Hitching France Pt. 5 – Saint-Omer

Around 6p.m. or so I returned to the main square to meet up with my host at a café where we sat to have a pint. We talked and talked about anything and everything that evening. I don’t even have the faintest clue what was discussed but the conversations wouldn’t end. After some time at the café I paid for our beers and he took me on a brief tour around the northern part of the town. We walked up to the cathedral and went inside to admire the main hall with all it’s intricacies. All while I was receiving a full history lesson from a super nice guy in his late twenties whom just happened to message me back from an app on my phone. He told me all about the history of the town, how hundreds of years ago powerful artisans had made the town center exclusive to their ranks and forced commoners to the outskirts. He pointed out more modern looking buildings, among older ones, which had been built after bombings made by the allies during Nazi occupation.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way back to his home to grab a few last ingredients for dinner we would cook together. When we arrived to his home, we prepared a mushroom-onion-green pepper and cheese quiche (I cut the onions) and as it baked in the oven we chatted, had some beers, and jammed to some classic rock. I have to say that I really surprised myself with my conversation skills. My French was by no means perfect, or even really fluent I would say but somehow, we managed to talk for hours about what seemed like anything without many hiccups. There were times where I had trouble articulating my thoughts, but he almost always seemed to be able to interpret what I meant and helped me with the words I needed. I remember at one point he got up to pick up an old photo album and saw my rubiks cube in my haphazardly open bag which I had opened to show him my hitching signs. He laughed out loud and said “tu es serieux?!?!” So I explained I had been solving it on the side of the road to pass the time and attract some additional attention. We had a good time together and after an evening well spent, he opened up the couch for me and we got ready for bed. I was really comfortable on the couch which sometimes isn’t always the case but for some reason a pretty bad headache and sinus pressure lingered through the night and I hardly got any sleep.

It was pretty terrible actually. I’m a great sleeper to be honest. I think I get it from my track and field days where naps between or after races were common, usually on the ground or on bleachers, with the firing gun going off and people running around all around. So usually when I’m ready to sleep in a normal circumstance, I’m off catching Z’s not long after my head hits the pillow. That night, however, was one of the few nights I can remember that was mostly sleepless and it was in a stranger’s apartment so I was pretty limited with what I could do about it. I made it through the night to the early morning as he got ready for work and I packed up my bag. I didn’t quite get all ready to leave when he was about to leave for work and he did something which really surprised me. He left me, in his home, as he went to work, and he only told me to make sure I had everything and locked the door behind me… that was it. The trust baffled me. He told me the night before that it was totally cool to sleep in since he had to leave around 7:30am but I insisted I’d leave with him since I thought it was improper to overstay. However, I was moving a little slowly after the near sleepless night and still prevalent headache so I was still packing my bag as he shook my hand, wished me luck and went to work. I found myself then alone in someone else’s apartment whom I hardly knew, and it was a very unusual feeling. I took advantage of him being gone and cleaned all the dishes from the night before so he had a nice clean kitchen when he came home. Then once I had everything together I put my pack on my back, locked the door behind me and left to take on the early morning. I stopped in a Carrefour on the way out of town and got some snacks for the day. I even asked the girl working if I could have one of the boxes she had unloaded food from so I could use it later on my journey. She gave me a pretty weird look but it was just the thing I needed to help me get over to Boulogne-sur-mer. I stopped down the road at a bakery to get some pastries for breakfast and then I went down to the gardens to eat and collect my thoughts. I was still feeling pretty under the weather and my nose was running like crazy. It was a pretty drastic, unexpected turn my body had made in maybe twelve hours.

On a positive note though, the gardens were beautiful and the ambiance in the lower courtyard was very tranquil, especially in the early morning. Some joggers were taking advantage of the nice morning as the town was slowly waking up. I hung out for a bit on a bench down in the lower section of the park and after I soaked it in I made my way through the park heading west. It was a long walk to the point I had previewed from the map to hitch from, which I definitely underestimated. I walked a few miles getting to the point I deemed to be the most ideal, all the while I was walking along a roadway with cars passing one after another but there were many other directions those cars could go so I decided to just carry on and wait for my point where the traffic would be concentrated to the same direction that I wanted to go.

It took some time to get there, probably close to an hour and a half. Plus as I approached the last few hundred meters of the trek, the sidewalk disappeared and I was left to walk through high grass on the side of the road as I reached the exit of the second roundabout which was the straight shot I needed to head west. There was one small problem that I noticed when I got there. Which was the fact that I was out on the outskirts of a very small town near the middle of the day on a Friday and the traffic heading in any direction through the roundabouts was sparse at best. But, I took a look around where I was standing, noticed the vast countryside, and I have to admit, I smiled. It felt like pure insanity (a recurring theme on the road) and it invoked true happiness. I had my tent, water and some snacks- not to mention the fact that there were some grocery stores not far away so I realized I’d be fine and make due whether I was picked up or not. I was left with the sense of real adventure.