# A Midsummer's Day



## Mihail Morea (Mar 30, 2011)

Anno Domini 2009
It was in France, specifically - the warm sunny south of that strange old country. The day was June 23rd, Midsummer. And I was hitch-hiking out of the beautiful student city of Montpellier, where I had met and hung out with some interesting and, honestly, scary freaks for 3 days, and stayed with a nice student girl in what she called her "apartment", where she was renting a room. Well, it might've been an apartment, but it was an apartment with three floors, at least three times bigger than my parent's house, 6 meter high ceilings, owned by a German baroness, operated by a 75-year old Buddhist woman who was also a practitioner of modern dance... And it had a beautiful stone kitchen from the 15th century. Goddamn, was that an "apartment". Had spent the Day of Music wandering around and taking in the massive street party that France is on the 21st of June.

Now, though, it was time to hitch out, go furthur down, to the region right on the border with Spain...
So I caught a tram to the outskirts of town, and after walking for 20 minutes realise that the information I was given was old and outdated - where there should've been a toll station, there wasn't. Or at least no place where I could feasibly get onto it and get a ride. So I pulled out my handy little atlas, and checked the map... there! Just a bit furthur on there was a gas station, where I could probably easily get a ride. But there was a little hitch - I had to get over a river, one way or another. But I was confident I'd find a bridge, so I decided to trudge on, with the sun beating down on me constantly and strongly.. but not viciously. After a while of this walking along the highway, I come across a section where the road lifts up into a bridge, and there's a barbed-wire fence blocking my way. 

Now, this was the first time I had come up against something like this. It was about a foot or two higher than me, and topped pretty liberally with what looked like new barbed wire. Luckily, there was a boulder from which I could, with a bit of acrobatics, conceivably get over it.. So after 10 minutes of hesitating, I pulled on every piece of clothing I could, threw my sleeping bag over the barbed wire, and tossed my bag over. Climbing from the boulder to the fence, I had a feeling of dread as I straddled the fence... One wrong move and I would get pretty good insurance against kids. But it passed without incident, and getting down I started to look for a way how I could get over that river - which, while nothing much, wasn't something I wanted to swim across. So I asked a jogger, the only person I had met for a good long while, where I could cross. Although my French was pretty bad, I understood from him that there were some rapids downstream where I could clamber on over. I thanked him and walked on. Just near the river with the highway above, was what looked like a graffitti spot. Met a guy and his girl, who had driven up, he was painting a piece. Don't remember what it looked like, don't remember what we talked about, but he was nice. And one thing he did mention is that he thought that the gas station was about 10 kilometers on, which made me wince a bit. The sun was glowing with love and adoration up above, so much adoration that I was pretty sweaty and tired by then. But I had to get over that river...

It hadn't rained in something like two weeks, so I got lucky - when I reached the "rapids" they weren't much more than slippery, muddy rocks with water flowing in between them. Still, if I had slipped there, it wouldn't have been pretty. I got across without incident.. And, crashing my way through the jungle that welcomed me with open arms(or vines and branches), got to the Other Side.

One big obstacle surpassed, now just those 10 kilometers to go. So I walked on, following animal paths to get back to the side of the highway, and kept going. It turned out that it wasn't 10 kilometers to the gas station, but only 5 or so... Which made me breathe a real sigh of relief when I saw that billboard announcing it. Basically, I had to jump a few more fences - no more barbed wire, thankfully, and I finally got to the station. Now this is the part where I learn an important lesson, which has stayed with me on every other trip I've been on. That lesson was: When yer hitch-hiking, you're not in a rush.. So don't rush it!

I got to the gas station, but it was fenced off from the surrounding area(I had approached it from the back somehow). An access road was blocked by a metal barrier, a bit higher than my waist. I thought "Hell, if I've jumped a barbed-wire fence I can easily do this", and without taking off my pack, vaulted myself over. The only problem was, my foot came down where the sidewalk met the asphalt of the road... and the former was about a... foot or so, a bit less mebbe, off the road. And my foot landed right there. So I hear a crack, a jolt of pain, and I tumble down onto the road, swearing and grimacing. Rolling up my pants, I could see that the ankle was swollen about the size of a tennis ball. Poking the swelling, I felt squishy, tender meat, and thought - "Well, that was goddamn stupid." A highway security(not cops) car rolled up, the driver looked at me through the window, and then simply.. drove on.

The situation, then, was something like this - an inexperienced 16-year old with a badly sprained ankle, just chilling on a road in the middle of nowhere on a hot Midsummer's Day in southern France... wondering what the hell he does now.
And if you guys wanna know, I'll write some more, maybe I was too drawn-out with the whole thing.. Lemme know what you think.


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