Day 87: Monday, 15 August 2011
I had been in Berlin now for two and a half weeks, and I had become quite comfortable: Sleeping in every morning, browsing the internet, exploring during the day if the weather was nice, and meeting up with friends and couchsurfers almost every evening. Life was good. But I also knew that I had to move. That's the thing with traveling: You can't become too comfortable in one place, even if you're feeling tired and don't want to leave, because all the best experiences and all of the "magic" happens when you're moving.
Well, I wasn't really leaving Berlin today for good: I had plans to go to the Highfield music festival the next weekend, and I would return to Berlin after that with Felix. In the meantime, however, I had 4 days to fill. So I decided to go to Dresden, a beautiful city that I was very keen to discover and where I knew a couple people. And given my past good experiences, I decided to hitchhike.
I started with a goodbye lunch with a new friend from Brazil that I met at Friday's couchsurfing meetup. We shared some amazing (albeit fancy) döner before I left for my hitchhiking spot.
I researched (using digihitch and hitchbase) the best places to catch a ride out of Berlin, and I decided on catching a ride outside of a couple gas stations near Schöneweide. I took the S-Bahn there in the mid-afternoon, walked to the stations and asked everyone politely for a ride. I was politely declined each time. After about 20 minutes of this, I decided to make a sign and just thumb it by the road.