Autobahn at night – Photo by Christian
It was hot in the mid-morning sun as I waited along the side of the autobahn with two German policemen rifling through my belongings. Nearly everything in my backpack was spread across the hood of the two-door Škoda car I’d been riding in. My heart raced and I rocked back and forth while I considered what the inside of a jail cell might look like on the Czech/German border.
My driver, Tomáš, stood nearby and spoke no English or German, so he didn’t know what was going on. He’d picked me up hitchhiking just outside Ústí nad Labem and knew me for less than an hour.
His eyes bulged with fear and fury when he asked me in Czech, “What is happening?”
Half-convinced that we were going to jail, I tried not to look nervous when I reassured him in his native language.
“It’s okay. I’m not a dealer,” I said.
We both looked at the pile of my things being searched. Various shirts, jeans, shorts, socks, underwear, a bright red hipster jacket, a Walkman, several cassettes, a paperback of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, rolling papers, half a dozen packs of Gauloises cigarettes, and a journal were all littered across the top of the car.
A stern-looking, brown-haired policeman with a matching brown mustache held my passport and kept slapping it into the palm of his other hand. His blond partner, clean-shaven, and hefting a significant beer belly, pulled a large, paper-wrapped package out from the bottom of my backpack.
He turned to me and asked in English, “What’s this, you?”
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Hitchhiking was in my blood. I was named after a hitchhiker by my hippie parents. Before I was born, they picked up a man named Kip Gentry in a blizzard somewhere between Wyoming and Nebraska. Later, I received Kip’s last name as my first.
So, it wasn’t the first time I hitchhiked, but it was the first time German cops were threatening me with jail time while getting a ride.
22 years old, I was sweating and anxious in my steel-toed boots, cut-off jean shorts, and white tank top. The goatee under my chin matched the color of my short, Caesar-cut hairdo, which was combed downward toward my deep-set eyes that always made me appear stoned. I looked like a drug dealer, even though I wasn’t.
I was hitchhiking from Prague to Amsterdam to sell a literary magazine, and I hoped feverishly that there was nothing illegal hiding in my backpack. I certainly wasn’t a saint, so anything was possible.
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It was late June 1995, and I’d been living in the Czech Republic for six months working as a club DJ. I was also an editor and marketing manager for Yazzyk Magazine. The publication was an independent East European art and literature periodical with a small budget, and we were hoping to enter the Western European marketplace.
Magazines were rarely published online in 1995 and we didn’t have the money to ship copies, so Yazzyk asked me to travel to The Netherlands and get the new issue on the shelves. They said I could keep the revenue to pay for my travel expenses.
I was a naive, young American looking for adventure, so I volunteered to travel to the capital of Holland, and I decided to hitchhike most of the way to save money because I was broke.
Tomáš was my first ride of the day.
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Several hours earlier, I used the inexpensive Czech train system to get me near the border and I boarded a 5:00 am slow train from Prague. I arrived in Ústí nad Labem three hours later, threw on my heavy backpack, and walked to the edge of the small city where the highway ran.
The summer sun climbed into the sky among the green hills as I trudged until I found a place on the roadway. Then, I turned around and stuck out my right thumb near an on-ramp.
It was past 9:00 am when Tomáš pulled over and I threw my backpack into his car, which was strangely empty of backseats.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To The Netherlands. Rotterdam by tonight.”
As we rolled down the road, he didn’t smile much, but after exchanging names and learning I was from San Francisco, his curiosity grew.
“What do you do in my country?” he asked.
“Many things,” I said.
“Me too,” he said. Czechs often had several ways to make money. “Like what?”
”I’m a DJ and I work for a magazine.”
“Why are you going so far?”
“I’m selling the magazine in Holland. But first I’m going to a music festival with my Dutch friend. Pleasure before business.”
Tomáš nodded with understanding and continued driving quietly.
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My Dutch friend was another DJ named Sacco, and I was meeting him in Rotterdam for the festival. Sacco had asked me to bring the Gauloises and rolling papers because they were cheaper in Prague.
When Tomáš and I got to the border to have our passports stamped, the tobacco items were one of the reasons why the police pulled us out of the car. They thought it was going to be used to roll spliffs. Cannabis was illegal in Germany then.
The other reason we were dragged onto the asphalt to be searched was my passport photo. My picture had been taken two years earlier when I worked and played in the rock clubs of Seattle during the grunge years. The photo was far from flattering; I looked like a junkie.
Once the police took a look at the pasty white, long-haired young hoodlum picture on my passport, they demanded we exit the car. And after they found the rolling papers and cigarettes, they thought I was trafficking something.
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With the large, suspicious package in his hands, the heavy blond policeman waited impatiently for my answer to his question.
I said, “Those are magazines. I’m selling them in Amsterdam.”
He rolled his eyes and immediately tore through the paper. When he looked down at the colorful cover with foreign authors’ names on it, he looked confused.
Yazzyk Magazine cover – “Borders, Homelands, and Exiles” issue – Photo owned by the author
Then, they let us go.
Tomáš was silent when we drove away and he dropped me off before we even reached Dresden. Visibly angry, he never said another word. He just had me get out at a rest stop and roared off in his Škoda.
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My backpack felt even heavier when I stuck out my thumb again. Muscle pain was a chronic condition I suffered from, so rather than standing in one place, I’d walk up the roadway and back to make my back feel better, careful not to walk on the fast-moving autobahn. When I heard a group of cars approaching, I’d flash my thumb near the on-ramp.
It was 900 kilometers from Prague to Rotterdam and it took nine hours to drive by car. At that point, I’d traveled only 150 kilometers.
The next two hours were long as the sun rose higher. Cars whizzed past me and my back was in agony. No cars wanted to pick me up. I grew tired, frustrated, and ached with each step.
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Without warning, I heard a buzzing engine behind me and before I could turn around, a white Volkswagen Beetle raced past, then squealed to a halt on the side of the road kicking up gravel.
I walked to the passenger door, opened it, and a round-faced, middle-aged woman turned and said, “Hallo!” followed by German words I didn’t understand.
“Rotterdam?” I asked.
“Okay!” she said gleefully. “I am Anna.” And she waved me inside with a generous expression.
We began driving and I managed to use the only German words I knew. Anna giggled at me, bounced in her seat like an aged cherub, and switched on the radio. ABBA was playing and the song Fernando filled the tiny car.
Exhausted from the day, the music was a disco lullaby, and I fell completely asleep.
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When I woke, I had no idea how long I’d slept or how far we’d gone, but the car was stopped. Anna was quietly idling, grinning, and waiting anxiously for me to get out of her car in the middle of nowhere near a farm field. I felt like a lost toddler as I rubbed my blurry eyes, got my legs into the road, and pulled my pack out just in time as she pulled away with the car door flapping.
The entire ride felt imaginary; Anna was the strange driver of a carriage ride in a fairy tale.
With no idea where I was, I started walking back down this strange side road. My left leg was cramping when I saw a sign ahead that read Leipzig.
I was still over 650 kilometers away from Rotterdam. It was 1:00 pm, I had a long way to go, and severe bolts of pain were shooting down my back into my left hip and leg. There was no way to go but forward.
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Several long hours passed until I saw a gorgeous, charcoal-colored BMW ahead. It was humming and waiting mysteriously for me by a petrol station.
I got to the side of the vehicle and a darkly tinted window rolled down revealing a handsome, older man wearing John Lennon-styled round glasses behind the wheel.
“Can you roll cigarettes?” he asked with a Dutch accent.
I replied, “Yes, I can.”
He smiled.
“Good.”
Then, he popped the trunk. I put my backpack inside, walked back to the passenger side, got in, and slid into the seat next to him. It felt like a soft leather cloud under me.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Where are you from and where are you going?”
“I’m from San Francisco, but I live in Prague. I’m going to Rotterdam tonight and eventually to Amsterdam.”
“Okay, San Francisco,” he said as if the city were my name. “Toward Rotterdam then. I hope you like to go fast.”
He got back on the autobahn and we took off at the speed of sound.
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I had no idea how far my Dutch driver would take me. There was never a way to know who might pick me up when I was hitchhiking. Each ride meant strange, new characters, who took me an unknown distance and deposited me on the roadside. Putting my thumb out invited possibility. During each ride, I always hoped for the best, but I stayed vigilant and aware because I’d been in difficult and dangerous situations.
As we flew by cars, we were going absurdly fast. My driver kept his left hand on the wheel, reached for the glove box with his right, and said, “I’m Dr. Roland.”
He pulled a packet of rolling tobacco out and dropped it in my lap.
“As long as you keep rolling me cigarettes, I’ll take you to Utrecht. I’m headed home from a conference. My wife is waiting for me in the Randstad.”
I brightened with excitement. This was great news. Utrecht was close to Rotterdam.
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I began to roll a cigarette and Dr. Roland slid a CD into the car’s stereo. Then, I heard a familiar sound; the opening guitar riff of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. I knew every lyric. It was an album from a band I loved. Released the same year my parents had picked up Kip Gentry hitchhiking on the side of the road.
The music swelled up in rock ’n’ roll splendor and I handed Dr. Roland the rolled cigarette. He lit it, took a drag, and blew a dragon tail of smoke out of his cracked window. Afterward, he settled back into his seat and increased our speed even more.
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Afternoon eased into dusk and few words were spoken as both of us were lost in rapturous classic rock. Hour by hour, we listened to Jethro Tull.
When the sun went down and Thick as a Brick faded out, Dr. Roland said, “Let’s get some food. I’ll buy.”
We pulled into an odd, dimly lit, American-style cafe with orange booths. The menu was in Dutch. That meant we had reached The Netherlands. We were outside Arnhem, Utrecht was close, and Rotterdam was just beyond.
Dr. Roland looked over the top of his menu and said, “So, San Francisco, I still don’t know your official name.”
“Gentry. It’s a pleasure to travel with you, Doctor,” I said.
“Aaah, the pleasure is mine. We have arrived in Holland. Let’s get some Dutch apple pie.”
Our orders arrived, I dove into my slice, and Dr. Roland left to make a call.
I was nearly finished when he returned, and said, “I called my wife and I’ve told her I’ve been delayed. I’m taking you to Rotterdam. She can wait. I will get you where you need to be.”
Yazzyk Magazine – “Magic, Madness, and Mysticism” issue – Photo owned by the author
The doctor’s generosity was a gift. I had nothing to offer but rolled cigarettes and companionship. Just a fellow traveler nodding his head in time to magnificent, old songs.
He was only my third ride that day and he took me into the heart of Rotterdam. It was a seven-hour drive and the doctor got me there in five. Then, he tipped his glasses as a gesture of goodbye and drove off into the night like a wisp of cigarette smoke.
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Sacco and I went to the Metropolis Music Festival the next day with incredible sets by EDM acts Zion Train and Mad Professor, and we slept in a record store owned by a friend that night. When I woke up in my sleeping bag between the aisles of vinyl, I knew I still needed to get to my destination: Amsterdam.
A train took me to the center of the city and I found my way to the Museumplein. I had the address of an interested vendor at a kiosk there. The bright-eyed and bearded old Dutchman who owned it decided to buy every Yazzyk Magazine I had with me.
When I watched him place one of the magazines on the shelf with the cover facing outward, I felt accomplished. Then, I turned and walked away with a much lighter backpack slung over my shoulder and my pocket full of Dutch guilders.
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As I walked through Amsterdam, I knew I needed to get back to Prague soon. I was booked to DJ the Yazzyk release party.
A week later, I threw my thumb out on the road and hitchhiked from Amsterdam back to Prague. Moving one ride at a time. Open to possibility at every passenger door.