Europe from the Passenger Side

Travel Stories: He began hitchhiking on a Basque motorway. By the time Jeff Biggers reached Denmark, the power of a well-timed shout of "Euskadi," and other secrets of the road, had been revealed.

06.21.01 | 1:05 AM ET

Kentucky, USAPhoto by Michael Yessis

We stood on the edge of the ramp, just far enough onto the highway to attract attention, one foot within the bounds of legality for passing Basque patrolmen, raising our destination signs like skinny billboards. The motorway, like hitchhiking itself, was its own world, a concrete transit station through the villages and lush hillsides. I wanted to see the heart of Europe. Autostopping turned out to be as easy as traveling through its clogged veins.

“Ain’t no autos stopping,” Brian, an Irish traveler, mumbled, as cars sped by.

We had been waiting for five hours. We probably looked like we had been waiting for five days. Brian hung his head in between his knees, having spent the night on the edge of a farmer’s field, throwing up the remains of some bad sardines. During one interval, trapped inside the tent, he even resorted to cutting through the side with his pocket knife, instead of struggling with a troublesome zipper. I looked even worse; I had picked up the chicken pox a couple of weeks earlier, and then hid out at a small lake tucked into the dramatic gorges of the Pyrenees. Meeting up in the Basque country, Brian and I had decided to take the high road of traveling across Europe on a lark: that international word of “autostop” had such an alluring (low-budget) ring.

“What better way to meet the locals,” Brian had said. He regaled me with the stories of a veteran hitcher. “They’re stopping,” I screamed. We were first picked up by Belgian hippies in a VW van, then a German couple on vacation, then a businessman from France. I didn’t meet one Spaniard until a Basque separatist gave us a short jaunt, waving two stubs from his decapitated fingers during a harangue on Franco, at which point his girlfriend demanded that they dump me.

“You’re not Irish?” she screamed. “Say you’re Irish next time,” Brian grumbled, throwing his bag onto the side of the highway. “Everyone loves the Irish.” “Are you even Irish?” I said, suddenly suspicious.

He feigned offense. We finally arrived in the Spain-France bordertown of Irun on a stormy evening. Our clothes and backpacks were soaked within minutes. At the edge of the cool Pyrenees, within a short distance of the Bay of Biscay resorts, landing on the first day of the French summer vacation, not one pension or hotel room was available. We took refuge in a run-down bar, tended by a brawny barmaid, who failed to withdraw from a pinball machine for hours.

“Euskadi,” Brian suddenly called out the Basque word for their homeland with gusto. I was shocked. The barmaid and a couple of others unfurled smiles and raised their glasses. Within seconds, the barmaid came over to chat. “Any chance we can sleep in the bar?” we asked, in Spanish. She stepped into the wet streets, shouted at the apartment complex on the other side of the alley, and then waved us on. We spent the night—for ten bucks—on the couch of her cousin. “The key is meeting the locals,” Brian insisted.

By seven the next morning, we had positioned ourselves at the French customs station. All vehicles crept out of the gate and saw us in full view. None of the French drivers stopped, as if there was some unwritten rule that locals couldn’t pick up strangers.

Then we spotted two blond-headed bare-chested men in consecutive convertibles. They both pulled over.

“Hey, can you drive?” said one of the drivers, a young man in his 20s, in English. He pointed to the second driver draped over the steering wheel with the grace of a mannequin. “He’s about to pass out.”

I climbed into the front seat of the first convertible, tossing my backpack onto a back seat laden with a fine collection of wine bottles. Rupert, a businessman from London, held out his hand.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “Dublin?”

Rupert went through more bottles of wine, flying past the Bordeaux estates of southern France that were laced with the best vineyards and hilltop medieval chateaux. We only stopped for gas. This was the price of autostopping: the French provinces loomed afar like unreachable fairylands. Instead, I listened to Rupert chronicle the rise and fall of his English clan, marriage by marriage, with the elan of a tabloid, ending with the sudden news that his father had suffered a heart-attack the day before.

“I’m not stopping this car until I get to that hospital,” he was suddenly shouting, passing cars at 100 miles per hour.

Next Page »


Jeff Biggers is the author of several works of travel memoir/history and plays, including the forthcoming "Damnatio Memoriae: A Play, Una Commedia," based on migration stories in ancient Rome.


No comments for Europe from the Passenger Side.

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.