Hitchhiking from Amsterdam to Italy
Rome is the goal but the outcome very different...
Chapter 1
It’s around noon in Amsterdam which means that it’s already way later than what I had hoped for. I leave Amstel station with an anticipative feeling of excitement and walk towards the dedicated hitchhiking spot. There’s a week of vacation ahead of me and I thought that I should spend it adventurously. I bought a flight ticket from Rome to Amsterdam and planned on hitchhiking the 1600km to the capital of Italy. In modern-day central Europe, traveling is super easy, and nearly everyone can afford it. Without needing to interact with locals or speak a word of the local language, a family of four can have a perfectly luxurious hotel trip. The most meaningful interaction with foreigners will be at the hotel reception or with the sommelier at the restaurant. Consequentially, the first couple of minutes at the start of each hitchhiking trip are always weird for me: Standing by the road and raising my thumb gives me an unfamiliar feeling of being an outlaw. It’s a way of traveling that breaks modern societal rules. I look at people’s faces as they drive by. From what I can tell, most find what I’m doing wildly inappropriate, others think I’m homeless and the tiny rest that’s left is the fun 1% of people that stop for me. It takes about 20 minutes until I have a ride. A boat carpenter that recently restored an old Swedish yacht is telling me how happy he is with his job; a wonderful but dying profession that satisfies him daily because he can look back at what he made happen with his bare hands. The next car is driven by a policeman undergoing special training in crime prevention in Amsterdam. We chat about artificial intelligence and its ethical implications when used in policing and about his area of expertise - Amsterdam Nieuw West. As the conversation evolves, I learn that the new west is the hood of a couple of dangerous youth clans where some weeks ago, 12-year-olds were stabbing each other in a clan war... Several interesting conversations later, I am near the German border but it’s already 4 pm. I have made little progress and see no chance of getting to Italy within two days (a challenge I put up for myself to make things more interesting). At a gas station near the border of the Netherlands, I see a guy with a license plate from southern Germany. He is willing to take me with him all the way to his hometown Nürnberg, a city marking a good halfway point to Italy. It’s dark as he leaves the highway to drop me off at a large gas station in southern Germany. Seeing the progress I made today gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I can happily call it a day and hop over the fence to check for a tenting spot. The guy that I ride with the next morning has a super crazy life story. A drug addict for five years doesn’t finish school – a severe car crash drunk driving at age 23 – insight that he needs to change his life – founds a company – Two years pass and he’s CEO of a 16 million revenue company with 700 employees. The guy superficially brags about the number of cars, apartments, and girls he “has”. Nobody has ever decided to leave his company – if anything, he is the one firing. “If I ever have the feeling of not wanting to talk to somebody in my company, I fire them. I only work with people I like.” A week ago, he brags, the Forbes magazine asked for an interview because he might reach “self-made 30 million under 30”... People you meet on the Autobahn. At the next stop, a trucker sees my “IT” (Italy) sign and says that he can take me halfway through Austria. Wonderful. Climbing up the stairs of a truck with the huge weight of my backpack on my back is not an easy task but I manage. The guy is a grandpa with hilarious humor and vocabulary. A camper van cuts him off on the highway and he comments “These stupid fuckboxes have the worst drivers”. Driving a truck is something everyone should experience; one sits elevated over everyone else, and cars speed by and seem vulnerable in comparison to the slow, powerful beast. The speed at which we’re moving is super relaxing, there is tons of space in the truck, and because of my high seating position, I can see over the highway’s sidewalls into nature. He drops me off at an Austrian gas station and asks a sun-tanned, muscly Russian truck driver whether he can take me with him. The two don’t understand a word from each other but the Russian sees my “Italy”-sign and nods. The final ride towards Italy is rather quiet since we don’t understand each other whatsoever. We silently listen to Russian pop songs and cruise through the Alps.
Usually, as a hitchhiker, one is socially obliged to converse and it’s relaxing not having to talk for once. We take his mandatory 30-minute break, and he prepares a coffee for the two of us on a large Russian camper stove. I imitate a praying position with my hands, and we smile at each other, I think he understands my gratitude. As I open the door of his truck in the late afternoon, humid Italian warmth hits my face. Less than 48 hours and countless conversations ago, I stood by the road in Amsterdam. I have successfully completed my two-day Italy challenge - this occasion clearly calls for a pizza! With an accomplished smile on my face, I make my way through Bolzano. I find a small pizzeria and talk to the bakers; the adventure I had in the past two days already seemed like normality to me until I talk to the boys while they are preparing the pizza for me. They are jealous of my boldness and give me a drink for free while I tell them about the funny people I met on the way. With the pizza in hand, I walk towards a small park where I find a nice bench to sit on. A couple of pieces into the Italian culinary experience a couple of happy Italian guys approach me. They’re asking for my name and what I’m doing here in Bolzano. With surprised faces, they learn about the way I got here and for a couple of minutes, don’t stop asking questions. As the discussion ends, they disappear into the darkness. I finish my super delicious Italian pizza, throw away the carton, and start wondering where my wallet is...
Chapter 2
Fuck. The stupid wallet is not in my jacket pocket, not where I thought it was... I am hastily searching all my pockets, and my backpack and unfolding everything I own around the park bench. The scene is lit by a streetlight right above me, but the rest of the park lies in the dark. As my hands collect the stuff that is scattered on the floor around me, I recollect recent events. The pizza store. The guy that was staring at me. The creepy homeless person. The Italian guys that left a couple of minutes ago... They were so kind and open, asking about Germany, Amsterdam, the studies, the differences in culture... Did they maybe take it? My heart is racing as I slowly grasp the unfolding consequences of the missing wallet. In my head, I recollect all the documents that I just lost together with that wallet: ID, driver’s license, insurance, local transport of Amsterdam, emergency information, organ donor info, and debit card. What a list. I’m in a foreign country and I don’t have any identification or insurance information with me. The worst fact, however, only hits me now: there’s an airplane from Rome on Sunday that I want to take back to Amsterdam, which is impossible to board now, without some form of identification. This profoundly changes the idea of this trip; Rome, a city I haven’t yet seen is more in reach than ever before and it would be so much easier to just head to Rome and take the plane... Instead, I have to start thinking about a plan B. The next day, I head to the embassy and explain my situation. The kind lawyer at the embassy tells me that I can return tomorrow with a photo and 21 Euros in cash. That sounds super simple! I’m relieved and happily spend the day in the wonderful city of Bolzano. I chat with a girl who studies in town and I’m becoming increasingly jealous of the mountainous horizon surrounding her day by day. Not only are there wonderful hiking trails available in all directions, but the city itself is also green, and very flat, and bike infrastructure is well maintained. In general, there are lots of bikers and other sporty people in town wearing mountain gear and going their sporty ways of enjoying the Alps.
Since I am (mistakenly) certain about receiving a temporary identification document tomorrow at the embassy, I book a night bus to Rome and stay another night at the hostel. As the evening progresses, a guy in his late 20s enters the room. Throughout the next few hours, I learn from him that he is an Egyptian refugee who stayed in Germany for the past 8 years and speaks the language fluently. He repeated school in Germany, became a nurse, and from what I can tell from my limited perspective, was a prime example of successful refugee integration. That’s crazy, I know that Germany is lacking nurses, especially in this health crisis! I reply in arousal as he describes a letter he received by mail two days ago. You are no longer tolerated in Germany; we therefore kindly ask you to leave the country it said [perhaps to make space for Ukrainian refugees fleeing because of the war with Russia] After 8 years in Germany, after sitting in school with students that were 5 years younger, after learning a language that is spelled out in the opposite direction, after doing his driver’s license, after building a new life and sending money home to his family that he has not seen since he left his home country Egypt – he must now leave Germany. Abdalla proceeds to tell me about his traumas fleeing over the Mediterranean Sea and almost drowning in the process. He tells me how hard it was initially, being confronted with the cold and up-front culture of a country where every single sign looked Chinese to him. He tells me how happy it made him learn about the law-abiding German police. He asked an officer the other day about a fine he received and as a result, got him a handwritten note stating which law he had broken and an apology that the fine was indeed much lower than what was initially being asked for by his colleagues. In the countryside in Egypt, the best he could have hoped for in such a situation, he explains, would have been an elbow to the nose. The more I hear about his story, the less I understand my country. Are we seriously expelling hard-working people who are well-integrated and have a stable life? As we continue the conversation, I am fighting hard against a detrimental shame for the letter that my country sent him and that will change his life forever – after it had already been forever changed when he was using buckets to shovel water out of the dinghy that they were sharing among 300 refugees to cross the Mediterranean. Given the unjustifiable rejection of his asylum, another feeling arises in me: I am incredibly privileged. Not only do I have incredible privileges, but everyone with European citizenship does. Don't get me wrong, not everything is perfect in the European Union, but we live in a castle surrounded by water and barbed wire that we use to protect what we have. However, Europe is rich not only because of its incredibly talented people who had powerful ideas (e.g., the steam engine) to aid the prospering of modern society. Europe also prospers today because of yesterday’s colonialism: the trade of stolen goods and human beings or the massacring of entire tribes in the process. We enclose our lands because we think that we deserve what we have. Even if we do – why don’t others? If they are born on another piece of land on this planet, do they deserve less? I think that the main reason for the big refugee crisis happening in 2014 and 2015 (until Europe built fences and set up transit-block-treaties with neighboring countries such as Turkey) was the internet and with it, social media. A poor African person that can afford a smartphone, is given a tool with which he or she can see clearly through the otherwise hidden windows of the European castle. Even people who do not fly to Greece over the weekend but instead live a more average life have a standard of living that’s likely better than that of 99% of Africans. Privileges that 99% of the European population takes for granted are given to them because their mother gave birth on a piece of land that humans call the European Union. Abdalla will be sleeping on the streets tomorrow since Italy only gave him one night at this hostel and everything else in this city is booked out. In the expectation that I will go to Rome anyway, I give him my tent as a small gift for his journey. He will be spending the day walking around town visiting hospitals and asking for a job while I am going to the embassy to pick up something he dreams of; a piece of paper that officially labels me as a European citizen. Just before leaving the hostel, we have breakfast together and exchange contact information...
Chapter 3
I really thought I was going to get that transit paper at the embassy today, but in the late afternoon – after preparing passport photos and getting cash by using contactless payment methods at a bank (thank you, modern smartphone world) – the German lawyer tells me that she cannot help me. Since I am flying from Rome to Amsterdam and not to some airport in Germany, there is nothing she can do. What? You could make an appointment at the head embassy in Rome, they can give you a temporary passport but I cannot help you since you are not returning to Germany. Wow. I am startled. Not only do I not get to go to Rome now, but I also immediately notice that the gift I made this morning to the refugee Abdulla (to whom I gave my tent) will end up making me homeless instead of him soon. It is now around 6 p.m. and I feel super lost. I don’t know what the goal of this trip is anymore – Rome is now far beyond what is reachable and there are no appointments for temporary passports available in the next weeks. My parents are sorry for my situation but there is nothing they can do either. As I hang up the call with my dad, it’s getting dark, and I am in an unsettling and insecure position. I can somehow remotely relate to the feeling a homeless person might feel when he or she has nowhere to go. In such moments of deep insecurity, I wish to just be back in my usual day-to-day life, and I hate myself for having gone on this trip. After some thinking, I return to the pizza store to calm down a bit and to possibly get a CouchSurfing opportunity. The guys are super kind, give me the pizza for free, and offer me a drink as they figure out some solution for my night. One of the guys gets an okay from his parents to host me and I immediately feel an incredibly large weight drop from my shoulders. Entering his house, I am met with the sincere kindness of his caring parents. A rough mix of some German, Spanish, and English enables basic conversation over a ginormous cake that his mother prepared the same day, coincidentally. As I leave the house the next morning, his mother hands me 20 Euros that I try my best to decline but fail because of her being stoically generous. If I ever come back to Bolzano, I will absolutely give you a visit is a promise I have to make to be allowed to leave the house. In the early morning sun, I walk towards the highway where a lift is going to take me north towards Innsbruck, Austria. After seeing that I could take a night train all the way from Innsbruck (which is close to the Italian border) to Amsterdam, I was looking for Couchsurfing hosts and found Melissa. As soon as I meet her, I am convinced that the rest of my trip is going to be a huge success; the city of Innsbruck with its flat valley and mountainous skyline reminds me of Bolzano and as I learn throughout the next couple of days, somehow attracts stunningly sympathetic people. I hang out with her, her roommates, and her boyfriend, we visit the city’s university and party together. In comparison to the rich underground culture that I am confronted with here, Amsterdam, my current hometown, seems too clean, too expensive, and too gentrified. Only around 100k people live here but life is filled with students, art projects, raves, clubs, and endless sporting possibilities. Several people that I meet throughout the miraculous days in Innsbruck moved here for skiing (or snowboarding) and stayed for that but also for the rich culture that they were met with here. I am so amazed by this city that I begin thinking that I could do my master’s degree here... On the night train journey back home to Amsterdam, I hear from my dad that my wallet was found somewhere in Germany. Contrary to what I had believed (that it was stolen by the guys who talked to me in the park), it was my own stupidity of losing it that made me get to know a wonderful Italian family and the people of Innsbruck, whose positive energy and kindness amaze me. Warmth fills me thinking back at this hitchhiking trip that somehow changed its direction chaotically but led me to meet amazing people whom I hope to call my friends for a long time. I know that I will remember this trip for what it was: a truly enriching adventure.