Vee Dub Hippie

In the seventies I hitch-hiked all over the place. If you can hitch-hike the Nullabar you can hitch-hike anything. But maybe not Sweden!! (I'll return to that one later)
I think it was the Swiss/ German border that I arrived at..pretty sure it was Basle in the early seventies??? I was travelling from Clermont Ferrand (Central Massif) middle of France; heading for Norway. Like you do.
I did the passport stuff on the Swiss/German border and walked through...   Germans and Swiss...lovely people.Scabby old rucksack, sleeping bag.
To be confronted with a whole bus queue of hitch-hikers, all thumbing lifts. The etiquette is obvious.....you walk past them all and wait your turn.
I took one look at them and immediately went back through the German /Swiss customs back to Switzerland. Where I set up my roadside vigil.
In minutes a German chap in a sleek Merc offered me a lift. He said I'm glad some idiot was on the right side of the border. They all thumb lifts on the other side. He said Those four boxes of wine are yours, those four are mine. Obviously they weren't mine. But for customs purposes they were.
So we drove North. Nice German guy. He asked Where are you going?. I said Norway.
He said that he was only going to Frankfurt. He said You've got to get up to Hamburg.
We drove on into the day. Being in a Merc you travel faster than most and we soon came up behind a hippie Vee Dub camper van. My new Merc friend said See that guys reg plate. It's Hamburg. That's where you wanna go. We all had long hair and beards. You know. Brothers in arms. Soul mates. All the badges of honour left behind from the ridiculous sixties........So we wait for a road-side pull-off and Merc Buddy goes side by side with Vee-Dub buddy. Gets his attention and motions to the approaching pull-off.....I'm amazed when Vee Dub guy nods agreement. He probably thought he was gonna score some Hash. So in the rest-stop I put my rucksack into the VW and hours later arrive in Hamburg.