The second time I start now with writing this first post, it will obviously be different and propably be shorter (and I hope better). Previously I was typing directly in the editor of the blog and when I thought I was smart to copy all what I had typed in word to save it, it all disappeared miraculously. So here we go again.
As the above already makes clear I do not always know what I am doing, just hoping everything works out. This is true for this page, I have not practiced with it as for the whole trip, no plan, no preparations. Here come the first few days.
On feb-3 I finally left Holland, much later than promised, but ok I am gone now. My first ride was only from Oosterhout to Breda but it got me on the way and I now was on the road to Antwerpen, my first planned destination, or at least direction, on a petrol station. The advantage of a petrol station is that you can ask people to take you with them and strangely enough you are much faster moving again. The next person who took me on board was an ex army guy who now worked for a company as information security manager. We spoke the whole trip from Breda to Lyon and we even touched upon Sarbane-Oxley and Basel 2, which brought back my ABN-time which looks much longer ago than 2 months. I had decided I would sleep in Lyon, unfortunately I was dropped of 20 km north and was not very successful in getting a ride for the last km to Lyon. Finally 2 Dutch girls and guy would bring me to Lyon, however the girl who was driving, kept following tom-toms instructions and tom-tom did not want to go to Lyon. After missing a couple of exits they dropped me of at the airport and I managed to get a bus to Lyon centre. I text messaged my brother for some advice on cheap hostels, but when he responded I already had chosen another. This strategy helped me enormously the next day in Barcelona, as I then got the info in time.
After a breakfast at the Rhone in freezing conditions I got on my way to Montpellier. Arie, a housemate in Delft, had told me he had friends there and that I should stop by when I was in the neighborhood. It was on my route south so it seemed like a good idea. My French ride, with whom I had a hard time communicating (I should have paid more attention in French class at school), let me out of the car after Montpellier on the autoroute. I now had no chance to go to Montpellier. I decided to try to get a ride to Barcelona with one of the many truckers. I was lucky and a Spanish guy was nuts enough to let me in his truck. He did not speak much other language than Spanish and I hardly speak Spanish, however we managed to have a good time, although 90% of what was said was lost. This propably was the reason why I left the truck on an awful spot. I walked past a dark road for about 5 km before I came in a town, where I met 2 very nice people who showed me the way to metro station with which I got in the centre of Barcelona, where I am now. Today I have walked through the city as I will tomorrow and then I think I will take a train or bus south as I am hardly able to communicate in Spanish. That is all for now. Hope you are not already asleep.
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