Exact hitchhiking spots

Here is a list of the exact spots I stood when hitchhiking.
Many of them have streetview enabled, so if you click the link you'll be able to see exactly what I saw when I stood there with my thumb in the air :)
The times in brackets behind the links indicate how long I approximately had to wait at that spot .

Day 1

1. Antwerpsesteenweg [2 min]
2. Up-ramp E19 [15 min]
3. Gas station E311 (street view) [0 min]
4. Gas station E232 (street view) [10-15 min]

Day 2

1. Out of Zwolle (streetview) [1 hour]
2. East of Meppel (streetview) [15 min]
3. South of Hoogeveen (streetview) [1 hour]
4. Direction of Germany (streetview) [3 hours]
5. North of Meppen [25 min]
6. Gas station direction Cloppenburg [30 min]
7. In Cloppenburg, direction Oldenburg [15 min]

Day 3

1. Central station Oldenburg, shared group ticket to Hamburg [3+ hours]

Day 4

1. Getting out of Hamburg (streetview) [1 hour 20 min]
2. South of Flensburg [20-30 min]
3. Bus 1 to Kruså, DK [20 min]
4. At the German-Danish border (streetview)  [15 min]
   You can see a bunch of flag poles in the distance, that's the border

Day 5

1. Out of Haderslev (streetview) [0 min (excluding walking to the spot)]
2. At a reststop north of Kolding (streetview) [40 min]
   this place changed a lot since the pictures were taken, no gas pumps anymore IIRC
3. Another reststop, west of Aarhus (streetview) [40 min]

Day 6

1. Out of Aalborg (streetview) [45 min]
2. South of Fredrikshaven (streetview) [20 min]
3. West of Fredrikshaven, going to Hirtshals (streetview) [1 hour 30 min]
   Even though the waiting time was only 1h30m I probably was there way longer than that since I had to walk away from Fredrikshaven center.
4. Road to Hirtshals (streetview) [30 min]

Day 7

1. Where I took the ferry (Hirtshals - Kristiansand)

Day 8

1. Highway out of Kristiansand (streetview) [40 min]
2. Lyngdal to Stavanger (streetview) [1 hour]
3. Bus to Hommersåk (streetview)

Day 8: Kristiansand - Stavanger (Hommersåk)

The next morning dropped me off at a good place to start hitchhiking.
Apparently most of the highways in Norway have a speed limit of 80 kph, which is quite understandable if you see the highways, they make a lot of turns around mountains and hills.
Another somewhat weird difference compared to other west European highways is that Norwegian highways have bus stops next to them.
A bus stop is a good place to hitchhike because cars have a lot of space to stop behind you, so that's where I started.

Norwegian highway with a bus stop

I had to wait for about 30-40 minutes before a truck stopped on the dashed line between the bus stop and the right most driving lane.
The first trucker to stop in the entire trip!
He told me about the time that he picked up a family of Polish people and let them stay at his place for a while since they didn't have a place to go to. Apparently they ate a lot :)
 He was running low on gas so he tanked up (for 350 EUR O_o). If you tank for more than a certain amount you get a free bag of pastries, which he got.
I got one of them, they tasted quite good :)
He dropped me off in Lyngdal, a little after a truck stop that Fredrik told me about as well.

Lyngdal

Unfortunately it was raining on and off so it was hard to use the sign I made, When I stepped out of the truck it had fallen in a puddle of water and that together with the rain made it very floppy.
After about an hour or so I got picked up by a couple. The girl was from France and the Guy from Germany.
She worked in the HR department of a company and he was a doctorate student writing his thesis.
They were on their way to Stavanger which was awesome for me because that meant that this was my last ride of the day.
Along the way they shared some food with me (apparently they bought way too much in Sweden) and I gave them my last Danish Krones (they would return to Denmark in a few days).

After arriving in Sandnes (South of Stavanger and Hommersåk) I bought a bus ticket and took the bus towards Hommersåk where I met up with a friend of mine, Monica.

Day 7: Hirtshals – Kristiansand

The next morning I left for the ferry check in. After 2 hours of waiting I could board the boat. Nothing very Interesting happened, I mainly used the time to write in my journal and to type it over on the pc.
I noticed 2 Belgian families on the ferry.

Arriving at the ferry

After getting off in Kristiansand I met with Fredrik, an internet buddy who I’ve known for 6 years but never met in real life before.
After dropping off my stuff at his place we went to the supermarket to buy some food.
People in Denmark were saying stuff was expensive in their shops, but that’s nothing compared to Norway.
A 0.5L bottle of cola costs 2.5€, a liter of gasoline 20NOK, also about 2.5€
After getting back home I started putting the blog posts online.

I didn't find a CouchSurfing host for Stavanger so next week I'll be sleeping solely in my tent. This also means I'll have trouble recharging my laptop and cellphone and won't be able to post blog posts.
I still need to find a solution for the electricity problem...
All of the photos up till now can be found here.

Day 6 bis: Hirtshals

I walked around in the town and spent some time on the beach.

Fiskefest in Hirtshals

A view of the beach from where I sat

Alcohol for the Norwegians in a local Aldi

In the evening I ate something at a local diner thing and went looking for a place to put up my tent. There was a camping place nearby so I went and checked out what it would cost to camp legally.
It costs 20€ for one person for one night for an itty bity tent… What a fucking rip off.

I went looking for alternatives. One thing I thought of was putting up my tent in a nearby forest, but first I asked around a bit to see if it was possible to put it up in someone’s garden.
Luckily, third time was the charm and I found a Danish woman who could speak Dutch because she does a lot of her business with Belgians (selling Fish)
There were a few children playing in the yard and I could try out some of my Norwegian on them.
The family was very generous, giving me a few soda cans and offering dinner (but I already ate, as said before)

Day 6: Aalborg–Hirtshals

I was recommended by every Dane I encountered to go see Skagen, at the nothernmost tip of Denmark.
The first ride I found in Aalborg went somewhere a little south of Fredrikshaven.

It was a couple on their way to pick up their camper.
Not much was said.

Where they dropped me off

I was dropped of at a road going to Fredrikshaven and was picked up there by an older man on his way to his son who had just bought a house.

I went to the trainstation in Fredrikshaven to check out the prices of tickets to Skagen. They were quite expensive, a retour ticket would cost over 15 eur and then I still needed to get to Hirsthals in time.
So I decided to continue to Hirsthals instead and seeing Skagen the next time I’m in Denmark.

Fredrikshaven

I walked to the west, to a large road going to Hjorring.It was a commercial street with lots of shops to the side.
None of the cars stopped, I guess most of them were just there to shop.
This is also where I met the first genuine douchebag on the road. Of course it was a muscle head with his bimbo girlfriend next to him. He drove past me very fast and when the car near me he swerved it out to my direction, acting like he was going to drive me over. Must be nice to know that I came almost 1000 KM having hundreds of cars drive past me where the worst I got was a look of indifference and then there you are, the shit of society.

I walked down the street where the shops ended and I was soon picked up by an older lady who spoke only Danish.
I was happy to be able to use the little Norwegian I know to explain where I was headed and she dropped me off at a road going straight to Hirsthals.

Road to Hirtshals

There a man picked me up who also barely spoke any English.
He drove me straight to the Fjordline ferry check in.

Day 5 bis: Aalborg

Because of the weather Hjalte’s plans changed and we could meet earlier. He had to do some shopping so I joined im in that. After that we went back to his apartment where I met his girlfriend Kira.
Hjalte is  a student of medicine and Kira of communication.
After meeting I had some time again to write in my journal.

Hjalte gave me a big tour of Aalborg  while we talked about various things.
When we arrived back Kira had prepared a delicious dinner with potato salad, regular salad, ham and olives.

Some time after dinner the three of us went to grab a beer at a local bar where we talked some more. Hjalte was going to make a 22KM longboard trip with Kira as a supporter next to him on a bike.

The next day we had breakfast together (first time I ate unprepared oatmeal and milk) and I continued my journey.

Day 5: Haderslev – Aalborg

The next morning Ida prepared some leftover pasta as breakfast.
I then left for the hitchhiking sport Malthe described the day before.

On my way out of Haderslev

When I was about 50 meters from the spot (walking backwards to the spot with my thumb in the air) and even before I arrived at the spot someone already stopped who was on route to somewhere near Kolding.

He was on his way to an apartment he had just bought and was going to inspect the carpenter’s work.
He had picked up hitchhikers before he said and I asked if he had any remarkable stories.
This one time he picked up a girl and after 5 minutes in the car she started touching him and tried to give him a BJ. He promptly kicked her out of the car.
So there you have it, another reason for me to get my driver’s license.
He dropped me off at a rest stop at the north of Kolding.

After not too long a couple picked me up.
They lived in Germany for a long time already but were both Danish. The husband had a lot of experience with hitchhiking. When he was younger he had once hitchhiked for 6 months straight. Along the way he told some interesting things about the Danish landscape. Most of the Danish forests, especially near the highway, are not very thick (400-800 meters) but are quite long (tens of kilometers).
When crossing the German-Danish border the change in scenery is noticeable immediately. There are a lot more open spaces, farmland I think .
We also saw the highest “Mountain” of Denmark, it’s a hill approximately 190 meters high.
They drove me to a rest stop north of Aarhus.

At that  rest stop I found a couple willing to drive me all the way to Aalborg.
There they showed me where I could store my bag in a locker, which came in very handy because my host would only be available after 17:00.

I walked around in Aalborg and checked out a local Supermarket to see what the differences are in products with a Belgian supermarket.
I found some funky colored drinks which I wanted to try out.
What I didn’t notice but was explained by my hosts later was that the content of the bottles needed to be mixed with water before drinking.