a minute depending on how physically blessed you are).
*Get into car and go to destination.
Congratulations, you've hitchhiked. Perhaps avoid Truckers though, as they have a reputation for being a little murdery.
Hitchhiking for Guys:
Got a penis aye? Tough break. Unlike the rest of your life, having a penis is now working against you. You know what no one has ever said before? 'Gee I wish this place had more guys'. As a male executive hitchhiker, you need to minimise all those stereotypes that unfortunately have been associated with your sex. Here are some ideas that will help you convince people you're not a serial killer:
* Shave.
Being clean shaven definitely helps. If you want to ride with a bunch of flower childs in their hemp mobile then feel free to let your beard and dreadlocks grow. But if you're hoping to get a better class of ride, you need to impersonate a better class of person. Once your facial hair gets longer than a five o'clock shadow you now look like a mugger. A bit longer, and you're now giving off a druggy vibe. Once you enter beard territory you've now become a sexual deviant. You see, facial hair is all about context, and while it may look hot in a bar, or ironic with your hipster friends, your facial hair is now evoking people's deepest fears thanks to the fact your standing on the side of the highway asking to jump in random strangers' cars.
*No Sunglasses.
Sure it might be sunny, but you're now a showdog being judged; they're going to want to poke and prod every bit of you before they give you a place in their car, and they're definitely going to want to see your eyes to check for any depravity or murderous twitchiness.
*Look like a backpacker.
Your backpack is your friend here. People love helping out people who are on a once in a lifetime trip. The type of person who doesn't think that taking your entire life on the road for a few months is a great idea is the kind of person who wouldn't give you a lift anyway. People will gladly share their journey with a complete stranger if they think that stranger will be able to tell them a few fun stories about their adventures, and most lift givers are ex-backpackers, so they will empathise with your plight. However if you have no backpack, and just look like you're on your way from one felony to the next, you're out of luck. Even if you're not rocking a massive backpack, bring out your camera.Anything that makes you look like a tourist will definitely help you.
*Have a sign.
As romantic as it might sound to you, just going where the road takes you wont fly in the executive hitchhiking circuit. I experimented with signs a bit, and I've determined that the next big city in the direction you're heading is your best bet if you're going on a long journey. Luckily most people are just going one city at a time and wont have to rock a sign like mine:
The hardest part of hitchhiking is getting onto the highway. Once you're on the highway you just need to make sure you get dropped at a service station and you'll be fine. Getting out of cities is a nightmare, as most people are only travelling locally, and will probably be too busy watching the road to notice you pathetically perched in the gutter. It's worth traveling in the wrong direction for a bit just to get to a gas station on the highway. Try and find the last gas station out of town and start your journey there. One thing that needs clarifying here: Rest stops are not the same as Gas stations. Do not get stuck at rest stops whatever you do. Best case scenario, people will assume you're a sex offender/murderer. Worst case scenario, you'll find out why people thought you were a sex offender/murderer for hanging out in a rest stop.
Also worth bearing in mind is which country your in. As a general rule, you won't get picked up by people who see you as significantly wealthier than them. If you're in a country where people expect you to pay them for showing you where your hotel is, then the odds are pretty slim that you'll get a free ride.
*Smile.
Sure, you may have dropped out of 'conventional society', you may not be part of the 'corporate machine', you may go around annoying people by 'referencing vague sweeping generalisations about ideologies while making quotation marks in the air', but your career is now in Advertising. You're marketing the idea of a free lift for a complete stranger, who may be dangerous/boring/annoying/smelly or all of the above. So stop acting entitled, and show em ya pearly whites. Do whatever you can to humanise yourself. If a car goes by and shakes their head at you and the car behind them sees you shrug and smile at them anyway, they're a hell of a lot more likely to offer you a ride than if you flip the first car the bird and scream abuse at them. A sense of humour is also vital, and not just for your own sanity. I honestly think that a male jokingly showing a bit of leg to attract cars is as likely as a girl doing the same to get a lift. Another tactic that can work is looking pitiful. You have to balance it though, because no one wants a debbie-downer riding shotgun, but looking cold/but determined can be your friend. A well timed shiver paired with a smile is perfect. Light drizzle is also your ally, as it accelerates people's sympathy for you, though try and stay dry, because no self respecting executive lift offerer is going to let a soggy gypsy onto their heated leather seats. So remember, you're a product, you've got to make a pretty hard sell, so make sure you're an attractive proposition (after all, that's the exact reason why the girls' section is so short). Here are a few examples to see what to do, and what not to do:
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| This is how it's done. This snappy young lad will be cruising the autobahn in no time. |
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| Failing to shave and lack of practise on getting the smile 'non rapey' will result in many hours of aimless standing around for this young misfit. |
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| I think this one is pretty self explanatory. |
*Be a good guest.
So, you've gotten a ride? Well done. Take a second to enjoy the cushy leather seat under your spine, listen to the soft hum of the engine as it accelerates towards 200km/h on the autobahn, and silently judge their tacky choice of fake wood interiors. Now be a good guest. Chat with the person, even if there is barely any language crossover. Don't under any circumstances put on headphones, play with your smart phone, go to sleep. Nothing in life is free, and you're not on a bus. Strike the right balance between entertaining your driver, and letting them just get on with driving and there's a good chance they'll pick up the next hitchhiker they meet, and you'll have made the world a better, more charitable and trusting place.
For those of you skeptical of the value of my advice regarding hitchhiking I present to you my first hitchhiking experience. I started out on the outskirts of Munich, and endured my longest wait of my entire trip. Perched next to a gas station right before the start of the highway, I may have been a tad optimistic displaying the London portion of my sign, but my theory was that there was a good chance there were some English people beginning their road trip back from Oktoberfest, and if I got a ride with them then that was me sorted. Sadly everyone was flying back, or English people are untrusting backpacker haters. Sadly it was too windy for my full sign to be displayed so I had to flip between the different ones, until I was only aiming for a destination one city away. Finally I got my first ride. At this stage I would've taken anything, but in true executive hitchhiking style I got a lift in a lovely new Audi with a guy who was the chief editor at a German financial periodical. The guy was awesome, and we chatted about all manner of things, and he recounted to me his days backpacking across the US and Australia, and how his kids had just recently gone travelling. He was only able to get me onto the autobahn, but luckily that was all I really needed, as after he dropped me off it took me one whole minute before I got my next lift, with a very stylish German doctor and his beautiful nurse wife, this time in an even newer and sleeker Audi which I found out first hand could very easily accelerate up to 240km/h without emitting so much as a whimper. The two of them had left their two daughters with their grandparents for the weekend and come down to sample Oktoberfest. I chatted with them a bit about the research I'd been doing back in Australia, and the rest of the time we spent rocking out to Die Toten Hosen and a whole bunch of 80s rock which I now knew off by heart thanks to the Oktoberfest evenings. These two took me the better part of about 700km all the way up to just past Koln.
Unfortunately the traffic had been quite bad thanks to the fact it was Sunday and there was a massive Oktoberfest exodus, so despite the fact we reached speeds in the mid-200's, we only averaged about 70km/h and as a result it was about 10pm by the time they dropped me off. Making the split second decision to head into Koln rather than try and travel through the night, I waited for about 15 minutes at a very small and unpopular Autobahn-side restaurant before swallowing my pride and accosting a nice German man who agreed to give me a lift into town. As it was only going to be a short drive I slummed it a bit with the car, an older model Mercedes, but I refused to compromise on the company. Luckily for me this gentleman turned out to be the minister for education for his state government, and we had a very interesting chat about German policy and its' place in the European union. After finally arriving in town around midnight, and locating a cheap place to stay, I hunkered down in my bed for the night and got a very good nights sleep.
The next day I briefly wandered around Koln and decided that it was another typically beautiful, organised, if a bit uninteresting, city, before heading to the gas station nearest the entrance of the autobahn, ready to do it all again. This time I was lucky enough to get a lift pretty quickly out of the city by a man who owned a window making company. While this job was only just white collar enough for my executive level tastes, he luckily made up for this by having a very fast and new Mercedes which he proudly got up to 240km/h for me, before telling me that he has another Merc which he was gotten up to 300km/h before. In a matter of minutes we were at the last gas station before the border and I was again looking for a ride. This is where my plans looked to hit a bit of a snag. I was now traveling out of Germany, into Belgium, meaning I was not going to get as many hitchhiker friendly German drivers. This resulted in me standing around for about two hours holding my sign while drivers shook their heads at me. It didn't help that this gas station was predominantly frequented by eastern European truckers, who responded to my sign for London with hand signals that varied from 'You're crazy' to 'You're going to die'. This began to wear on me, and I was very close to going to the other side of the highway and trying to hitch back to Koln to get a bus to England. The situation reached the point of despair when two other hitchhikers joined me, especially as one of them was a quite attractive young German girl. I didn't like my chances of out hitching a girl, and so I pinned my last hopes on two cars, after which I would give up. One of the cars had an English number plate, while the other was a convertible BMW which belonged to a lovely couple who I had talked to earlier, but who had informed me that they were about to sit for lunch and weren't leaving for a while. The English plates car was a bust, as they were going only a few km's away before stopping for the night, but luckily the lovely Belgium couple driving the BMW agreed to giving me a lift. This turned out to be a real stroke of luck when they informed me that they lived on the coast next to Bruges, meaning I would get all the way across Belgium and be dropped off at a ferry that went to England!
Sadly, that's where the luck ended. Unfortunately the ferry went to Hull, which was actually further from London than where I was currently located in Bruges. At this point I was pretty knackered, and decided to call it a day. As the band Pulp may have put it, I had lived like common people, and was now phoning my Dad and getting out, and so I decided I'd go with public transport for the rest of the journey. Not that this made the journey any easier.
After navigating a confusing series of connections between my four trains from Bruges to Calais, I arrived at the French port town around midnight. From here I had to make my way from the train station to the ferry, a trip of about three kilometres. This proved to be a far more traumatic experience than I had first expected. Most people who travel to Europe go to Calais. However, rather than stay, they pass through as quickly as possible to the awesome cities that lay either side of it. This is because Calais is a hole. The city consists of a row of restaurants for people to kill time while waiting for their ferry, and I think that's about it. Apart from that, it's just ghetto as hell, or at least it sure seems that way at midnight when you're walking through the rain with all your possessions.
I had no wifi access, but had earlier saved the map of Calais onto my phone, so I had a vague idea of how to get to the port. Unfortunately google maps only points out roads, not where you're likely to get mugged. I set off towards the port, passing through the main street and then going along the coast line, where I figured it would be safest. Unfortunately I was wrong. After walking for a few kilometres, and nearing the port, I turned a corner to be greeted by what my very quick glance told me was a ghetto. There were about thirty guys all drinking and generally being gangbangers. I did the quickest swivel a person carrying a 20kg backpack has ever done, and began double timing it back to the town. A couple of guys walked after me for a bit, although I'm guessing this was mainly out of curiousity. I was pretty paranoid and exhausted by this stage, so I probably just stumbled upon a high school house party. Although they were all dudes, the place was ghetto as hell, and it was in Calais. I eventually figured out who they probably were, but I'll get to that later.
After this encounter I was a little on edge, not least for the fact that this had now extended my journey from three km's to about seven. I power walked the hell out of the rest of the way until I got to the port. However at this point my google maps let me down massively, as it showed that the passenger entrance was exactly where a massive fence was. Unfortunately I ended up walking the entire length of the border fence before finding this out. This is when things got truly stressful. I had no clue how to get into the port, I was exhausted from carrying my backpack for so long, my shoulders burned, my calves were cramping, and now, just to top it off, there was a car with it's lights off following about 10 metres behind me at walking pace. I had walked past this car on my way to where I thought the port entrance was. I'd thought it a bit odd that there were just a couple of guys sitting in a car parked right next to the fence, but I was so focused on the fact I thought I was almost at my destination that I didn't really give it a second thought. But now, I had no idea where I was supposed to go, was wandering aimlessly, and I was being followed by what I could only logically assume were people who were going to mug me. I quickly went into Bear Grylls mode and hatched a plan that the moment they went for me, I'd piff my bags over the fence and try and clamber over before they got to me. My thinking was, that even though I'd be in trouble with border patrol, I'd be safe, and so would my stuff, and I could worry about explaining it later. But I soon realised that they weren't interested in me, as they pulled up level and I saw that the front passenger had a very high tech gun-site which she was scouting someone in the distance with. Now I was even more petrified. They were going to sniper someone, and once they'd done that, they weren't going to leave any witnesses. I had no idea what I was witnessing, a turf war, rival drug dealers, all I knew was I was done for.
It was at this point that something clicked. I had earlier walked past a group of guys standing on the side of the border fence, just hanging out. I now noticed that they had moved on, and were now randomly walking through a field back up towards the highway that led into the port. It was then that all the documentaries I'd watched about border crossing came flooding back. What I was witnessing were undercover officers tracking potential border jumpers who were trying to get under the lorries that were crossing the channel. It also dawned on me that the guys I'd seen earlier partying it up in the ghetto were a bunch of refugees/illegal immigrants. I'm not sure if that makes me paranoid, racist, or rightfully concerned about the possibility they might've jumped me for my valuable passport, but it did explain who they were. Despite all the stress I'd just endured, and the fact I was now absolutely knackered, witnessing this spectacle first hand had made the whole hitchhiking experience worth it. The route the border jumpers had taken also highlighted exactly where I needed to go, and I soon found my way to the ferry terminal. Sadly the last ferry for foot passengers had left about 5 hours prior, and so I did the only thing I could, got out my sleeping bag, and got some sleep. Well actually, I shoved all my valuables into the bottom of my sleeping bag and THEN hopped in it and got some sleep; I was still a little on edge.
England had now become my home away from home, and I'll be honest, it was good to see the white cliffs of Dover. It was even good to see the border control guys. I've got to hand it to the British border control, just when you think you know the system well enough to breeze through, they step it up a notch. My first experience with them had been at 3am on an overnight bus from Paris. The girl before me had walked up to the immigration officer and had the following exchange:
Immigration: 'Do you have any other forms of ID?'
Girl: 'No'
Immigration: 'OK'
And that was it. Seeing how lax their standards were, I stepped up confidently, presented my passport, and my bus ticket out of the country which I had booked prior, and gave the lady at immigration a big 'I'm not a terrorist' smile. She eyed me skeptically and asked:
'What is your purpose for visiting the UK?'. I responded that I'll be visiting friends, and backpacking around the UK and Ireland. She then proceeded to ask me exactly where I would be going, which I began reciting off the top of my head, all the time expecting her to interject and say 'OK, that's fine' but it never happened, even after I finished. I felt like I was in a Louis Theroux interview. She then proceeded to query me on how I was supporting myself, how I earned the money to support myself, how confident I was that the money I had would be enough, and finally whether I would seek employment while in the UK. Finally after another extended pause, she stamped my passport and I was in. After experiencing these exact same questions again I now realised that it was just the script they were required to say, but I'll be damned if they don't punish you for being too rehearsed and relaxed when you answer, because this time the guy started adding on a few more questions about what kind of science research I'd been doing, and getting me to repeat my planned itinerary to check for any variance he could catch me on. I can't wait for my next trip to England, because my most recent interview, a few weeks before this blog was written, ended with the border control guy saying 'Promise me you'll leave when you've told me you will'. I don't know where they can go from that, but I'm both petrified and excited to see where they go the next time. I can see it ending in either a blood oath or a pinky promise, or possibly a staring contest after I've recited my itinerary for the third time.
Luckily, after the insecurity I'd experienced the past couple of days, I had a lot of patience for authoritative figures, and so I politely got through my interview, hopped on the ferry, and after unsuccessfully lobbying for a lift to London from my fellow ferry passengers, hopped a bus to London and then had the longest hottest shower of my life. I'm extremely glad I gave hitchhiking a shot, and if in a pinch, I'd gladly do it again, but I don't think I'm really cut out for it to become my primary method of travel transport. My main problem is I have no patience. After 15 minutes my attitude turns from optimism to 'Bugger it, where's the bus'. But it mainly comes down to the fact that I quite enjoy travelling by bus. It costs a little more (hitchhiking is cheaper, but it's definitely not free if you actually have a destination in mind, once you factor in the last minute accommodation and the times that will inevitably occur when you don't get a lift) but paid travel allows you to be completely absorbed in your own world, you can watch a movie, sleep, listen to music, and do whatever you want, whereas hitchiking feels a lot like work. But those worries were all behind me now, I was in London, and after a few days of sleep, liver regeneration and long hot showers, I was ready for Honeymoon Part III.......
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