Saturday, 4th of September, 2021.
After a lot of talking and considerations, Korbiniam drops me off in an road before an exit to the main road to where I am heading to. Confusing: Yeah, I know. Anyway, after only five minutes I realize there is only a few cars taking this exit while the actual main road, which is only 100 metres from where I am standing, has a much bigger flow of cars. And there is a good place where I can stand, plus a slightly place where the cars can park. I decide to try.
After only 10 minutes, a van stops. The girls had actually passed by me but decided to come back. They are Simone and Patrizia, from Burghausen, and they are going to Regensburg. They are nice and we talk for a while. I tell them how much I loved Burghausen’s Castle and they are very surprised about my travels. They are actually going to shopping at IKEA but decide to go into town to have a coffee and drop me off. We quickly take a look on the way I have to take to go out of town, in direction of Halle. They go for their coffee and I take my way.
In a first quick look, Regensburg looks nice, with the river crossing town, but it is much bigger than I thought. When I get to a huge bridge, from which I cannot see the other side, I decide to hitchhike their because I am thinking that, across the bridge it is already going to the highway or something. Wrong! In five minutes, a nice man stops and tells me this is the centre of town, and so being, not a good place for hitchhiking. He offers to drop me out of town. Yay!
But no. It happens that the place where he drops me, it is not a very good spot because the only place where I can actually stand and the cars can park, is a route for cars coming not from town but from somewhere else. And I am stupid enough to remain there for over 4 hours! Until I finally decide to walk further into town, until I can find a suitable hitchhiking place. And it does not take long for me to find. A bus stop. The only things is, for the first time in my hitchhiking experience, I have to stand in the opposite line of which the cars going to Halle are driving. But id does not matter for Mike and his son Christopher, because in something like 20 minutes, they crossed the road to park at the bus stop and take me.
Mike and Christopher are both really cool. Mike is travelling soon to Mexico to meet a girl who he started to talk via an website. When I tell him I am from Brazil, even before getting in the car, he says I should come in because I would be riding with the right people. Christopher is 23 years old but, in the opposite of so many boys I have met with his age, he is not shy but very social. We have a nice talk until they drop me nearby where they live but by the road. The sign it says is the way to Berlin but I trust on them and stand in there.
In about five minutes a tiny car passes, I see a young couple inside, and by the look in his face and the way they are talking, I think they are saying something not good about me and are gone already. So I start to talk out loud like and old broken radio, some of my indignations like what is so wrong about a girl hitchhiking, but when I look back they are coming back so just like in a movie, I say Oh shit!, shut up and go in their direction. The boy tells me they are going to Leipzig but I say it is fine.
Xanyar ans Paruina are a just married couple from Zell am See, in Austria, but as many people living in there, they are originally from an Arabic country, Iran. Xanyar speaks some English and we talk a bit during the trip. They drop me in the exit to Halle, which surprisingly it is only 18 Km from where I am standing now. Unfortunately is already late evening, the sun is almost gone. But I do not give up!
A sportsman stops for me and his car is full of extreme sport equipment even though he says he has only one girl. He is not going to the centre of Halle but says he will drop me in a mall outside town. He confesses to me he is enjoying his evening in a friend’s house because his wife and daughter are spending the night somewhere else.
I am staring at a Kauffland, it is Saturday and I have almost no food at all, so I am thinking maybe I should go shopping, camp nearby the mall, eat my dinner and go to visit Halle next morning, instead of going now and then camping also outside town, but in the direction of Quedlinburg, where I am going to tomorrow. I have no time to decide because a car stops and a man uses his indicator finger (like you do with kids) to call me. He asks me to wear my mask.
Las is a funny guy and is trying hard to remember some words in English. He parks a few hundred metres out of the city centre and decide to walk with me towards there. Which I think it is really nice. I take some photographs of the Marketplatz and after some consideration I decide to take the tram and leave. It sounds maybe stupid, I know, but in the end I think it was the best decision. And after all, I can at least say I reached my goal and arrived in Halle.
I do not pay the tram. There is a tickets machine inside the tram but I decide not to buy. After all, so many locals do not do it and they can because they have jobs and stuff, why should I? At the camping place, it is already dark and I do not see a reception or a place with some one responsible for the place. There is a group of young people and kids doing a bonfire, so I ask them if they know with whom I should talk about my stay. They say they arrived just a while ago and had the same issue. Until now, nobody had appeared. So I go for the toilet, decide to have a shower (a bit tricky because it is a mix bathroom, there are no curtains and the floor is all wet, but it worth it) and come back to put my tent up. I eat my dinner (for the first time, in a very long time, under the flashlight!) and go to sleep. Ah! There is a very loud music coming from the swimming pool area and it keeps on for almost the entire night. Maybe because of that there was nobody around charging the people? I would not feel like paying to spend the night in such a noisy place. Well, I did not pay. When I left early next morning, again I did not see anybody (well, there was a lady around but I am not sure if she was some kind of guard or only another guest) so I just left. After all, tram and camping place cost 3€ each, which for me it is a two days food money.