Story from the Dutch HH competition, October 1997

Written by Gerard van Leeuwen

A short report on the trip: Friday morning shortly after 8:00 we (five of us after two late cancellations) left Nijmegen. Sander, Soan and I chose to go via Arnhem. Leaving Nijmegen for Arnhem was no problem, getting onto the highway to Oberhausen seemed difficult but only took me a reasonable 15 minutes. Crossing Germany should have been very simple but somehow I was never lucky: always having to wait 15 to 20 minutes, most rides not going fast nor very far. Just before the border, at a gas station near Passau, I saw Soan again. It had taken him two more hours to leave Arnhem, but my relatively slow progress had enabled him to catch up. Soan was just stopping to get petrol, his car was going to Vienna. At that point it was already past 21:00, rain and traffic jams had slowed everyone down.

Going through Vienna seemed like a bad idea to me and with the large number of Hungarian cars stopping for petrol at PAssau, I decided to only accept a ride if it would bring me past Vienna. It took about a quarter of an hour to find this. At 1:00 I was dropped by Romanians at the exit for Bratislava, about 30 km from the finish. Luckily it was not too late to get a ride: Just after 2:00 I was at our meeting point, the Roland fountain. For a short time I thought I had won but soon Soan showed up. He had reached the finish 20 minutes before me.

We went to a bar, returning at the fountain at 3:00 but none of the others had shown up. Not requiring comfort and not feeling like searching for a hotel at this time of night, Soan and I put ourselves to rest in our sleeping bags somewhere outside and out of sight. At 7:00 we got up. We took a stroll through the city and had a Slowak breakfast. At around 10:00 we were back at the main square. No sight of the others. While we waited in the sun Sander was the first to arrive. He had taken the route past Prague and Brno, and spent the night in a real bed.

At 12:00, the first appointed meeting time of the day, Allard showed up. He had arrived at 5:30 and had slept in some building. At 14:00, the second and last appointed meeting time of the day, still no sign of Paul. I left a note for him stating a new meeting time: 18:00 and asked two girls if they could send him to the Ganymede fountain if he would show up soon. We drank a beer near the Ganymede fountain in splendid sun and decided to drop our backpacks at the Irish Pub, before we would go to the Castle.

In the pub I met the two girls I had briefly spoken to on the main square. We got a conversation going, the others joined in, we had
another beer, Paul was seen passing the pub and was called in together with his last chauffeur, and soon it was too late to consider going to the Castle. The day before Paul had somehow got himself stranded in a village in the Czech Republic, and, knowing that he had lost, had gone for a drink with his American driver in a discotheque in Regensburg. After our dinner, we went to the student hostle where one of the girls was living. A large building, ten floors, visitors not allowed after 22:00. We took a shower and had coffee and left for Charlie's Pub, leaving our backpacks in the hostle. We had a fun night, staying till 5:00, some of us dancing on the tables. Upon returning to the hostle Soan, feeling very tired, left for the railway station to catch the morning train to Vienna. The remaining four rolled out their mattresses and sleeping bags in a rain protected space under the hostle. Around twelve we got up, bought some food at a close service station and had breakfast and a shower back in the hostle. By this time I had missed the train I had planned to take to Vienna. After the brunch, the six of us went back to the city centre where we had a last beer together. After three nights of bad sleep (I'm at times a light sleeper) however, I was feeling so tired that I was socially useless. The others definitely wanted to be back for work in the Netherlands on Tuesday. With the experience of the rather time consuming journey to Bratislava in mind, it seemed that we only could be reasonably sure to reach Holland by Monday night if we could start hitching Monday morning on a service station past Vienna. So that was when I rang your girlfriend to say that we would not come and visit you.

At 19:00 the four of us started our return trip in duo's. At 21:30 Sander and I were finally in Vienna, having had to hitch for more than 90 minutes at the border. Leaving Vienna went OK. We slept at a Raststaette near Linz. Reaching home from there in one day seemed easy and proved possible, although we decided to take a detour via Munchen.