I was thinking about what to do next. After France. The following idea came to my mind:

Once around the Iberian peninsula...

This song has become the soundtrack of my trip. It seems to follow me whereever I go. The last time, it turned up in the following:

this story is not complete.... this story is just a fraction....

My host Dionysis has just the right name for what happened the night I arrived in Marseille.

I got company.

We might get arrested for what we are going to do tomorrow.

I have a tight schedule for the last few days:
- juggling lessons
- ukulele lessons
- hiking up to Notre dame de la garde and up and down the Calanques (awesome btw)

And a lot of other things to do like hunting for a Kazoo.

We are going to be a juggling gypsy band. At the moment we are rather a ridiculous freak show with a broken guitar.

We are going to participate in a crazy hitch-hiking race across the alps.

We are going to Grenoble, Annecy and Evian-les-bains.

this story is not complete.... this story is just a fraction....

I am going to Marseille. A one hour journey by tram, bus, and foot takes me to a gas station directly on the highway. The first person I ask offers me a ride. Leonardo sounds Italian, but he is Croatian living and working in Germany. He offered me some chocolate and started telling me about his own hitch-hiking experiences.
When he was "young", he was travelling through South Africa without money. Now his motorbike is his passion, and he tries to limit his yearly working time to six months in order to travel around for the rest of the year. His upcoming plans are a bit more challenging though: A 9-months bike-trip through South and Central America.

One hour in his truck passes by fast, then he drops me off at a huge gas station with the biggest truck parking place I've ever seen. Well, I might be exaggerating, but there have been quite a few trucks. So I walk alongside them, showing my Marseille sign. A Czech trucker turns out to be going exactly my direction, more precisely to Brignoles, within a stone's throw from Marseille.

Frantisek immediately impresses me with his language skills. Being native Czech, he also speaks Slovak, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian fluently, and Turkish on a communicative level. In addition, he has some basic knowledge of every language you can imagine. He spent a good part of his life driving to countries like Syria, Iraq or Yemen, in order to provide KFOR soldiers with some essential things to survive. Like Czech beer. Once he's retired, Fran is dreaming of a life in Greece, living in a cave with a veggie garden around.

We move rather slowly, and after 9 hours of driving, chatting (in Czech!!), and enjoying some wonderful baguette with cheese and chocolate milk, Fran stops for his 10-hour night break. He offers me to stay on his second bed, and continue to Marseille together the next day. I'm grateful, but I want to reach my new destination by the end of the day, and so I keep going.

I approach a couple standing outside the gas station drinking some coffee. It is eight o'clock now, meaning I left my host's place in Strasbourg exactly 12 hours ago.
- "Non, on ne va pas vers Marseille"
- "Merci", I say, and go off to have a pee. Coming back outside, the couple awaits me.
- "Si, on y va, on y va."
Which has been clear to me from the beginning, since ALL the cars stopping here go towards Marseille. The unassertive lady then turns out to be a really nice person, interested in me and my trip. However, they drop me off only 40 km later, as they have to leave the highway for Valence, where they live.

So I get off the car, finding a young man standing there, smoking. One question and off we go. Nicholas, a good looking but not very talkative guy from Toulon, is on his way back home from Lyon, where he wanted to see a Jamiroquai concert. Unfortunately, it didn't happen, as some roadie had a lethal accident while building the set. More than 600 kilometers, 5 hours of driving and almost 50 Euros street charge just to have the pleasure of giving me a ride.

Not going through Marseille's center, Nicholas drops me off some 40 km outside of the city. Again, I get a ride with the first person I ask. Being the father of a 27 year old daughter, the driver of a fat Audi seems to want to protect me from all of the dangers waiting for me out on the road rather than just help a hitchhiker, but that's just fine. He warns me of going to Marseille's city center after nightfall and drops me off right at my upcoming hosts doorstep.

A day of hitch-hiking draws to a close. At least that's what I'm thinking at this moment...

Permettez-vous que je vous casse le pieds?