621 Postscript
Summary
- Thursday 8th Sept finished my walk from Rome through Switzerland to Basel and Germany
- Sat 10th - Wed stayed in Mulhouse France
- Thu 15th went back to give a lecture in a Swiss highschool
....then since I had a 3 country dayticket back into Rhein valley Germany

..OK The plan was hopefully to bump into somework on the way, 3 weeks of highly paid grapepicking would have been great .. but didn't bump into the right opportunity - Sat 17th decided that since there was no vendange work I should come back to UK European jobsearch
... Unlucky about flights .. out of Basel Euroairport nothing to north of England .. there were only expensive flights to Gatwick .overland as no convenient flights) *
- Sun to Strasbourg
- Mon to Reims and Lille
- Tues to Bruge
- Wed - Eurolines bus through tunnel to London, then Stagecoach to Scunthorpe
..arrived 2am Thu..meaning I completed a journey overland from the Tunisian Sahara to the UK

Thu - went back to give a lecture in a Swiss highschool
I rather regret not taking up the opportunity of working picking grapes in Gipf-Oberfrick. I had hoped that I would find a better opportunity like 8+ hours per day, 6/7 days per week, but unfortunately I never bumped into the right people....

- After the school I headed to Rheinfelden, but first decided to get down from the train at Stein, AG.. I walked to the Rheine and suddenly found a large old covered covered bridge to Bad Säckingen on the German side.

So I crossed and did the heritage walk, before deciding to get to Rheinfelden by taking the German train.

- From the train I crossed back into the Swiss part of Rheinfelden. I walked around the medieval part , but it was already after 5pm so the museums were closed.

- Since I had the Triregio ticket (3 country ticket ) and it was supposed to be European heritage weekend I continued back into the Rheine Valley part of Germany first I took the train to to Lorrach in Germany, but it was a bit rundown so I went onto a wine village..

Fri - looking for work

.. I imagined that as I walked I would bump into someone who would offer me some kind of job.. like working on the vendange for 3 weeks ...I am always getting strange jobs I never knew existed by bumping into people Well the plan was to do the walk and hopefully on the way bump into something ... well during the walk I didn't bump into the right people .. that job at Jonas village didn't see too promising so I continued to look.

- I passed the winery on Friday, but I hadn't checked my email, I found workers in another vineyard later, found the farmhouse , the owner said no, next vineyard had slavic workers they sent me back to the first vineyard the owner said no.

Sat - More on German side of Rheine then over to French side
- The next day it was raining I ended up in Mullheim I went in the museum, but I found that like Switzerland European heritage weekend was the previous weekend ..so this was a reason to cross to France and then the French side ..so I had spent a couple of days going to wineries, but then it started to rain and it was Sunday

- I thought well I could waste more time looking for work and since I had a lot of internet work and all my stuff like my backpack, shoes, teeth were worn out so I should head back to the UK before the winter came and keep looking out on the way, but when I arrived in France in was raining and he next day was Sunday.. and I never bumped into any farmers before Strasbourg.

- whichbudget.com : suddenly not working
after checking farms on Friday and Saturday I gave up in Mullheim and decided to go back to the UK by hitching to Belgium as the plane from Basel was so inconvenient (south of London instead of north England)

Overland vs Flight
* getting home - figuring out transport is a nightmare my uncle flies easily from Geneva to Liverpool, but the only options from Basel were 2 expensive flights to Gatwick or Heathrow ..will all the extra conditions and charges, so I figured if I got to Strasbourg it's easy to get to Belgium and easy to get to the UK.
- Train there used to be £12 fares but ferries are now ridiculously expensive ..Eurostar as well £39,£70rt if you reserve 3 weeks in advance .
ferry only.all the old tricks don't work
- if you buy a cheap day return they surcharge your card if you don't return
- half the ferries only accept passengers with a vehicle (with online booking agents often the last page sorry says we cannot book you because ..)
- car drivers can get tickets on Dunkirk route for £19 car and five passengers, Sea France has £22 day return for car and 8 passengers
- North Sea Ferries only have cabins now, no just seat option.
Truck ferries run from 5 ports including Denmark to Immingham. Freight only service so only allow 10 tourists at £170 cruise rate
- Bus On the bus it's no cheaper to get off the bus at Dover than London, strangely tickets from Belgium are more cheaper than France.
- so best option looked to be a €31 from Belgium ..plus a secret €5 fee http://www.eurolines.be/
- I see tickets to/from London-Amsterdam are £14 if you reserve a month in advance
- Later I checked free hitching across the Channel. This is possible from UK, but I think it's not wise for drivers or hitchers coming into the UK as possibility of drugs or peoples smugglers is high so UK immigration are tough people.

- Some info on on LP forum and Hitchwiki - most are armchair

Sun - Alsace ..Heritage day, upto Strasbourg
- The plan was to hitch up to Strasbourg ... first I came through Fessenheim and passed the The " Hardt " Museum and Schoelcher House. Luckily I went in. In was the family home of Victor Schoelcher who is the French equivalent of the famous anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce there was a lot of stuff about Reunion there as there is a strong Schoelcher family connection to Reunion.
- I 'd camped inland away from I see if I'd come up the river I would have passed the Fessenheim nuclear plant which I would liked to visit (open for "Journées européennes du patrimoine"


- From there I went up to Neuf-Brisach. Despite it being heritage weekend and the town looking spectacular from the air it was dead as a doornail.

- Wow I had never though of French people as particulary kind and hospitable..but it was a big change from Italy, as I found from hitch hiking. Sunday is always the worst day for hitching, but people kept giving me rides even though they were only going 5Km, a woman, a telephone engineer, a vet, a gardener, a student then a woman driving her mongol child said "well I'm not going anywhere so I'll drive you a bit further. I got down at a town with a fair, but it was a pretty boring fair. Then I got a ride with Noberto and Antoinette all the last 35Km to Strasbourg.

- Excellent hospitality from this scoutmaster and retired beer laboratory man, as he has always being interested in speaking English he invited me to stay at their house instead of camping. Wow we had some excellent wine ..Antoinette cooked a special pie from that area "called quiche Lorraine", which of course is very well known in the UK.

Mon - 19th - Hitching from Strasbourg to Lille
saxophonist, currency trader consultant driving to London,
- my big mistake was to get down at sign saying North Reims .. It was actually the far southeast of the city, and the road to Lille is in the Northwest side so a 3Km walk and 4Km bus ride, but then got a steady ride another 300Km ..with Bernadette the anti-nuclear camp woman invited me to stay at her house in Lille.

Tue - Lille and hitching to Belgium and Bruges
- If I had been rushing maybe I could have got into Belgium on Monday night, but being in Lille I decided to have a look around ... not a disaster , but a lot of depression similar to Coventry in England ..even the new council building had a safety fence around it as masonary was falling off. The Eurolines office said they had a bus going to London for €36 at 6pm ... but that meant I would be in London at 11pm midnight so I decided to continue with the original plan to pickup the bus from Belgium. All I needed to do was get to the first city in Belgium. I took the metro to the last French suburb. God Lilles metro system must be huge it was 22 stops. I walked into Belgium, but the road was no good for hitching so i took a bus into the town ..then another bus was leaving to Kortjik where there is a Eurolines bus. Got there ..no Eurolines office and when I found a computer I found the service to London only runs in summer... so I either had to get to Ghent or Bruges.

- I headed for Bruges figuring I would catch the nightbus that left Ghent at midnight..but it turned out that bus doesn't come through Bruges. I had to wait till the lunchtime bus . I had a bit of luck when I found a hotel with an internet computer so I booked the Eurolines and then found I could get the Megabus from London to Scunthorpe cheaply, so I booked that.

Wed - unexpected half day in Bruges
- I've been to Bruges a couple of times before, but my God it's got so many tourists. It one of those places in Europe which used to be nice, but is now pretty much ruined by over tourism.. everything was so expensive , with no free interent etc. It's a medieval city surrounded by canals so it made me think why doesn't Brigg make more use of it's 2 waterways as a feature.

.. Eurolines service is weird..there is no office, there is no mark at the bus stop. We drove towards Calais and got stuck in for 90 mins in a massive traffic jam. Then instead of going onto a ferry we pulled into the Channel Tunnel depot. .. It's weird the system isn't so much as a train as a long thin ferry on wheels. The train in a long box car with double decker carriages for cars. So instead of getting into London at 6pm it got there at 7.30pm. Then I walked from the SW part of London to the NE part to catch the train at 22.25pm .. then my poor Dad picked me when the bus arrived at 1.45am Thursday

Idea - Staycation Plus
- the stay at home real holiday see Stew's Secret Blog

- Stewgreen the Douglas Adams professor of hitch-hiking
I can explain the connection between travel,alternative perspective, intercultural understanding and the progreess towards a better world

The Racism of Greenies and Left Wingers
- I was in the library near Mullheim and the librarian starts talking about solar and then nuclear etc. .. and I realised that racists and Greenies and Green Left think in the same way : extreme simplication and extreme emotion .."of course, nuclear power is evil, GM will lead to catastrophe " ..surely such a statement is just as dumb "black people are stupid" but we let them get away with this. see essay The Racism of Greenies and Left Wingers

Greenies who won’t eat their greens - It's like when your children refuse to eat there greens .. An irrational prejudice based on emotion
- ..the adults with greater maturity understand what is good for the child more than the child itself .. the scientists understand better than Greenies who won't respect science.

Ugh did I come back too early ? I gave up after a couple of extra days looking for work

- Maybe I should have pushed harder early .. on the 3rd day in Switzerland I saw people picking apples 3 fields over .. so I said "thats's too far to divert" .. I passed a lot of vineyards but usually it was late in the day or Sunday.. after another 2 weeks when I did a man at the winery ..I'd just left a French speaking area and come into a German speaking area so wan't feeling confident .. in fact cos everything was so expensive in Switzerland I didn't meet people in cafes or hotels etc. I just didn't meet many people at all. I might have met up with people through couchsurfing , if I had been luckier finding internet instead of passing the places on Sunday etc. Yes it was funny most days I didn't meet many people ..most days I'd spend hours walking through the countryside seeing no one then I'd be in a town and it would be full of people and I'd just be one of the crowd ..then after a few minutes I'd be back in the countryside.

.. Some towns like Cressier had 40 wineries .. it would have been big work to go around them all.. In fact the reason I relied on bumping into people was that I need to find work that was starting immediately in that area,; it was no use yes come back into 12 days. When I was in the highlands harvesting hadn't started and when I got to the Rhein plains it had already started.

..well that was a bit of a failure, my travel system relies on bumping into one job and then you meet more people which bring you more opportunities; like eventually get into teaching at a university etc. ... With costs being high there was no possibility of hanging out at a hostel and I didn't find much at helpx.net for switzerland


The kindness of French people..on Sunday I hitched and Noberto and Antoinette invited me to stay at their house
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