[danskhed07] finishing with hitchhiking

What is this picture? I'll uncover this at the end of the article. So read along...

Few tips for hitchhiking:

• it's hard to hitchhike in the city. Usually we walked to the end of the city and then hitchhiked at the beginning of the road where we had to go
• highways... cars can't stop there so you have to hitchhike before the highway begins. Highway is good choice for longer distances. In general, distance is not a key factor for getting somewhere in time, but this matters: traffic, perfect spot, your mood
  
• spot... find a place where cars can see you and have a time to think about picking you up. Also it has to be a spot where a car can stop!
• gas stations... few times I got a ride while talking with people on the gas station. It's easier to communicate when you can talk
• smile... it's important to communicate with the drivers on the road. Look them in the eyes and smile them. Everybody likes happy people who would cheer you up on the road. If you look like shit, hardly someone will pick you up. Be patient, never give up!
  
• signs... it could be smart to put a sign which says where are you going. Some people won't pick you up 'cause they think you're probably not going on their way. But it's not essential, sometimes I preferred not to have a sign and sometimes it helped not to have a sign. This is less important
• partners... it's a great fortune to be a female or to have a female as a partner. Everybody prefers females rather than males. It's good to hitchhike in pairs. So divide if you have a bigger group. Few times we got a ride for 4 persons, but don't count on it too much
• communicate... while you get a ride, talk to the driver. You can always get interesting information about something. When you both feel more comfortable, ask kindly if it would ok to put you off at some spot which is good for you. Drivers usually do that

My statistics show that almost all of the drivers who stoped to pick us up where former hithchikers. If you happen to drive a car, don't forget to "return the favour".

Svendborg

Elena, Anders (camera-guy) and me hitchhiked to Svendborg. We got a short ride near the entrance of the highway. It took some time. Elena played guitar. Anders mostly filmed. It happened that Jaguar, extremely fancy car stoped. Unfortenutely, the guy was going to Kobenhavn and we were on a tight schedule. It was really heard to reject him :(

We finally entered Svendborg. While driving on the bridge, we could see it's a nice port. Our host took us immediately to a place where we tryed sea-kayaking. Elena&me entered funny suits and enjoyed kayaking. It was very relaxing for the mind. Cool thing is that there are many islands you can visit nearby to go on short trip. On many of them you even have WLAN so you can work there.

Viking style house is a hangar nearby the spot of sea-kayaking.
Great dinner at our hosts, again. It was mexican. Our host has a great job. He's freelance photographer so he traveled through the whole world, took pictures and collected some interesting stories. Elena&him told us about Russian Republic: Tuva, which is very famous for the special technique of throat-signing. Later Elena played few instruments from Japan and China.

Next day Anders&me hitchhiked to Naestved. It was a hard distance to cross and we were only to guys. Along the trip we sometimes saw some of the other people from the group so we waved to each other while some of us were in the car and some where on the street. Somewhere close to Naestved we met&Collette on the same spot. Well, they met us. I though the car was stopping to pick us up, but it was them exiting from the car.


Naestved

In the city we tryed to get hosts. Few people said they'll probably take us but they need to thing about it. Local TV crew was following us on this quest. Unusual experience: I knocked on the doors and when the door opened, I saw a middle-aged fat man in his underwear talking to the mobile and looking at me while I was trying to explain him what I want. He said he'll host us but he needs to talk to his wife when she gets home. He never called us to confirm. I took this picture nearby:

It will remind me to write in another post about something very interesting with snails in Denmark.

Next day we went to a police station. For a presentation. I took some pictures since I was bored most of the time:

On the 1st picture you can see list of subjects which policemen learn in their trainings. They wrote "aliens" instead of "alliance" so I made fun of that. The policeman who held the presentation has 2 houses in Croatia so sometimes we teased each other about some stuff. We learned that Danish police isn't corrupted, they get a lot of money so it's stupid for them to be corrupted. Also, some of the policemen from this station are volunteers in a youth club. They fund raise the money, organise parties & concerts, get a lot of equipment for playing the music, role-playing games, computers... Great job! And they are security at the parties, alcohol isn't allowed for the youngsters.

We continued to Roskilde. Managed to get a ride for 4 people:


Eco-community

Simeone's mother lives in ecological co-housing near Roskilde. This was our stop.

Danes are very ecologically aware, they use a lot of ecological food and implement some sustainable development. But let's talk about this special community.

Notice that houses are build in a square, looking at each other. They are all rented. This people hired a company to build them houses and rent it to them. Special houses, in a way.
On the 1st picture you see solar collector to gain some energy. They are drying the laundry outside, not to waste energy. The grass which you see isn't cut by a machine. They use ponies (small horses) instead who eat the grass.
In this square of houses, they have one special houses which belongs to everyone. They come every evening to have a dinner together to that house. In a special room children can play (this is where some of us slept). Dinner is prepared by one family and next time some other family prepares the dinner for everybody. They are sharing a great deal of their lives together in this community.
There is also a central heating for this community.
It's very usual even for a regular Danish family to recycle the waste so there are 4 baskets in a house (organic, paper, metal cans, plastic bottles).
There is even ecological beer:

Ecological beer doesn't have a preservative so it doesn't last that long but it gives a better taste! I've tryed this in Russia, as well. It really is better, specially when you try the regular one afterwards. On the other picture you can see that in that house which is shared by the community, walls are made of hay.

Remember the picture from the beginning of the article? Scroll up to refresh your memory. While you are in the "shared house" where everybody has a dinner, washes their clothes,... If you enter the toilet, you can see that picture. You can notice that the toilet is different. It has to separated parts:

1. part for pissing
2. part for shitting

They collect the piss, put them in a container, leave there for 6 months (to make sure all the dangerous bacterias from urinal organs are destroyed) and use this later as a fertilizer.
When you use your tooth-paste, you don't just use any. You need to be careful to use the one which is more suitable for the environment.
And so on, and so on....
Special electric plug (in later posts)...



Elena had a birthday. Got a nice candle for a present. Danes like to use candles in the night, very much, it's called something like "huga" ? So we had a cake as well, ha! And pancakes, ha-ha! :)

Next day it was last day of hitchhiking. We were going to Kobenhavn.