Scotland: “Are you sure this isn’t cheating?”
A kindly old woman stopped for me as I was walking down a lonely stretch of road in northern Scotland. For some reason, she decided I must be there because I was in a competition to walk across Great Britain, and by giving me a ride she would disqualify my performance. She even offered to drop me somewhere hidden in the next town so nobody would see me in a car.
Germany-Denmark: “You drive. We will hide.” An olive-skinned couple in a VW microbus stopped for me near the Danish-German border. They were from Argentina, and had been illegally living in Germany for months, selling ice cream out of the truck. Kicked out of several towns for not having a business license, they were going to try their luck in Denmark. When they discovered I was American, they begged me to drive the van through the border crossing while they hid under the bed in back. I cruised through without incident. They gave me a cone.
Netherlands: “You must come teach me swimming.”
A pale, thin, Hannibal Lector type picked me up in rural Netherlands. When I inquired about his job, he answered, “Oh, that’s not interesting. Let’s not talk about that.” Silence. He turned to me, fixing me with a stare a little too long for someone driving a car. “Do you like sports?”
I described my many sporting interests. He bounced in his seat with excitement. “And swimming? Do you like swimming?” I told him I once worked as a lifeguard. His smiled. “I have a pool. You must come and teach me swimming.” I passed on the offer, thanking him for the ride, and pointed out the next exit as my final destination, where my friends awaited.
A month later, when I was hitchhiking through a different part of the Netherlands, a pale man stopped to give me a ride. Not thinking anything was odd (it isn’t a sunny country), I hopped in the car and tried some conversation: “So what do you do? Out on lunch break?”
“Oh, that’s not interesting,” he said, “Let’s not talk about that. Do you like sports? I like swimming. How about you?” I told him I was an expert in martial arts and looked for the next exit.
Switzerland: “Don’t go in the basement — we have Kurds.”
A Swiss family in an RV stopped to give me a ride and offered me a night’s lodging in their large house in Geneva. They treated me to a huge meal, opened up their liquor cabinet for drinks, gave me a comfy bedroom to sleep in, and offered to fill my backpack with supplies for my trip. There was only one restriction during my visit. I could not go into the basement “because we have Kurds.” I initially thought they meant “curds” as in cheese, Swiss cheese. But no, the basement was actually occupied by Kurdish refugees that the family was clandestinely smuggling into Europe, temporarily hidden in a safe haven in the basement.
Hawaii: “Are you my son?”
A woman stopped for me in a cloud of red clay dust near a depressed town in Kauai. She was overweight, with the sunken cheeks and discolored teeth earned from a lifetime of smoking.She drove a mongrel car with mismatched doors and rusty holes. She was returning from a junkyard, where she had been searching for a back bumper for the car.When I told her I was visiting from California, she recalled she had given up her young son for adoption 25 years before. She had heard he had been given to foster parents in California. Was I him? She turned to me with a gap-toothed smile. I told her no, I was born and raised in Chicago.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “But how ‘bout you still buy me a couple beers at the 7-11 here?”
