Day 1 - Kapellen - Zwolle

Kapellen - Highway up ramp Breda:
After barely 2 minutes with my thumb in the air there was already a car who stopped.
I can't exactly remember what the driver did as job but he was on his way to Nijlen to help his daughter renovate a house she had just bought.
Apparently there was a lot of work still to be done.

Up ramp Breda - South of Utrecht
Here I had to wait a bit longer, about 10 to 15 minutes.
It was a little difficult to choose where exactly to stand, a little further from the up ramp was a car parked and so I was quite out of view of the approaching cars. But closer to the ramp was too difficult for the cars to stop.

Eventually someone stopped who was changing directions behind me.
The driver was someone from The Netherlands who lived in Brasschaat, BE and he was on his way to Amsterdam for work.
He's in the telecommunication business and also has a small IT company which writes software for ISPs and telecom companies.

Before cellphones etc he had also hitchhiked, To school if he missed his bus and in the USA with a friend.

Because he had to make an earlier turn, to Amsterdam, he dropped me off at a gas station south of Utrecht.
While we were driving up to the gas station we saw a car burning on the other side of the road. Not just a few little flames but the car was engulfed in flames.
The driver waited till I had found someone with whom I could continue my journey. He didn't need to wait long because the first person I talked to said it was okay!

Gas station south of Utrecht - Amersfoort
The next driver was also someone from The Netherlands. He was on his way towards a town near Apeldoorn so I could drive along for a while.

He worked for a company called Camelot. When people have a building with which they won't do or can't do anything for a while they can hire his firm. They will then rent out the building to people who can live there for a low price (150~ EUR) and at the same time keep an eye out so random people won't start living in it (called "Kraken" in Dutch).
A few examples of buildings were "De oude rijkswacht kazerne" in Antwerp and "De diamantbeurs".

Apparently his GPS system kept pointing in the direction of Groningen (north of Zwolle) so I was able to drive along for quite some time. Eventually he had to torn off at Amersfoort and so we stopped at a gas station.

Amersfoort - Zwolle
There was a big parking with quite some people.
This was the first time I heard a no to the question of I could drive along (hell , I couldn't even finish my question :p)
After about 10 minutes a Flemish couple parked and so I asked if I could drive along. After a bit of figuring out if we were going the same direction I could join.

They were a retired couple that was on their way to somewhere north of Zwolle.
Apparently the GPS had sent them on a different route than they had planned. (luckily for me)
There they would drive their bike and explore the heathland ("de heide").

They told me about their trip to Norway last year. They made this trip with the same car, a Mercedes van rebuilt to be a semi-mobilhome.
They took the ferry to Sweden and then crossed the border at Oslo and continued south and then north again (Kistiansand, Stavanger, ...) till Lillehammer where they crossed the border to Sweden.
The rest of the ride was quite quiet.

They had to go more north than Zwolle and the husband didn't want to take the off ramp to Zwolle. A little understandable, a little crazy :p
Because the only thing possible to do then was to park the car between the off ramp and the highway to let me out.
So then I had to walk a while on the side of the road till I found a door in a sound wall through which I could get off the highway.
Actually that was interesting to do once, You would normally never go there.

Zwolle
I arrived in Zwolle well before midday since I never had to wait more than 15 minutes between rides.
After getting off the highway I started walking towards the big church tower. Eventually I arrived on the Grote Markt which was quite deserted except for some people on terraces.
There I sat on  a bench next to the church It didn't last long before a weird (lees: marginaal uitziende kleine met zijn klak op half 12) guy came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some "get" (?).
Afetr asking in my dialect "was da" he answered "never mind" and cycled off.

I remembered that my CS host told me that she lived near the station and so I went looking for it.
After finding it I want back towhards the city center. So I was walking in a circle a bit but at least I saw a bit of the city.
After I ate my sandwiches I went to a terrace to drink something while waiting for my CS host to arrive.
Apparently she just did her exam for her (motor) driver's license, and passed :)

All the pictures can be found here.