Europe from the Passenger Side

06.21.01 | 1:05 AM ET

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.

Arriving on the peripherique of Paris that evening, out of francs, Rupert insisted on entering the city to find a hotel that would change his wad of Spanish pesetas. By the tenth hotel, Rupert resorted to screaming (again)—hotels refused him because he wasn’t a customer (and we had even put on our shirts and shoes to make a good impression)—and then it took us over two hours to find our way out of the city center.

We crossed the Seine six times. I was thrilled. I saw the Notre Dame from all sides. Rupert didn’t stop screaming until we reached the fork in the highway. Offered a straight ride back to London, Brian suddenly changed his mind and stayed in the car. Our goodbye, at three in the morning, was awkward and quick.

“Just in time to pick up the dole,” he said, with a wink. “I’ll see you in Ireland.”

I watched Rupert drive west, feeling as if I had been abandoned. There’s nothing worse for the solitary wanderer than to be left behind by his newfound mates; you feel alone, not solitary. Wary of catching a night ride, I slept for a few hours in a ditch. At dawn my first ride came from a Flemish-speaking trucker from Flanders. He was delivering toilet paper to the Parisians.

“The French are full of shit,” he shouted (all truckers seemed to shout), in English, “they even insist we speak their language.”

By the time I reached the fields of Belgium, my next rides, almost exclusively with Eastern European truck drivers, had grown rather silent. Drivers attempted to communicate in French, German, Russian and Greek. I responded in English, Spanish and Italian. Finally, I announced, “Arizona.”

“Arizona,” one shouted, and he withdrew both hands from the steering wheel, racing at 90-miles-an-hour, and pretended to fire off pistols. We nearly hit another truck head-on. “Bang, bang, Arizona, John Wayne.”

I felt giddy when I finally arrived at the border crossing into northern Rhineland. Germany’s autobahn was supposed to be the easiest transit station for hitch-hikers in Europe. The sweeps of rolling hills were dotted by idyllic dairy farms and the occasional blitzkrieg of exhaust-spewing industrial parks. I stationed myself within yards of the customs station. I raised my hand-written sign—Kobenhavn. I was going for what Brian had called “the big one,” a straight shot to Copenhagen. Within seconds a truck came screeching to a halt. A massive forearm wave me on. I climbed into the 18-wheeler, dragging my backpack into the front seat, as the trucker tore off before I could barely shut my door.

“I’m not going to Kobenhavn,” he said. He was a hairy, ravenous looking man with a set of stunning forearms. He was the spitting image of Rasputin. My heart wilted. My hitchhiking headline had arrived. He shouted really loud. “I’m from Kobenhavn,” he blasted, “so I can give you tips. You must stop at Christiana. It’s a commune in the center of the town where you can smoke dope. It’s legal. I took my wife there on our honeymoon. We didn’t leave the room for a week.” “Where are you going now?” I said. “I turn at the next exit.” He had ruined my perfect autostop location. “No drug problems in Christiana,” he went on, oblivious to my despair. “No, not like Turkey. I spent three years in a Turkish prison for drugs, but at least I learned good English. I speak good English, no?”

It took an entire day and night and the following day, arguing with a pair of Norwegian sisters for space on the highway (they ended up throwing rocks at me), serenaded to sleep by the rabid howl of farm dogs in a field where I slept like a fugitive, until I finally reached the shores of the Baltic Sea. I caught the last ferry to Denmark. An older Dane, who said he made a weekly trip on the ferry to buy duty-free booze, was amused by my journey.

“Great way to meet the locals,” I said. Hint, hint. I had visions of a Danish farm, a hot shower, and a lavish smosgarbord awaiting me. “I once made it to Greece by autostop,” he said. “So many generous people.” He nodded. “But that was a long time ago. You can’t trust anyone today.”

The old Dane dumped me at a nearby highway rest stop for the night. I joined a caravan of Romany gypsy campers with no license plates. Without a word, a young kid came over and offered me a bowl of soup. Stretching my sleeping bag in a grassy ditch to the side, I scanned the Nordic stars, shifting for some comfort on the hard ground. I was ecstatic.

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