Hitchhiking, or not knowing what you're doing.

After being dropped off by the bus driver in Barcelona, I said goodbye to the people that also got out there. Not knowing that I had apparently insulted The Rain God the day before, I made my way on the way out of town. A couple of minutes later it started pouring buckets and my shoes instantly soaked up all the water. I found a spot covered from the rain and sat down to eat a salad and plan my approach. After taking the Metro further out of town, I searched for a spot for about 2 hours, before jumping a fence and standing right next to the highway.

Writing a sign in Barcelona. 8:00.

Twenty minutes later a car stops. The driver asks me in mumbling Hispanic where I'm going. "France", I say. "We're not going there, my friend.", he answes. I convince him to at least take me to the next gas station. That he does.

There, I felt stuck. Nobody wanted to take me with them. I asked Germans, French, Italians even people from Czechia. None of them. So I decided to go back to the highway again. Sign in hand, I stood in the drizzle. Cars, trucks and vans passed. Some full of people, some only carrying a single person. People looking at me as if I were a mass murderer, a psychopath. Some people even scream out their windows at me. Maybe I'm not so likeable when I can't joke around.

Frustrated, I return to the gas station. Cellphone in hand, I scroll mindlessly, trying to get my motivation back by suffocating my brain of all the Dopamine it can produce. Suddenly, a car stops just in front of where I'm sitting and a guy yells out of the car: "Hey, come in! You want to go to France, no?". I'm flabbergasted. Of course I want to go to France, how does he know?

He saw me on the highway but couldn't stop in time, so he turned around and came back again. What a man. He and his girlfriend took me all to Perpignan, close to the French-Spanish border. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture with them.