Hitching France Pt. 16 – To Dijon and Back

Behind the bush in the back of a skatepark where I slept was right next to what looked like an outdoor distribution center with things on pallets stacked on high shelves so I woke up early in the morning to the sound of forklift beeps and the movement of goods. I had slept well still and I was ready to continue on. I figured I would try to hitch from the same spot as before since it was a bright morning and the most direct route. The worst case scenario would be to head to the roundabout I would pass on way to there so it didn’t hurt just to try. When I arrived at my drop off spot the night before, I had my eyes to the toll station and I had doubts about if anyone would stop. I had waited about ten minutes or so when I turned my head and saw a car stopped off on the side of the road in a pretty awkward position. It was two sisters who had seen me from afar and turned around on the wide road to try get closer to pick me up. I was so thankful and surprised. They were returning to Nancy from a weekend in the south of France and I was surprised by their dog sitting behind the back seat when they mentioned him. It was a pretty good ride up to Dijon. The three of us talked the whole way and the sister driving was really funny. They were even trying to teach how to curse colorfully in French because I was modest and told them I didn’t know how.

They drove a bit into Dijon for me and dropped me off within a short walking distance of Place du Président Wilson. I then followed the signs into the city center and stumbled on Place de la Libération which I think is one of my most favorite squares; Dijon is a beautiful city. I then continued wandering and got some street food from a small restaurant, your typical halal-kebab joint, where I got a burger contraption and fries. I used the wifi to find a place to stay and settled on a hostel that was pretty far from the city center but had rooms at a good price with an included breakfast. I wandered around the city a bit more before heading to the hostel to drop off my things and shower. Once I arrived, I was surprised again to find the bed cheaper than I had expected so I went up to the room more content than before. When I got to the room there was evidence of two others in the room and there was another guy laying on this bed on his phone. He said “bonjour” and I responded in French but after a few exchanges I heard his accent and switched to English to ask him where he was from. He was from California and was about to start teaching English in France. I took a shower and then we decided to head back into the city to walk around and explore. We had a nice time going around and sharing our stories. Eventually we stopped for some food and beer at a nice little resto before calling it a night and returning to the hostel. I had a nice breakfast at the large dining hall in the hotel / hostel the next morning before I took up my bag again and hit the road. It was raining lightly so I put the weather cover over my bag and put on a pocket rain jacket my host family had given me. Then I pushed on.

Hitchhiking in the rain definitely can be a downer. It was a little over a two mile walk to the spot I had picked from my map the day before which was by an entrance on to the A39 and a few other roads. I stopped at a gas station to make my sign a short distance before my spot just in case I could get lucky and not have to stand out the in the rain. But alas, that was not part of my destiny, so I went up the road and found a spot to stand. It was raining and I was trying to hold my sign in a way that it wouldn’t get very wet. Cars were passing by and for ten minutes or so it didn’t seem as if I got so much as a glance until one car finally pulled over. I walk up but it didn’t feel like this was going to be my ride and as it turned out it was a man with his wife and he wanted to tell me that this wasn’t going to be a good spot to hitch to Lyon. He said that many of the cars there were going a different direction and that it was not very likely I’d get a ride where I wanted to go. He told me to head down to La Champagne and Chenove to try there as I would have more luck. I thanked him for the advice and thought deeply for a moment. It was still lightly raining and this new spot was another two miles away. It was already late morning which meant I probably wouldn’t be getting my thumb up again until the early afternoon and I had an audacious distance ahead of me already. I decided to test my luck for another five minutes because I was already there before making my way to a spot where I was bound to have better luck.

So, within a few minutes, I again found myself walking in the light rain, tiring under the load of my heavy pack and stuck in my thoughts. Luckily, however after about a mile or so it stopped raining and it wouldn’t start again for the rest of my trip so things began to look up. I stopped in another gas station and got one of my favorite things in France: a ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette. It’s kind of lame I know but it is great when you just want something quick on the go and you can get such a delicious, simple and cheap sandwich for a snack. We just don’t have anything that can compare back home in the USA. I mean of course we do but the bread makes all the difference. Anyway, I decided to try and take a shortcut rather than go a longer way and I found myself at a dead end in the back of an industrial park. Behind the lots there were two sets of train tracks and open fields before the D122A. A few of the lots had fences in the back but I found one I could get through. I pushed through some bushes up a hill and then across a section of train tracks before landing on Chemin de Beauregard in the back of the fields with the highway off in the distance. When I was on that path through those fields looking ahead toward the highway the feeling was indescribable. It felt like I could do anything. It felt like I was on a real adventure, I mean I had just crossed train tracks in the back of a small industrial park on the outskirts of Dijon and got some scratches on my clothes and pack from the bushes I went through to get there. Then, I was walking on a path through some open fields staring at a random road that was soon going to be my ticket out. It was a high. I approached the road and at first I thought I was going to go through the underpass to get to the other side of the road to make it easier but it looked like there were some people there and I got an uncomfortable feeling so I dotted up the hill and swung over the guardrail right on to the road and began a careful walk a kilometer or so down to the first roundabout. I set myself up on the other side of a fence of the Campanile hoping to catch someone heading south from the D122A to the A311 to the A31 to the A6 straight back to Lyon.

It had stopped raining for sometime and I was feeling good at that point. I remember watching cars pass for twenty five minutes or so and just noticing how unhappy people look while they drive. When you’re hitching too it’s not a bad practice to smile, even if you have to force it a bit. It makes you look more approachable. So I was cheesing extra hard that day and hoping that I could share some of my exuberance with those who passed me. Still I waited on the side of the road for more than a half hour or so before someone finally pulled over. This time it was a man probably in his mid-thirties wearing a nice dress shirt and smoking a cigarette. He told me he was a phone salesman during the day and a magician on the side! He was heading to Chalon-sur-Saône where he was hired for a party and he told me he could drop me off at the toll station just off of the autoroute. We road for about forty to forty five minutes and chit chatted along the way but I don’t remember much too in depth. He gave me his card which I still have to this day in my wallet. He deposited me at Péage Chalon Nord and when I got out of the car to my dismay I saw a group of four hitchhikers with several large bags hitching from a small tear drop median near the toll booth heading out. I started walking in to town because I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t another spot I could hitch from near there and the group was too big for me to join. Plus I was a little frustrated that I was being held up from trying my own luck since it was already nearly the middle of the afternoon and it was starting to look like I wouldn’t make it to Montpellier unless I got extremely lucky. I went up to the roundabout but there wasn’t a good spot to hitch from and it was in plain few of the group so continued down the road because I didn’t want to be disrespectful to them either since they were there first. I turned down the road in to town more and found a decent pull off spot overlooking the Logis Hotel de la Thalie and put my them up holding my sign and trying to hold my head higher though I knew the prospects were not good. The cars were few and going fast. I waited for some time before walking up the road again to see if the group was still there. They were and they were waving their thumbs and jumping up and down trying to draw attention. To me it didn’t look good. It seemed odd for such a large group with big bags to be there. It seemed to be asking a lot of whoever might stop and it seemed a bit much to be such a scene but really who am I to judge. I went back to my spot to test my luck before checking again some time later. The second time however I came at just the right moment because as I was walking up a car stopped and it looked like a young girl on her own. I watched them load her small car with all their bags and cram into the vehicle.

They were barely on the autoroute before I was in their spot. I put my thumb up with my sign in my hand and within five minutes a big yellow van pulled over and a big bearded young guy with his hair tied in a man bun was smiling at me. I put my bag behind the passenger seat and hopped in. He was a really cool dude and we talked about this, that and the third while I rode with him. He and his wife were in Cirque du Soleil, his wife more of a performer while he was sort of the muscle and one of the guys who would catch her. They would live in that van sometimes and pull a lot of the equipment as he motioned to the bed way in the back. They did a lot of traveling and he had been on vacation but was now returning to their quiet mountain home to see each other again. We talked about yoga and meditation together I remember. It was cool to meet another younger guy who was into those things too. He said that he could take me just after Lyon before he would go his separate way and I said that would be great. We rode together for sometime before he dropped me off at a TOTAL service station with a La Croissanterie just off of the A7 out to the south of Lyon on Autoroute du Soleil. I guess part of me has never really liked rejection so I tried to avoid service stations because I didn’t want to approach people and ask them for a ride. My style was more laissez-faire so to speak. A lot of hitchhikers tend to prefer them so they can speak to potential drivers and convince them of their case. I decided I would avoid that until it was absolutely necessary because I didn’t want to sleep there so I went to the back of the service station. set myself up on some grass next to the road which merged back onto the auto-route and waited.