We got a lift through the Mitfahrzentrale from Berlin to Dresden. Our driver, Steffen Rudig is a citizen of the former DDR and although he didn't really speak any english, we were able to converse in german somewhat and he answered all the questions we had on what life was like in the DDR before the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and his hopes for the future of former East Germany. We arrived in Dresden about 9pm and found our hostel, the Lollis Homesatay with relative ease. The hostel is small and all the [View Full Entry]

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We were dropped by out driver Wilfried in the Zoo Station in Berlin and made our way to the Circus Hostel, close to Alexanderplatz. The hostel just completed a refurb 3 weeks ago and is fantastic with a wonderful bar area and comfortable rooms - all for €17/night. We woke up early in the morning to go on a walking tour of the city. Setting ot at 10:30, the tour lasted 8 and a half hours (12 km) and included all major sights of the city including the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall, New Synagogue and Checkpoint Charlie as well as [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Cologne early afternoon and after checking into our hostel, had a walk around the town - the best way to see a place. We had never planned to stop in Cologne but unfortunately the cost of the German train service and the non-existence of a national bus service meant that we wanted to check out all our options before paying the €90 train fare to Berlin. In the end, we managed to find the Mitfahrzentrale. This is a kind of organised hitchiking service where the bureau sets up passengers with registered drivers who are making the journey anyway. [View Full Entry]

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We left Amsterdam on the train as we had been warned about the diffeculty of hitchiking in the Netherlands and arrived in Maastricht at 2pm. After a lot of searching we managed to find a relatively cheap hostel on a boat called - the Botelboot. The cheapest accomodation in Maastricht (still not that cheap) it serves as a place of residence for waifes and strays. We got talking to one who then followed us on our walk around the town which is very pretty and quite similar to Durham. He came up with some mad stories about how one of his [View Full Entry]

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The ferry ride to Amsterdam went very smoothly. As we sailed out of the mouth of the tyne on our DFDS ferry, we looked forward to what the coming months will bring and bode a fond farewell to Bitish soil. The journey was easy and our cabin comfortable, despit the loud tannoy announcements waking us up in the morning. We arrived in Amsterdam and walked for 20 minutes in the rain to find our hostel which as we discovered soon was only a 30 second walk from where our bus dropped us! A good start! We checked into the Flying Pig [View Full Entry]

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'The Journey' was conceived in a drunken state towards the end of my final year studying Marketing and Media Studies at university in Leicester. Inspired by the epic 'Long Way Round' with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman, my housemate and soon to become travelling companion Adam Dale and I realised the true extent of distance between the UK and China. . . ."It's a F**king long way isn't it?" I remember one of us remarking. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, "Let's hitchike from the UK to China!" The next morning it still seemed like a good idea. [View Full Entry]

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