Back to home from IHHC 4, March 2000

written by Robert Prins (NL) on 14 March 2000

As for my trip back, it was nice, three rides from Vilnius to the border, one through Latvia, and one through Estonia, where the weather was absolutely abysmal. I finally arrived in Tallinn at 22:01, too late for the ferries. At about midnight I was tossed out of the terminal, but about five minutes later the guy who did this took me into some crew entrance, and allowed me to sleep at the top of some stairs!

The next day I realised that Helsinki would be out of the question, the ferries from Tallinn leave in the afternoon, arriving in Helsinki at such a time that hitching to Turku to catch the same day ferry to Stockholm would have been impossible. As a result I directly went to Stockholm, after spending all day in Tallinn.

Upon arrival in Stockholm, at about 9:30 on Wednesday, I tried to get a ride on the ferry and on the quay, both without luck, so eventually I walked into the town centre, bought three CDs, and walked to Fridhemsplan, Daan Toner’s suggested point of departure. It is crap!

Walking back I decided to try my luck at the E4 sliproad just after the central station, and was away in about 10 minutes, be it for a short ride, 6.3 km. Six more of such rides followed, and I was getting worried, it was snowing again, and at 17:10 I had covered merely 100 km…

At that moment, on a petrolstation just after Nyköping, my usual lucky moment arrived. I had already been promised a ride, but the driver had told me to wait, as he was going to get something to drink first. A few minutes later, another car pulled up, and again I asked if the driver was going in the direction of Jönköping. Again the answer was “Yes”, so at 17:29 we left. About 30 minutes for Jönköping the driver asked me where I wanted to go, and when I told him that I was on my way to Holland, he told me that he would give me a ride all the way - he was on his way to Amsterdam!!!!

We arrived there just after 12 on Thursday, and just over an hour later I arrived in Utrecht, where I decided to take the bus for the last bit.

Friday was the usual shit, getting from Bilthoven (Utrecht) to Calais is difficult, I left at 7:06, and crossed into Belgium, a mere 130 km or so, at 13:51…

Eventually I reached Calais at 17:14, and went through the tunnel for a second time. Dropped in the dark at Maidstone, I still managed to get a ride to London, but from there I took the ridiculously expensive train (and to add insult to injury, a taxi) to get to Ipswich, arriving there just before midnight.

After a day in Ipswich, I left for Holland, where I’m now staying with my father. We’ll be going back to the UK on Thursday, when I will, close to 10 years after leaving Holland, finally take my blazingly fast 16MHz 386 with me, whoopie! ;-)