Each wait, each stop, gives you another section of the universe; the intensity in the multiplicity of detail at last takes over from the spectacular, the tourist spot, the out-of-the-ordinary which is so boring after a while. My discovery of the zen nature of experience passed an important juncture on one of the most mundane travel experiences possible, the train from Nottingham to Birmingham, May 1989. Every now and again it came to halt, and I stared out at the thistles waving slowly in the wind and realized again that each one was different; then I watched small houses in council estates and felt the warmth of imagined people, each with their own purpose or lack of it. But I was in love.
I still wonder however how to reconcile this opening to the world with the sickness you feel rising as you realise that nobody is going to stop for a bearded stranger standing by a small roundabout outside Porsgrunn at 2 o'clock in the morning trying to get onto the E18 for Oslo. The best place to stand is too dark because of a malfunctioning streetlamp; almost all the traffic is local and in the wrong direction; it is getting cold in a T-shirt; a wish to be home in bed.
I was also exhausted after a 10-12 hour drive from Bergen along the Haugesund road, with two other hitchers and a fairly suspect marine cadet driving an old Volvo Amazon, sucking snuff. Maybe I was just sick of Norway; the place where people ask for money to give you a lift. This guy first got us hitchers to split on the ticket for the Hardanger Fjord ferry; then around Odda (a nasty place at the end of a fjord full of poisonous chemicals) he asks us to split on the petrol. Fair enough, 50 kroner each, and we're a heavy load. But you don't ask this sort of thing halfway; you ask at the beginning of the ride (earning money by picking up hitchers is a typically Norwegian idea).
We'd all arrived in Bergen on the boat from Newcastle; us and at least two other hitchers, German Alternativen. Us was a German teaching student on his way to a Waldorf conference in Stockholm after visiting a school in Scotland; and an Englishmen visiting a friend in Oslo. I'd met the German on the boat, along with some other strange people. The ferry takes 24 hours to cross the North Sea (sunsets, oil rigs beeping like small computers in the fog); at night many of the chair sleepers without cabin beds creeping out to lie on the flat floors of the corridors; I was learning to sleep (an art essential to travel) still; this time, with a hair-band over my eyes, I woke late for once.
Bergen was a long drag with packs along crowded shopping streets: "It's my aim to be the first hitch-hiker to get a lift with a pedestrian!" I shouted at the others as I started thumbing outside a cosmetics shop. They stayed at some lights while I rushed on ahead to check out the situation round the bend. I think my handbook was a bit out of date; there was a new bypass. One of the local freaks told me that this was a useless place to stand: "you have to go back along this slip-road by two busstops - I know, I've hitched a lot," she said. I pondered whether good places for women to stand are good places for men to stand. The others turned up after an hour, and we decided to walk on out of town; found a really good place. The Englishman checking out the petrol station then made contact with our marine.
In the end I did get my ride (hitch no.58 this Summer) out of Porsgrunn, arriving in Oslo around four: dropped off at Lysaker, I walked a few kilometers trying in vain to get a lift; up towards Egil's place. But I wanted to sleep in my own bed. In the end I had got so far that I managed to talk a taxi-driver into driving me. I had only 60 kroner. Sitting talking to this very steady and balanced middle-aged Pakistani in his sleak mercedes was comforting; he wanted to know what hitching around Europe was like, and carefully said "javel, javel" in a slow voice at all the right places.