American Road Trip: The Life of an Exchange Student

My name is Eugen Merher and I am an exchange student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I have come all the way from Germany in order to make my dream come true and study for one academic year in the United States. Now that the year is almost over, I’m looking back at all the adventures that I have experienced. Just yesterday I sat down with my friend Lars and we started jotting down all the noteworthy stories that have happened throughout the year. It is ten pages in length, so I don’t want to bother you with all of them. Instead, I will tell you a story that happened to me at the beginning of the academic year in November and influenced the rest of my stay tremendously.

 On a rainy November weekend, my friend Lars and I went for a road trip. A hitchhiking road trip, to be precise – equipped with a camera, two fully charged batteries, a backpack and Das Boot. Destination unknown. The reason for this was actually a slacking off on my behalf: for my journalism class, I had to produce a music video and had one week left to hand it in. As usual, the idea for the music video came to me when I was taking a shower. I only had the melody of ZZ Top’s road trip classic “La Grange” in my head. While adjusting the shower heat, I thought about the ultimate road trip: Driving during sunset all the time, listening to great music and now and then stopping to visit funny places and, of course, having great friends around you.

 But it’s all been done. How boring is that?

So I added some spice to it. What if the destination is unknown? What if you don’t know any of the drivers? And this is where the hitchhike comes in. So I asked Lars: “Hey, do you have two days to drive somewhere random with some random people?” “Sure, why not?” he replied.

 Ready. Set. Go.

After an hour of waiting for somebody to pick us up in downtown Eugene, Oregon we realize the highway ramp would be a better option. So we head there and try our luck again. A pickup pulls over and who do we see? Coincidence #1: Matthias Vogel, a professor from the German department at the University of Oregon. He was the only person we knew during the whole trip. But thanks to him the trip could start. Matthias takes us to the next rest area on the i5 north and sets us out in the wild. We talk to a trucker that is having a break. After five minutes of chatting he takes us all the way up to Seattle, Washington. For free, of course.

 So far, so good.

But this is where coincidences started doubling. No wait, tripling. Dropped off at a highway intersection, we make our way to the football stadium, where the Washington Huskies are (coincidence #2) playing against our school team, the Oregon Ducks. Oh, and the game hasn’t started yet. On our way to the stadium we meet middle-aged Duck fans. After telling them our story they invite us to stay at their house after the game, since we don’t have a place to sleep. Awesome! We exchange numbers as we don’t have tickets for the game and keep walking.

 Walking, walking, walking. Seattle is huge!

After having a burger and thinking about our next steps, we walk back to the stadium. The first two quarters of the game are over. Coincidence #3: All of a sudden, a guy walks out of the stadium and hands us his season ticket for free. We can’t realize what just happened. Mouths open. Another guy sells us a ticket for $50. We split it up, $25 each, and go to the game. As a matter of fact, the Ducks win the game. We walk outside the stadium and my phone rings. It’s the middle-aged Duck fans who we met before, and they tell us how to get to their house.

 Okay, this is getting too good to be true.

 The next morning.

After providing us with breakfast, beer (the evening before), and sandwiches, we have to give something back. Das Boot seems like an apt present. The Duck fans even take us downtown to the space needle, so we can start our hitchhike back to Eugene from there. But as I said before, every road trip includes visiting funny places. So we go ahead and do some sightseeing. Coincidence #6: The advertising agency Wexley. We can’t believe our eyes, another creative strategist class reference in two days! It seems almost like a class trip now.

 It’s getting dark now.

After several attempts to hitchhike back we decide to take the greyhound. Another experience we haven’t had so far. Lars and I have learned something from the trip. Being spontaneous and taking a risk has opened a whole world of opportunities for us. We did not have a place to stay so we were a lot more aware of our surroundings. If we had planned this trip thoroughly and booked a hotel, we would not even have taken this opportunity into consideration.

I don’t mean to say that you should never plan out a trip – we were indeed lucky to have met the Duck fans. But the slice of wisdom that I have gotten from this trip helped me become more aware of the many opportunities that are in the world around us.

Now that you have read the story, here is the music video that we produced: tinyurl.com/hitchhikeroadtrip.

Eugen Merher