It's 3 PM on the 13th of July and I'm sweating my balls off. Wondering why I didn't leave earlier the asphalt is melting under my feet. I'm standing on the nearest highway to my house waiting for the first random car that is willing to pick up a kid with a huge bag with wheels under it. Destination: Les Deux Alpes on the French side of the Alps. But first I have to make sure I'm getting out of this country where the horizon doesnt's show as much as a little raisin in height difference. It takes me about an hour and a half till some weird business dude picks me up in his station car that probably just carries his loving wife and kids most of the time. I could care less as long as he takes me further away from home. Or maybe I should say closer to my destination. Glass half empty half full shit. I guess mine's about 1 percent full when I take place in his airconditioned vehicle.

Perhaps it helps if I explain why I'm setting off on this journey in this particular way. Well, I don't really have a lot of money besides the dough I just got from selling some old gear and working in people's backyards. It's not that I'm lazy and jobless, it's just that I spend it all without knowing where it goes. Then summer comes around and most of my buddies leave to go shred the glacier and I'm stuck at home contemplating why I'm not with them. All of a sudden one of those little light-bulbs popped up right next to my head. It was clear to me then that I didn't need money to make the 1100 kilometre trek south. I decided hitchhiking was probably the cheapest way so that's how I ended up sitting in this posh car. Thanks brain! (sorry thinkthank but it was just so convenient here)

I get dropped off right after we cross the Belgian border. After about 5 minutes some lady stops and asks me where to. Then she notices my big wheelie that's carrying my gear and clothes for an undetermined period of time. She probably has the space for a little beauty case so she spurs off again in her economic mini-euro car. Two hours later two guys in a beatup car offer me a ride. They bring me to the nearest city and from there it doesn't take too long before I get carried further by arguably the funniest Belgian guy walking around. He drives a white van that has 'Spekslager' written on the side of it. Loosely translated that means the man does business in meat. We swerve around for a couple hours and when the night's well underway I'm left on the outskirts of the city where the EU holds down it's fort. Brussels. I walk around for a while feeling pretty lost untill a middle-aged man offers me a ride to the train station. That was probably the stupidest thing I could do, because from there on it seemed pretty impossible to hitch myself further.

My lightbulb starts flickering so I decide not to torture myself much longer and spent the warm summernight sort of sleeping at the central station. The next morning I stumble and decide it's gonna be the train from here on. Another 900 kilometres going through so much hassle was gonna get me on snow when all the white stuff would be gone. I buy this Eurail pass that let's me travel by train unlimited for two weeks. Cheaper than a one way so I saved myself a little money there. 13 hours and 5 different trains later I'm at the foot of the Alps. Grenoble. Beautiful city, but expensive places to sleep so I crash on a patch of grass. Luckily there's two more backpacking girls hanging around so we look out for one another. I got the morning shift so they wake me at 5 AM just in time to catch a beautiful sunrise. Ahhh, things are turning out for the better. By 7.30 I'm on the bus letting green grass hills glide past me on the way to my resting place for the upcoming two weeks.

The moment I get off the bus everything falls in place. I smell fresh air for the first time in it seemed way too long ago. A second later I see a bunch of my best friends decked out in their gear walking right towards me (actually the bakery behind me but that's another stoy). They're amazed I made it and let me crash in their humble appartment. There's already 8 people there while it's only made for 6, but of course they can fit one more. There's a whole colony of Dutch kids there in summertime so needless to say those two weeks were engraved into my mind for eternity.
Foreigh alcoholic beverages, slushy rails, getting radical in the pool, extreme golfing, mushy kebabs, buttering little jumps, hiking the falls, touching sky on the hip, croissants in the chillzone, cardhouse domino, international shittalking, baguette liftrides, spanish girls, home away from home-made food, well, the list can go on and on. You all know what it's like. Sharing amazing stuff with like-minded people in a beautiful place. Yeah, I'm turning into a hopeless romantic again.

I guess I could tell you some more stories about how me and my friend who throws insane stuff on rails sessioned one minibox for a whole afternoon and were the last ones leaving the glacier. Or how my friends' cellphones got stolen out of the appartment by the owner and some big dudes so I had to spent a mere 4 hours translating stuff at the police station cause the frenchies simply refuse speaking english and I was the only person my friends knew who speaks french. You see, I'm doing the long sentence thing so I'll keep it short.
My friends all went back the same way they came, while I had a long trip ahead of me already digging myself well into debt cause everything turned out to be a little more expensive than I thought. Now in case you've ever heard about those high-speed trains, that's not my style (although it would've been nice). My cheapass pass however would only allow me on the twenty-stop, easy going, but see more, old-bounce train. It took me another two days to get home and a sketchy overnighter in Paris, but hey, at least I didn't get any inappropriate offers by dirty old-men looking for the right thing in the wrong places.