The last 100km leading up to the festival grounds were the toughest going. Competition was fierce at the off ramps. Yes, hitchhiking may have been falling out of fashion in those days, but I suppose when you have 93,000 people camping at a music festival, a small percentage choosing to travel via the romance of the open road - just for sentimental kicks - could easily cause the amount of congestion we encountered. In the early afternoon, the day before the festival, John and I found ourselves standing in a lineup of about 10 people waiting for a ride. And most of our companions appeared to have been waiting for quite a while.
After about an hour of fruitless waiting, John turned to me and asked what I thought about trying our luck on the highway. Earlier on in our journey, the idea of flagging down a ride with with vehicles whizzing past at speeds in excess of 150km/hour+ might have seemed intimidating. At this point, anything seemed all right as long as we didn't have to actually cross the highway (I never got used to that craziness). In full knowledge that we were about to commit a hitchhiking faux pas and jump the line in securing the next available ride on that particular stretch of highway, we hightailed it out of there as inconspicuously as we could manage.
And a ride did pick us up within a few short moments on the highway. One that drove us all the way up to the gates of the festival - through the backstage entrance nonetheless. Of course, I jump ahead of myself, but had I known that upon our arrival at the festival grounds - my first introduction to the European music festival experience, or really any music festival of similar scope - that John and I would be accidentally separated and I would find myself in a cattle run of 93,000 strangers with no tent and therefore, no place to stay for 3 days, I might have tried a different approach. One that at least entailed a stop at the nearest camping store or better yet, sussed out hostel accommodations in the vicinity. Lucky for me, however, I had no idea how things were about to unfold.
I'm not sure exactly, but I believe this was the song I played to land an invitation to hitchhike to Roskilde.
A few friends have asked me to write about how I came to use the name, theotherlondon, so here it is: a collection of stories from June 1993 to October 1994 that include my experiences working in Switzerland and the UK; my engagement to a German blacksmith in Paris; our road trip across North America in a ’67 Volvo with an Australian footballer, and oh yes, my introduction to something ‘new’ called the Internet. You can find the first post here.
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