We left Morgan a bit later than planned. I really didn’t sleep well with the prospect of waking up at 5AM. We started of taking a bus out of Montreal, at 9:16. Hitching in Quebec is easy. We had a couple of short rides, and then a ride down to Burlington, a college town in Vermont (in the US, the State of Cheese). Like most college towns, it was easy to hitch out of there. But then we were in a shitty spot. We waited a long time, till we finally walked to a traffic light, where someone was so friendly to drive out of his way. amylin prefers “on-ramp hitching”, that is waiting at on-ramps, but our luck with that had been mediocre in the US, so I decided to change strategy and be dropped at a rest area. The first guy we saw asked if we were hiking, and I said “well, we’re hitchhiking”, and we were treated to a long ride and an interesting life story. We made it to Boston that night where we had interesting conversations about Esperanto, veganism and (not for me) push-bikes with our hosts.
The next day we met up with John and his wife. After fruitfully working together on CS and later BeWelcome, for almost one year, it was great to finally meet John.
Later that day we took the Chinatown bus to NYC and went all the way to the upper point of Manhattan. The next day we walked a lot, saw some German thing at the Goethe Institut, with pictures and some dude who was going to go around the world with his motorcycle. The guy taking pictures was very interested in amylin and me. Rightly so, we were by far the most colorful people around. Friday I had to say bye to amylin 
and take a plane to Dublin. My flight arrived in the very early morning, and I basically had a stop-over of 23 hours. Fortunately, through BeWelcome I had found out that Matthew, who was my guest in Paris in 2004, was now living in Dublin. So I had a place to crash for a couple of hours.
The check-in for my next flight (with another Irish low budget company) was at 4 in the morning. Since there’s no nightly public transport, nor cheap taxis, I had to take my bus there at 23:00.
I arrived at Treviso around 9AM. I slept a bit in the first train, changed to the other one, and then got to Verona, to find out that there was a train strike, and no trains going north until after 21:00. Shit!
Well, just hitchhike, I thought. I saw a car in front of the station, and fortunately they took me to a better spot. But, not too great. So, from there I started walking, and walking. Into a bar, for a toilet, a pen (for my sign) and a cola. Then, more walking. Walking. Walking. And I walked more. I started to feel quite unhappy about all the Italians that were speeding by without stopping when someone finally stopped and took me for 15 km or so. From there, same story.
Italians are wary of strangers!
I ended up on a spot where I had found a ride straight to Trento the first time. But I wasn’t so lucky this time. I was getting thirsty. I saw some black people in the backyard of a house and they were from Ghana and very nice. A guy gave me a big bottle of mineral water.
After a while I decided to walk. And walk. Until there was a point in the road with construction work and a traffic light where all cars had to stop for a while. Finally I saw a small Fiat and got my ride.
Until a couple of kilometers before Roveretto, where I was picked up after not too long. By a very friendly Albanian couple, who started explaining that Italians are bastards. They dropped me off at the station, where the trains still weren’t going. So at 19:00 I finally took a bus to Trento, where I was treated to an excellent vegetarian meal. I woke up at 16:00 this afternoon…
I miss you.
ciao!
welcome back to Europe. i did not go to Trento while you were abroad and went straight south from Venezia.
anyway, Sicily is not a place for me to work, so i went back to Berlin. will look into BW when i moved into a flatshare (which might be an undogmatic commune, practising intergalactic cybercommunism).
dunno if you had ever been to southern Italy, but all the bad things you encounter in the north are worse. but charming.
arre,
Ciao! In Italy I’ve never been South from Sabbaudia (90 km South from Rome). Intergalactic cybercommunism sounds great, I hope amylin will be back in Europe, so we can come and visit you in Berlin - by thumb! Also check into Crash at Mine, it’s more ad-hoc, and there’s the plan to start with a just-for-geeks (or at least internet junkies) hospitality exchange network, this month
my only hitch-hiking experience outside service areas in italy was from como to milano (50 km), i waited about an hour at the drive-up. so i won’t even bother trying smaller roads then.. uh, forgot, i only waited 5 min with a big genova sign at the toll station leading out of pisa a few days ago. i thought it was pretty cool of the young mother to stop there.
apart from that asking every single person that i see at service areas including staff (hitch-spamming, hehe) worked reasonably well for me. new to me were people lying straight to my face, when i asked them if they are going my way. i’m not sure which one i prefer, this or some germans that say, ‘yes, i’m going this way, but i don’t take hitch-hikers.’
immigrants or young people without fancy sunglasses (if you find any!) are always a good bet.