Hitchhiking turned out to be much more difficult than expected. From Beijing to Berlin, the two Chinese men with shoulder-length hair and disheveled appearances were rejected by over a thousand drivers. They often had to spend several hours finding a car willing to pick them up. Once, they waited for two whole days at the roadside. "We waited from morning till deep night, and then had to find a hotel to stay in. The next day we finally got a ride," Gu Yue said. In countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where there was no hitchhiking culture and language barriers existed, Gu Yue asked someone to write some cards in Russian: "The two of us are hitchhiking all the way from China to Germany," "If it's convenient, could you give us a ride?" "Sorry, we might not have money to give you, but we have cigarettes and smiles"...
On June 8th last year, I met these two post-70s young men named Liu Chang and Gu Yue for the first time. Each of them was carrying a large backpack weighing dozens of pounds, standing in the misty rain of Houhai, thumbing rides. They convinced visa officers from 12 countries with the reason of "backpacking travel" and obtained visas valid for one or two months. They prepared cash and bank cards, packed sleeping bags, laptops, cameras, and a few clothes, and set off on their journey. Afterwards, Liu Chang told me that among all the countries, the hardest hitchhiking experience was from Beijing to Hebei. They waited for over an hour in Houhai without any driver willing to stop. Eventually, a kind driver took them to the toll booth entering Hebei. At the toll booth, they endured the heavy rain while waiting, and road administration personnel kept urging them to leave quickly. When they explained the reason for waiting to the staff, the young staff member thoughtfully replied, "There aren't many cars going from here to Berlin..."
Three and a half months later, the two finally arrived at Gu Yue's girlfriend Ika's home in Berlin. Before seeing Ika, romantic poems welled up in Gu Yue's heart. "For these three months, I walked every day toward the direction where the sun sets, because in that direction is Berlin, where Ika waits for me." But when Ika saw him for the first time, this naughty Berlin girl couldn't help but say, "Next time, just take the plane to see me!"
Our reporter Song Wei J200, photos provided by Liu Chang.
Liu Chang and Gu Yue
From Beijing to Berlin, using the method of hitchhiking, these two Beijing youngsters backpacked through 13 countries. They hitched rides 88 times, including once each on a tricycle, tractor, and horse-drawn carriage, ultimately taking three and a half months to cover over 16,000 kilometers and reach Berlin, Germany. Regarding the motivation for this trip, they answered it was to visit one of their girlfriends, Ika. They even printed this reason in Russian on cards to move the drivers from a few Middle Eastern countries, but of course, this wasn't the entire goal of being "on the road."
Their experience has been called by netizens as "the most romantic hitchhiking" and "the best Valentine's Day gift ever." Now, Gu Yue and Ika are on vacation in Thailand, planning to spend a wonderful Spring Festival there.
Liu Chang said, the longer they hitchhiked, the more addicted they became. Meeting unconventional people was their greatest harvest from the trip. Mr. Qiao, who drives a truck from Hebei to Shanxi, is determined to drive for 20 years to save money for his two sons to build houses; a lonely oil tanker truck driver in Xinjiang likes to offer rides to every passerby; a financial director who lost his job due to the financial crisis gave them a ride to the Czech Republic on the second day after finding a new job; a company president driving a luxury car has a bold personality; in Georgia, they unfortunately rode in a car driven by a drunk driver, performing "life-and-death speed" on the highway... The funniest incident happened in northern Iraq's Kurdistan when Gu Yue hopped onto a tractor. After traveling for two or three kilometers, the tractor suddenly turned into a smoking village. It turned out they were going to put out a fire and invited Gu Yue to come along for the excitement. "After the fire was extinguished, I became the object of the villagers' curiosity, and one uncle even invited me to his house for dinner."
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