As I walked along the highway somewhere in France I turned to have one last look at my Volkswagon that I walked away from. I could barely see it now so I waved goodbye and turned around and kept walking. Thinking to my self here I am in Europe, no money, no food, no vehicle, with only the clothes on my back and a thin blanket. My survival mode started to kick in and I thought I would be ok eating fruits and vegetables from people's gardens, and If I came across an unlocked vehicle I could take anything of use to me. I was also thinking about hiding from any police vehicles I saw. Survival was not my biggest concern, finding a way to get back home to the U.S.A was.
I walked all day and into the night and didn't see any cars or trucks. I was getting so tired so I walked over to the ditch beside the roadway it was covered with grass so I laid down and went to sleep. I had covered up with a small blanket that a group of kids had given to me earlier, I must have covered my head and did not feel the lite rain that fell but when I woke up my whole side was damp and I was laying in some water. The weather was warm and with the sun up I dried off pretty fast. and on down the road, I went. I must have been pretty close to the ocean because a mile or so I came around a bend and saw some thick bushes and heard voices behind them. There was an opening between them and I walked up and started to go through then I saw people with no clothes on. I looked a little closer and saw the ocean an a nudist camp on the beach. I was so shocked that I turned around and kept walking, I was thinking if they saw me I could get hurt for spying on them.
The road followed the beach line and as I walked I noticed a lot of the girls were topless, it made me think this must be the French Rivera beach and I kept walking. I could see a lot farther down the beach a tower was standing. When I got closer to it my curiosity got the best of me so I walked over to investigate. It was starting to get dark and no one was around so I walked up closer and saw there was an opening in the back. The tower was round and made of concrete and blocks about 20' high. I walked inside and saw old pieces of steel and wood junk laying around and a metal ladder going up to the top. I climbed up and through the top portion and looked out into the ocean and beach. There was a waist-high wall around to keep me from falling off. I thought this was a perfect place to spend the night and I laid down and fell asleep. I heard voices in the morning below in the tower it sounded like there were two men checking things out. I laid there very quiet until I heard them leave and as I peeked over the wall I saw they were guards walking the beach. I climbed down and ran up to the road and walked away.
Down the road aways I stopped at a coffee shop on the roadside, I had found a few coins along the way and asked if I could have a coffee. It was the blackest and thickest coffee I have ever had, but it was what I needed and I took my time sipping it. On another day going into the late afternoon I was close to a farmer's field with potatoes growing so I was pulling up a plant to get some potatoes when I heard a shotgun go off and a man shouting. I crouched down and started crawling on my knees and elbows as fast as I could out of his field and then ran till I was out of his sight. Whenever I saw a garden or a fruit tree I would help my self and not think about whether they cared or not. It was the only food I was able to get at the time. One day I came to a plum tree and they were ripe so I filled my stomach and carried as many as I could walking away down the road. About an hour later I had a really bad stomach ache and had to go to the bathroom bad. There were no houses or trees around just open fields and the road so I squatted and let it all come out. Plums on an empty stomach are not good. I found that in a lot of the smaller towns wagon trucks with canvas covers would carry beverages and produce down the roads and they traveled very slow so it was easy to keep pace with them as they went. A couple of times I was so thursty I picked a bottle from their wagon without them seeing it.
Hitchhiking was fairly easy during that time and I was able to catch a lot of rides to so many places that I can't remember and language was not a barrier we would just smile and use sign language and point to road signs. One man picked me up and spoke enough English to say he was going to Spain and I said that's where I wanted to go to. He drove a Citron car which is similar to a sports Cadillac and he had to drive through some rocky cliffs with deep drop-offs and lots of curves. That was the fastest and scariest ride I have ever had. He stopped short of the Spanish border and had me get out he said I had to walk across he didn't want to get stopped because of a stranger that he just picked up on the road. I passed through and caught another ride that took me to Barcelona. Looking for places to find some work I saw a coca-cola plant so I stopped and asked inside if I could get a job and was turned down because I needed work permit papers. They gave me two bottles of coke and wished me luck.
I walked most of the way out of Spain and caught rides into Italy, then through Germany and back into France. So many places I wish I would have journaled them. In one small town outside of Paris, I found a car unlocked and I was going through the glove compartment when people came out of a building and was walking towards the car so I crouched down hoping they would walk by. As they opened the door I jumped out the other side and ran as fast as I could with a backpack full of stuff. I made it to Paris and didn't want to be seen with the backpack so I hid it behind some bushes and went site seeing. When I got back the backpack was gone someone else had stolen it from me.
I was in my fifth or sixth week of traveling aimlessly around Europe and trying to find work and getting nowhere. I was tired, hungry, dirty and I hadn't had a bath or shaved since I left. Walking along thinking I might be better off to go back to Wiesbaden and my wife and ask if we could start over again. So I decided to make my way back to Gustavsburg where her mom lived. I kept walking and when cars would stop I would say Frankfort Dauschland and most people knew which way that was so I gradually made my way back to her small town.
I stopped and had a moment of fear go through me before I went up to her mom's house. I rang the doorbell and Heidi my wife answered. She had a surprised look on her face as she said my name Buzz where have you been? I told her my story and asked her if she would go with me to America and start over. She asked me to come in and get cleaned up and talk about it. The bathwater was so dirty that I had to empty it and take another one to get clean. We came to an agreement and made plans to move to America.
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