Wandering American

Over the Top

   I had pretty much given up trying to get a ride from one of these magical beasts with 18 legs; the drivers never even seem to look down at me from their high mount.  My luck changed just the other day when I got a lift from Poznan to Berlin.  I heard that the toll plaza 10 km outside of Poznan was an excellent spot to hitch a ride into Germany but I was a little skeptical since it always seems to be girls who rave about how great a spot is.  Lets face it; you’d surely pick up a girl in a skirt before picking my ass up off the side of the road.

   So after a hop across a metal fence behind the police station, I was on the highway ready to get a ride.  I took out my cardboard sign with ‘Berlin’ written on it, and I started to eat an apple that my gracious host in Poznan had given me.  I always try to time the amount of time it takes to get a ride since I’m a numbers kind of guy.  Surprisingly it took less then 10 minutes for a truck to pull over, and I ran over to open the door.  Wow, these things really were tall.  After I opened the door, even with me standing on the curb I couldn’t even see the floor.  

   I scaled the side and then introduced myself to the driver.  Marcin was the name of my Polish driver who was headed to a suburb of Berlin to drop off some lighting supplies.  We made some small talk in the beginning before my driver really started to get talking.

   I heard that truck drivers often pick up hitchhikers because they get lonely on the road and need someone to talk to, and this was certainly the case here.  My driver loved to talk, but I was glad to hear it.  I learned about his brand new Mercedes truck, which was super freaking cool.  It had all the luxuries of a high end car, which I had no idea these monsters had.  I had always imagined them to be like the trucks from the 1987 movie Over the Top