Burren, Backpacks and Beer.: Stencils and Stereotypes

There exists, for some reason, this generalization that Germans do not pick up hitchhikers. After our extremely positive experience with Stefan, I was ready to call this myth busted. After three hours outside the gas station on the main highway connecting Berlin and Dresden however, I wasn’t so sure. Tobi and I approached nearly every motorist who was heading in the right direction, and while I mastered the German phrases “Are you going towards Dresden?” “Do you have space for two people?” and “Oh, that’s ok, thank you anyway,” we had nothing even close to a yes. Finally, a young, well-to-do Czech couple who had left the kids with the grandparents for a weekend getaway in Germany pulled up and asked us where we were trying to go. They then proceeded to take us all the way into the heart of Dresden, where we met up with Victor (the featured artist) and went out for Falafel/halloumi/kebab sandwiches. After dropping off our bags, we went back to the gallery to work for a few hours. Tobi and I set about cutting out stencils that Victor had printed off, and around 1:30 am, we headed home to the apartment of one of the gallery curators (a lovely German girl named Verina) where Victor, Tobi and I converted the living room into our shared sleeping area.
Today we were back working in the gallery. Besides cutting stencils, we mixed colors, painted backgrounds on big canvases, stenciled decals onto the windows, and more than once used our combined language skills to interpret between Victor and Verina, from Spanish to English (me), and English to German (Tobi). I also became the default translator for the official artist statement and biography, which was just a little bit more pressure than I quite like, but turned out pretty good I think. We’re staying at Verina’s for one more night, and setting out tomorrow morning to hitchhike to Kehl, where Tobi lives. We’ll see how it goes and call this the tie-breaker on the German-hitchhiker-picking-up-itude debacle.