Perfect Amsterdamse Day! 19/4/11

Sitting in the sun smoking a joint while drinking some juice, pondering the existence of myself in this crazy big amazing world, with water lapping gently at the cement and old cobblestones of the dock. Such a beautiful beautiful day as summer comes by.

A single swan floats by, grey feathers completing its perfect white coat. A woman in a sailboat glides by, her black silky hair shimmering in the glorious sun, and a bearded man cycles past.

The water’s getting angry, as a car’s horn toots in the background. Something is disturbing the calm.

Something ominous, or something as innocent as a passing boat, whimsically flying two flags, one a maritime flag and the other a Dutch tricolour. The Federica labours past, a huge low-lying flat cargo ship. Almost with a touch of class, the black of it’s body is wrapped by a lining of white.

People making merry outside of Lava Design light cigarettes with their mugs of coffee and tea. The menacing winds threaten to crash the party but are soon overcome by rays of nourishing sunlight.

People, people, people everywhere, working, playing, cycling, conversing with each other. A lady walks her dog, her dog walking her almost just as much. Theirs is a relationship of mutual dependance, though imbalanced, it is the rarest yet the most rewarding sometimes.

I click my pen, the sound as foreign and unnatural as the sound of engines roaring and the everyday din that surrounds us, whereas the canoe that comes past is as gracious as the swan.

Time is flying, the journey that began to Haarlem and back must continue. Life goes on, as the waves or any other phenomena of nature. It will all come and go, transient and temporary states of mind induced by many things will be torn and stripped away, ending as suddenly and abruptly as it started.

The bike, trusty workhorse and close companion, awaits.

 

Train from Saigon to Quy Nhon

14-15/2/2011

I’m lying in my bunk of the train right now, with a sleeping couple below me. Not directly below of course, but in the pair of bunk beds. Given that I look very much like a Vietnamese, no one has been trying to rip me off so far, except for the lady that sold me a beer.

Is it possible that a can of beer costs 15 000 Dong? It is said that a loaf of Ban Mi bread costs only 10 000! Well, I don’t care, it’s a S$9 mistake, but then again I had a fantastic meal for free! (Later on I found out that 15 000 Dong is around S$0.90, not S$9. Sorry train people!)

The meal came courtesy of Keith, my friend’s boyfriend, who really knows how to be a good host. This I should have expected, because how else would he have gotten a girl like Shisei? She’s also very nice and this visit to Saigon reminded me of why I thought she was amazing! We went to a restaurant housed in an old colonial building and that served amazing Vietnamese food. I brought along my new Vietnamese friend Alexander, who offered to give me a lift on his moped while I was lost and confused in an internet cafe, and we had a great time with a steady flow of Saigon beer. In Vietnam, you don’t drink alone and instead you clink your glasses together every time you want to take a sip! This makes for a very merry dinner! The twist of fate that led me to meet Alexander came out of the blue, as I called my friend in the internet cafe to tell her that I didn’t have any USD or vietnamese Dong on me, and I didn’t speak any vietnamese while people hardly spoke english. The guy sitting beside me asked whether I was American and that’s how our conversation began. Alexander speaks good english, is funny and sort of cool, super hospitable (he spent 5 hours sending me around on his moped on Valentine’s Day), and he knows how to host a guest! Most of my small expenses he paid for, even refusing my compensation!

Back to the train, it’s funny that the Vietnamese train conductor tried to get 500 000 Dong from me just so that I could return to my own bunk, but right after I refused to pay her, she tried to hit on me by grabbing my book and asking me questions about it! This is really funny because she couldn’t speak nor read English, and I couldn’t speak a word of Vietnamese! Just as we were getting into a cuddly position (My arm was on the back of her chair and I was leaning over in an attempt to point out some intricacies of the English language), her supervisor popped up. She was a pretty and young conductor and I would have continued our conversation just to see where it would lead, since the train was rather spacious, at least in the cabins where I was bunking.

My adventure in Saigon has started off on the right foot, now I’m curious to see how the next few legs of my trip will go.

Saigon – Quy Nhon – Vinh – Hanoi – Thai Nguyen – Thuy Bac – Hanoi – Singapore

(It turned out to be Saigon – Dieu Tri – Quy Nhon – Vinh – Thanh Hoa – Hanoi – Thai Nguyen – Hanoi – Singapore)

 

A Story from Taiwan That Calmed Me Down

The past few days have been full of emotional turmoil for me. The tidal wave formed by all the bad news and the negative emotions of the past weeks crashed over me on Monday. Anger, disappointment and sadness would not leave me alone, and it was with their unwanted company that I went to meet Chia Meng, a good friend of mine who also directed me in my first short film.

He recounted a story that had an extraordinary effect on me.

While he was in Taiwan with some friends, they visited the grave of Teresa Teng, a famous singer that his mum liked. On the way back, they passed by a Buddhist temple that would have been rather out of the way for a casual visit. Taking this opportunity, they went into the temple.

The temple was situated in such a position that looking out in one direction, devotees could see the city from a distance. In the middle of the temple, there was a serene pool. The reverend said that devotees should keep in mind the peace and serenity that the temple offers, in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city that was in sight. The pool signified Buddha’s heart. If a stone is thrown into the pool, ripples would form, destroying the mirror-smooth surface of the water. The more stones are thrown at the same time, the more chaos there would be interrupting the water’s tranquility.

Buddha’s heart is the same as every individual’s heart. The stones represent events that happen to us, and the ripples represent the emotions they cause. We can choose to cast the stones into our hearts and disrupt the calm, or we can choose not to do so. Peace of mind will only be achieved when we choose not to allow events to affect the tranquility of our emotions.

After hearing that story, I decided to focus on maintaining the calmness of my heart and mind, and refrain from casting any stones in anymore. I hope I can keep this Zen-like outlook.

 

Muay Thai Training

Training in Progress

I spent a week training under Sert, the guy who’s back is facing the camera and is wearing the multi-coloured boxing shorts. When I first began, I thought I was not going to last through the 10 training sessions that I had waiting for me.

Patong Boxing Gym is located a short distance away from Karon and Patong Beaches, but getting to either of the beaches would require an outlay of approximately 14 euros return, so I rarely made the trip to the more touristed parts. Phuket, of course, is famous for its nightlife and associated ladies, and lady boys. However, I never had the energy to make the trip to the nightclubs or go-go bars after training.

Even if I did have the energy, my legs were way too destroyed for any movement. On Session 1, I got a huge blister on my right feet, the kind that sneaks up on you and bursts before you even notice its presence. The one on my toe came not long after that but even though I could sense its impending arrival, I did not want the trivialities that were tiny injuries to impede my training. I used all the plasters I had brought, all 20 of them, on bandaging up both the blisters and the bleeding top parts of my foot which I chafed on the heavy sandbags I was kicking. I had to get something to tape up my feet, and so I limped into town and bought some electrical insulating tape. I always knew this tape (I knew it as black tape during my bomb disposal days) was versatile, but I never knew that it could insulate my feet from the roughness of the training ground! There was nothing really wrong with the ground, but because Muay Thai involves all kinds of twisting and turning on the balls of your feet and toes, the skin on my feet tore up very fast.

For the next five days this tape saved my training life. I would wake up really early, tape up my bleeding feet, limp to training, ignore the pain during training, limp back, remove the tape, shower, eat a heavy but extremely cheap meal, read/watch a movie and take an afternoon nap, and do exactly the same thing for the evening session. By midnight exhaustion would take me over, the kind of exhaustion that I had known in the army. The army was a lot tougher mentally, since you never knew when training would end, so while Muay Thai training was tiring, it felt like a good daily routine; wake up, train, eat, sleep, train, eat, sleep.

The only time I thought of skipping sessions was at the halfway point. By then, my feet were torn up and hurt really badly, my shins were bruised and swollen from finally getting the right contact on the bag and my knees were bruised from practising my kneeing technique and I started to feel some strain in my wrists from all the punching and jabbing. The day before though, I had seen videos of my trainer’s fight where he knocked out a guy with an elbow to the head. That, plus the fact that Bo, the matriarch of the boxing gym, took it upon herself to correct my stance and technique from seeing me practise wrongly, made me have second thoughts. Bo was amazing. She was fluent in hokkien, so I managed to communicate much more with her than I could in english. We were chatting away, and in one of our conversations she offered to buy me Thai glutinous rice with fried chicken after training! That didn’t happen, because the little food-cart/motorcycle didn’t come, but it motivated me enough to train through the pain and before I knew it, my time at the gym was over.

All the trainers at the gym were amazing, having at least 2000 professional fights among them. The pictures of my training were taken during kneeing practise, since I can’t knee very well, but the kicking and sparring were the really tough ones. If I didn’t execute the right technique, I’d be taken down, and in sparring, I was getting boxed in the face if I didn’t keep my head protected enough. Sert was just messing around without any effort, but I was on the ground or getting boxed way too often! As the pictures tell, the trainers are much more muscled than me, and that is motivating me to work out more. Already I have gained 2 kgs of mass (though whether it is from overindulging during Chinese New Year or from working out is debatable), and I hope to gain a few more, in case I ever get the chance to fight at a higher level.

Most of the trainees at the gym stayed for at least a month, and you could tell by the way none of them had taped up feet. Their feet were toughened by the continuous abrasion, the skin that got ripped off replaced by a glossy layer of smooth, friction-less shell-skin. I wish I could have stayed for a few months there! I am sure that I could fight much better, and had I gained a few more kilos of mass, I would even want to fight in the ring! Such a simple, settled life that focused on getting through the next day’s training was just what I needed to shake the rust off my bones, body and mind.

Even my injured knee held up well! My left leg is much weaker than my right leg but since I was practising mostly on my left leg, I think the increased balance and strength that I gained in my left leg was good. Right now though, a week later, my knee is hurting like hell, probablu due to overexertion. I don’t dare to go for practice runs to prepare for my army run, but I’ll just have to see on the day itself whether I can grit my teeth and bear through 2.4 km of pain fast enough for a nice monetary award.

 

 

 

Phuket, Thailand

First Hotel

I’ve been in Phuket, Thailand for nearly 3 full days now. When I arrived, I was turned away from the hotel affiliated to the Muay Thai gym where I made my booking, to this place in the picture. Not too shabby! And this wasn’t even the best part of that place. I had a beautiful room in front of the swimming pool, with a huge kingsized bed. I was actually sad that I had to leave all this!

The gym’s accomodation is actually very charming too, it’s “sculpted into a cliff facing the Andaman sea”, which means it’s much further up in the hills. From here to Patong beach, the bustling tourist center of Phuket, it takes me at least half an hour by foot, or 300 thai baht (7.50 euros) by tuk tuk. The view is really beautiful here, maybe because of it’s seclusion. The gym is right across the road, so I just have to wake up, climb up the hill and cross the road to start training.

These few days I’ve been to Patong Beach only to do things that needed to be done. Patong’s beaches are so packed that finding a free spot to sit down and work on my “Thai for Beginners” is nearly impossible. Of course, this is for good reason because Patong beach is after all gorgeous. At night, it resembles a huge stag night party on the streets that matter, Soi Bangla (also known as Soi Ti-ti as a thai guy told me because ti-ti is one of the thai sounds for  sex), Soi Eric, and so on. These streets are filled with bargirls gyrating and pole-dancing their way into the hearts of men looking for company. These girls try to drag you into their ‘loving’ embraces around the bar, so it’s hard to find a place to have an uninterrupted beer along these parts. I’d need to make a special effort to visit these places, but I’d rather chill in the hills. I might visit Karon beach which equally beautiful but much less crowded, and Phuket town, the major town on the island.

Anyway, my days have been spent training, eating a lot, and studying Thai. I’m ashamed that after being to Thailand for 5 times, I am only beginning to get familiar with the complicated alphabet! Training’s tough but I’m learning a lot about muay thai. My shins are destroyed, my feet are VERY blistered both on the sole and the top side from practising kicks on the bags and pads, but I’m enjoying the challenge. It’s 11 pm, and I’m really exhausted from the 4 hours of training today!

I’ll make sure I’ll write more about training, but 4 hours per day is definitely making me a machine! Or at least I hope so.

 

Kuala Lumpur, Start of SEA 2011

Outside the airport

After a very long 17 hours, I finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

These flights took longer than my flights to Africa because I didn’t have David Herrmann as company (you should have come along!). I have been looking at the pictures from summer 2010 and the crazy adventures that I had in Istanbul and Africa made me think of so many things that would have slipped my mind if I didn’t have those photos. I’m already regretting not keeping my African journal up to date, having only written very minimally about those two months.

Long nostalgic story short, I’m going to improve on my previous feeble efforts at a journal, or die trying if the Muay Thai doesn’t kill me first.

I stepped out of the plane with a girl from France (Toulouse to be exact, more on that later), and we went to meet her good friend, also from Toulouse, with whom she was going to spend a week eating exotic foods in Penang. We grabbed some spicy food at the airport’s food court, and they really surprised me! Europeans are well known to be rather shy when it comes to adding chilli to their meals, but not them. My friend was complaining that her food wasn’t spicy enough, while I, a seasoned spicy food dude, was scrambling to get soy milk to ease the burn!

They were also more excited than me to step out into the humid nature of Malaysia, and what better place to do it than outside the airport? We got out of the sliding doors, and this view greeted us, together with 100% humidity and 30 degrees. Despite the overcast skies, it hasn’t been raining much this monsoon season, or so we’ve heard.

Breathing in the thick, humid air, gazing out at the lushness of the tropical forest and wearing only a thin shirt, I had begun my trip to a region that knows no winter or coldness, outside of the ridiculous chill of air conditioning. Now the winter depression has almost left me. All I need is to wake up in the morning, go for a swim in the pool right outside my door, head to the beach 5 minutes away to grab breakfast (and flip flops, boardshorts, other beach equipment), and I will be a new man. I’ll be…. The Man of Eternal Summer! At least for the time that I’m here, I can escape the reality of annoying exams and bad weather. My motivation’s been shot the past two months, and I hope that this trip will set my head straight for the coming semester.

 

Anyway, back to the girl from Toulouse, I can’t believe how things turn out! I just met Marie, a girl from Toulouse, and suddenly I meet these two girls from exactly the same place! Okay, they’re actually from Albi, which is a small town close to Toulouse, but still, what a coincidence!

But that’s not all! So I had a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket, and I had to take a one hour bus ride to the resort. Throughout the entire bus journey, there were two french guys beside me playing euro-techno-synth disco music from some speakers. They couldn’t speak English, but they were amazingly funny with that music on.

Thai Bus driver: “Where are you going?”
French dudes: “Patong Soup Inn”
Thai:                 “What is that?”
French dudes: “Patong Soup Inn”
Confusion, and Thai guy figures out what they are saying.
Thai:                ”Do you mean Kata or Patong”
French dudes: “My english not good, take us anywhere, it will be correct.”

I can’t capture the humour of the situation, but yeah. Anyway, I got to my resort, walked in, crossed the pool to get to my room, and the only group of people chilling by the pool were ….french! They were shouting something after me, but I couldn’t understand them.

What are the odds? Is it really a coincidence? Is it just me seeing non-existent patterns?

Anyway, I’ll take this chance to do a shout-out to my french friends: Marie and Julie, love you girls!
To my french canadian friends: Stay warm!
To my francophone rwandan friends: Amahoro!

 

IDFA Surprise Film Summary

It’s another rainy night in Amsterdam, and snow is on the forecast for tomorrow.

I just watched a Romanian IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) documentary called “The World According to Ion B.”, and it’s about a homeless Romanian man who was creating collages through the decades of social upheaval in Romania. He spent the latter part of his life drunk and dirty, but he never gave up making his collages. Someone eventually found out about his talent, and organised exhibitions for him, at the same time getting him off the streets and back on track.

At some point, he made it home to his little village (Zapodeni) and met his siblings and childhood friends, evoking strong emotions and fond memories.

Last year, his work was exhibited alongside the work of Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamps, and a little later, he had a solo exhibition in Paris.

As I watched this film, I was reminded of Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh decided to teach himself how to sketch and draw a long time before Ion, but van Gogh was extremely good at what he did. As I found out more about his life during Museum Night at the van Gogh Museum, I decided that I really should teach myself how to draw as well. Of course, saying that right after describing van Gogh rather gives off the impression that I want to emulate his achievements, but that is really far away from the truth.

I have always believed, very strongly, in my own lack of artistic ability. The only right-hemisphere-of-the-brain thing I thought I could handle was languages, but after nearly a year and a half back in the country of my birth, I still do not speak Dutch.

Either I really do not have any artistic ability, or I am not trying hard enough. I wanted to become more comfortable with music, and I think I improved, with efforts to familiarize myself with the guitar and harmonica (though I am admittedly still rather amateurish). I wanted to be able to jot down my thoughts better, and now I am writing (by hand) much more and, hopefully, better too. I’m trying to be ambidextrous but training my right hand to be as good as my left is really difficult.

I think my next two challenges will be:

1. Teach myself how to sketch and draw,

2. Become good in Dutch.

This is probably the earliest anyone has started making New Year Resolutions, but these could be mine! Wish me luck or even better, do it in Dutch. :)

 

 

On the African Road

Its been nearly two weeks since I left comfy Amsterdam to head eastwards to Africa, and everything has happened in a whirlwind since.

After Istanbul, I headed to Uganda and landed in Entebbe Airport, which is about 30 minutes away from the Ugandan Capital, Kampala.

Uganda bears many similarities to Singapore: it used to be a British colony, it got independence in 1962, which is one year earlier than Singapore, and the climate is pretty hot and humid too.

One major difference between Kampala and Singapore are the roads. The roads in Kampala are insane. There are few traffic lights around, and those around aren’t noticed much by drivers. I took the bodah-bodah (motorcycle taxis) and it was like crazy taxi (an arcade game where you have to drive a taxi as fast as possible, with as little regard to safety as possible) on two wheels. With a heavy backpack behind, I nearly fell off my ride a couple of times.

I had to take the midnight bus to Rwanda, since the morning bus was too full. Its crazy how packed it was, and just as I thought I lucked out by getting an individual seat, a massive Ugandan dude came out of nowhere and put himself into my seat. Honestly, this seat was meant for one person, one and a half at most, and he sat there and elbowed me into the armrest.

Two hours into the worst bus ride in my life, at 2 am in the morning, I had to do something even if it got me killed. I told the massive dude to get another seat, because it was a rough journey for me. I think he was bewildered at first, a skinny asian muzungu (foreigner) asking him to move, but in the end he told me to put up with it.

I was actually quite happy not to be stabbed, so I sat down beside him and tried to sleep through the rest of the night. Surprisingly, Big Man tried to give me a little more space (which didn’t amount to much, but i give him a ten for effort), and I reached the Uganda-Rwanda border.

It took us an hour to clear the border, because in Africa, queuing is not a very popular idea. People kept trying, and succeeding, in cutting our line, until I got fed up and slithered in between the one centimeter space between two sneaky, queue-jumping Kenyans. These kiswahili-speaking Kenyans also tried to steal my wallet, but I was lucky he was a really bad thief, because he felt my ass up at least twice before he tried to take my wallet, by which time I had removed it already, and I gave him a cheeky smile and apologized for removing my wallet to a safer location.

After a harrowing night, I finally got off the African road, into Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. Of course, nothing could go smoothly for me, so the moment I stepped off the bus at 6 am in the morning, the entire city had to suffer a blackout.

I made my way out by special hire taxi to Patrick’s place and ended my time on the road completely exhausted on a bed shared by a Rwandan, a German, and me.

 

How To Hitchhike from Berlin To Amsterdam

Tomorrow will be another day on the roads, but this time in the reverse direction, from Berlin to Amsterdam. The last time that I did this I was alone, but I felt that it was much easier compared to the route from Amsterdam to Berlin.

Why?

A few hypothetical reasons:

1. Cars heading east from Berlin’s hitchhiking spots are mostly heading to Hannover or even further east. That’s the first ride you should get, at least to Hannover, or to Osnabruck.

2. The first few rides are much longer, due to the bigger distances in Germany.  So within two (easily obtainable) rides, its possible, and in fact highly probable, that you can be 400km closer to Amsterdam.

3. The further east, the less grumpy germans, the more friendly dutch people! No offense to my dear German friends. It always makes me happy meeting cheery people, who even though they are extremely helpful, are sometimes unfortunately heading elsewhere. Much better than getting flat out rejections in Deutsch with unhappy (I sometimes suspect they are even angry) facial expressions.

Anyway, enough of my hypothesizing. Here goes:

1. From anywhere in Berlin, get the S-bahn S1 towards Wannsee, and stop at the station called Nicholassee. From there, get out on the right, cross the pedestrian walking bridge that goes over a highway, and take a right into a smaller pathway, and a petrol station (Grunewald West) will appear.

2. At that station there are a few hitchhikers sometimes.

I would suggest holding out for a first ride to Hannover, or try asking the yellow number plates for a ride all the way to Holland. The highway you need to be on is the A2, aka E30, it has two names, but the germans know it more widely as the A2.

* Hitchwiki.org suggests taking any ride that is heading south or east and dropping at the service station Michendorf West, from where you can get rides going east and south to Munich too, but personally I prefer to take as little rides as possible. Hitchwiki.org also has directions for heading to Michendorf West by tram, so hit them up for tips.

3. Choose your ride wisely, and you should end up either in Hannover or Osnabruck. If your driver is heading to Hannover, ask to drop at Lehrte, which is a little bit before Hannover. Its easy to get another ride west, at least to Osnabruck.

If your ride is heading to Osnabruck or any number of small towns in that area, I suggest stopping at Auetal, which is the last gas station before Holland by the highway A2. There are a few more further down, but they are in the country side with less traffic.

Also, Auetal is the last gas station before the highway A2 changes into the highway A30, so if your driver is not going on A30, get off here.

4. From Auetal, it is possible to get a ride to Holland. Try rejecting rides not heading to Holland but if you really want to take every other ride, reject the ones heading to Bad Oeynhausen, because it’s nearby with less traffic. Also, Ibenburen, with a BK and Subway Sanwiches, isn’t the best place to be.

The last (good) place before Holland to stop is the rest area Emstal. Everything past Auetal is on the highway A30, and no longer the A2.

5. From wherever you have reached, get a ride to Holland and you’ll be straight on the dutch highway A1, heading to Amsterdam.

6. Get a ride to at least a little before Amersfoort, where there’s a petrol station. From there, you can choose if you want to go to Utrecht and hitchhike to Amsterdam from there, or straight to Amsterdam. Both are no problem.

From Utrecht however, keep in mind that you will need to be dropped on the highway A2 (dutch version) heading North.

Afterword:

Anyway, the moment you enter Holland, hitchhiking should be considerably easier. I even got a ride straight from Arnhem to Amsterdam within 2 minutes of standing by the road side with a sign!

Anyway, my time challenge the previous time didn’t work out because I was stuck at Magdeburg for 2 hours. Otherwise I would have made it with plenty of time. So this time, I changed my challenge. I used ONE piece of cardboard to get from Amsterdam to Berlin, with Oost, Duitsland on one side, and Berlin on the other, so I’ll try coming back to Amsterdam with one piece of cardboard too, probably saying West, Niederland and Amsterdam.

Good luck and safe journey!

 

How to Hitchhike from Amsterdam to Berlin

I will be hitchhiking to Berlin tomorrow. I’ve done it a couple of times to Berlin, and once back, so I’m going to share what I know about going to Berlin under 10 hours for free:

1. Get a metro from Amsterdam Central to Amstel Station. Get out to the official hitchhiking spot at Amstel station, by the bus stop behind Fortis (or the petrol station 50m down the road S112 of highway A1, behind the bend.) and put your sign out, for anywhere in the east of Amsterdam to Germany. You can probably get a ride to Amersfoort or Hengelo, or if you’re lucky, to Germany.

2. On the highway A1, the possible stops are before the first exit to Amersfoort, or after Hengelo, at exit 31. Hengelo is the last petrol station in the Netherlands, before crossing the border. Both of these are service stations that have some drivers going to Germany.

3. After crossing the border, you will be on Highway A30, heading to Berlin via Osnabruck and Hannover. The first stop after the border is a Brockbachtal before Osnabruck, but you don’t want to be there because the majority of the folks are truckers, and truckers are sometimes not allowed to pick up hitchhikers. There is a small car park further down too, where you can get a ride if you’re lucky. I was there in the winter, so not too many people were around.

If your ride is heading to Bremen/Hamburg, you can still get a lift until a Petrol Station after the exit Osnabruck. Try not to take any other stops suggested by the drivers, as you will probably be stuck there with a lot of drivers from the region and who are not looking to make long drives.

4. Once you get to Hannover, you will get a ride to Berlin in no time. If anyone is on that highway at that service station, chances are that they are heading to the capital of Germany. You might get a chatty driver too, because most of the drivers that have given me rides along this route are highly educated professionals with in-depth local knowledge to share in English. Potsdam is good, but try to drop at Rasthof Michendorf, and hope for a ride in. Michendorf itself also has a connection to Berlin.

5. Once you’re in the whereabouts of Berlin, it shouldn’t be a problem getting a U/S-bahn to anywhere you want. U/s-bahns run pretty much everywhere for 2.10 euros. Even from Potsdam Hbf or other outlying areas it costs only 2.60 euros.

However, most of the times the drivers will be quite helpful and drive you to a metro station that has a more convenient connection or even to the location itself.

So, if you follow all of the above directions, and reject every other ride who is heading “somewhere else nearby” but “knows a good spot for hitchhikers”, you should be able to make it under 10 hours. I’ll be trying for 9 tomorrow!

XXX from Amsterdam,

Kelvin