To Berlin by Jaguar, Audi, Nissan; travel

On 12 October readers were invited to enter a competition to join The Independent's travel editor on a trip to east Germany. The method of transport: hitching. Simon Calder and the winner, Alison Clements, report on their journey

The weather forecaster had set the tone for the weekend early on Friday morning: "It's been the coldest night of the winter so far". The sparkle danced from a few fragments of frost, and I shivered. This was to be a long, cold day.

As Leonard Cohen nearly sang, it looked easy on paper: first, we take Rotterdam, then we take Berlin. We had planned a train-ship-train ordeal to the furthest east station in Holland. But the strange economics of international travel meant that it was cheaper to hop by air to Rotterdam, taking in a hot breakfast en route. Hitch-hikers must suspend all normal human functions, such as eating, so this was an asset.

You can trace a straight line from Europe's busiest port due east through Osnabruck and Hannover to Berlin, 430 miles of autobahn. Now all we needed was a lift.

Newcomers can bring a fresh approach to an activity. Alison eschewed several of the established conventions of hitch-hiking. I had not previously encountered the practice of walking down the middle of the central reservation while thumbing a ride, nor dancing by the roadside. Nor had I thought of holding the destination board at such an angle that most motorists could not read it until they had driven past. This "tease" certainly intrigued some drivers.

A three-hour wait, like the one outside Utrecht, can serve to focus on supposed deficiencies. Alison's declaration "I should have brought my daughter instead - everyone would stop for her" wasn't the sort of thing to keep the spirits up. Morale was flagging: after all, in four hours we had covered just 40 miles. So a lift in a turbo-charged Audi was just what the hitching spin-doctor ordered. Hardmut came round the corner a moment after I had replaced the two failed hitching signs "Berlin bitte" and "Hengelo or Arnhem" with one simply reading "Germany please". The implication - that we were (a) British and (b) desperate - was not lost on him. He could help with a 100-mile hop into Germany. As we crossed the border, Hardmut put his foot down and we began hurtling east at 200kph. Soon the lost time was being replenished.

He dropped us on the edge of the tangle of autobahnen in the Ruhr, where Dortmund runs into Essen and hitchers run into trouble. Berlin was 300 miles beyond, and the sun was setting fast. Being stuck all night at this breeze-blown Rastplatz seemed inevitable. What we needed was a Berliner delivering a brand-new Nissan to a customer, who could converse elegantly in English, and take us straight to the heart of Berlin. The red-and- white numberplate signifying a trade driver pulled up. Hello, Ralf.

In contrast with the 12-hour, three-lift race across Europe, the return journey involved seven hops and took two hours longer. It also cost pounds 20. It was by train.

On the journey back I defended the concept of hitch-hiking against some intensive lobbying from Alison. She thought the competition prize should have been a flight to Berlin.

"I didn't mind it, but I wouldn't let my daughters do it." Alison's daughters, Sarah and Emma, are 23 and 26 years old respectively.

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'One advantage of hitch-hiking is meeting interesting people ... but I'd rather have spent the time in Berlin'

Within an hour of leaving Rotterdam Airport we had flagged down our first knight in shining paintwork. Between describing his various homes and the refit of his yacht, Franz outlined his policy on hitch-hiking. He always picked people up, he said, to repay the lifts he had received as a student. Indicating the sumptuous leather upholstery of his Jaguar, he said: "I think it is also nice for them to ride in such a car". You bet it was.

However, he dropped us on the wrong side of Utrecht, where we had our longest wait for a lift.

Lift two also featured a quality car, this time an Audi driven by German businessman Hardmut. I was beginning to warm to the idea of hitch-hiking. I hadn't fancied riding in a lorry driver's cab, though I had taken the precaution of packing a few Yorkie bars.

Lift three was a hitch-hiker's dream. Hardmut had dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, and the temperature was dropping by the second. Then Ralf stopped and offered to take us all the way to Berlin. He even dropped us at a handy S-bahn station. Thirteen hours after my one breakfast and Simon's two, we were sampling a cheap tourist menu at a Berlin restaurant.

Hitch-hiking was an interesting and occasionally hair-raising experience. I had to close my eyes when Hardmut's speedo topped 200km. Second-hand car dealer Ralf was delivering a Nissan with almost nothing on the clock; the speedometer seemed mysteriously to have been disconnected.

One advantage of hitch-hiking is meeting interesting people. Franz was in heavy-duty removals, transporting anything from reactors to submarines. Hardmut, from the former West Germany, revealed a philosophical approach to the problems which have followed unification. "I think in 30 years no one knows about the DDR. It needs time." Astonishingly, Ralf, from the former East Germany, seemed indifferent to his new-found freedom. "A lot of people want the wall back," he told us.

We celebrated the anniversary of the wall coming down, and my birthday, in the company of a jolly little band of people we had met at our hostel. An all-night session was ruled out, as we had to leave the hostel at 6.30am to catch a train back to Rotterdam. Or more precisely, several trains. A special weekend deal allows up to five people to travel anywhere in Germany for about pounds 14. At the German border we crossed to Hengelo and took another train to Rotterdam and stayed in a youth hostel where the air in the dormitory was heavy with the scent of dope. It was too late for dinner, which would have been the first meal of the day. I ate a packet of crisps.

And the final reckoning? The cost of train tickets on the return leg, plus the flight to Rotterdam, was about the same as a direct flight to Berlin. Hitching and investigating the rail system had saved precisely nothing and cost about 20 hours' travelling time. I'd rather have spent the time in Berlin.

Despite Simon's claims that hitch-hiking is character building, I wouldn't do it again. I would, however, visit Berlin, perhaps on the 10th anniversary of unification when Germany's new capital should have become a coherent whole city. By then perhaps the supply of pieces of wall, still available in tacky souvenir shops throughout the city, may have dried up.

My most pervasive memory of Berlin is a park created in what was no-man's- land. Alongside a remaining section of the wall large-scale swings allow adults to soar through the air, untrammelled by the constraints of officialdom. These swings are not for children. "I feel liberated," said Simon, working his legs enthusiastically. "I think that's the point," I told him.

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