thumbs up

The last week or so has seen a pretty mega adventure. i have been traveling overland from Denmark to Morocco. If your not too shit hot with European geography take my word for it, it's a fucking long way!

Almost all hitch hiking except the final leg across the Gibraltar strait into Morocco from the Southern tip of Spain and also a train to get out of Hamburg when i got stuck at the city limit. I ticked up about 30 different rides starting with a group of Danish Motor Cross riders and ending with three young Spaniards crammed into a small hatchback cruising along the motorways at 180kph.

A few of these rides deserve a special mention.

1. Reza the political refugee from Iran who had to flee his country seven years ago at the risk of his life because he opposed the ruling party. Very interesting guy, pulled up in a nice car smoking tobacco from a pipe, dressed in a smart suit and appeared to store a weeks supply of grease in his hair.
2. 2* Turkish truck drivers. I spoke to them in English, they spoke to me in a mixture of Turkish, German and French. It worked out splendidly, I didn't understand a thing in the 24 hours it took us to get from Munich to Lyon but it was fun. Interesting on that leg was spending a night in a truck stop beside the motorway watching the hussy's come by and the seedy truck drivers being sleazy beyond imagination.
3. And finally, the nameless Italian drifter who almost got us both arrested. See photo. The story goes that I asked this bloke for a ride at the petrol station; he said no problem. As we pull out i realised there was something strange as we had very little petrol (funny considering we were meant to be going about 300km.) 30km later we pull into the next station, rapidly douse about 5 litres into the tank and boost out of there. I thought I'd give it a bit and see what happens, then we arrived at a toll stop for the motorway crossing from France into Spain. From what i could understand he had no money, the line behind us started to bank up. Horns echoed through the valleys and tempers from the entrapped drivers behind were rising uncontrollably. The attendant took action and signaled us to go through and wait, once we stopped the customs officers were onto us and the drug dog started to rampage through the car. I handed over my passport while denying connection with the nameless Italian, removed my bags and snapped a sly photo. However the sly photo not being sly enough led to a confrontation with a guard and i am lucky to still have my camera. I don't know how this story ended for the other party but cheers for the lift mate...

To anyone else that might be reading this that gave me a lift at some point, cheers. I made it here safely and in pretty good time. The hitch hiking is now over, it was an absolute blast while it lasted...

walking, walking and more walking

Firstly, thanks for the emails recently and I apologise for the delay in repling but I will get back to you LANCE, patience is a virtue.

Since the Stockholm or Bust escapade (which ended in Bust if you hadn't guessed), I've been hiking in the north of Sweden, orginally with the intent of catching the midnight sun, but unfortunately I wasnt able to locate it so 11ish pm will have to do for now. I cant be bothered writing a good story about it so I compiled an efficient list of Highlights and Lowlights. I think you should get the idea.

Highlights

• picking and subsequently eating masses of wildfruits (mainly raspberries and blueberries)
  
• taking two bush shits
• spitting on and disposing of my German ex-military training shoes (for explanation see Lowlights and photos)

Lowlights

• My German ex-military training shoes blowing out after 27 of about 150 km
• The ensuing daily struggle between the combination of my wit (depleted), 2 metres of bailing twine, a butter knife, a navigational compass and 1 metre of medical tape to keep the German ex-military training shoes on and blisters off my feet.
• Mega lowlight, the life of any poor soul that shared cabins or walked in the vapour trail following me after such consumption of wildfruits as mentioned above.