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
