That’s awesome!
Ha, my one visit to Germany was Goettingen about ten years ago to visit a vendor. And also about this time during the asparagus season, lucky! It was clear to me they take it seriously and was offered to us at several meals during my brief visit. I remember a cheese & crackers type professional reception in a hotel with the usual finger fruit and veggies but, unusually, also a heated crock of creamy white asparagus soup to self-ladle into a cocktail glass. I remember thinking you’d never see soup at an event like that back home and it would be Sysco broccoli cheddar or tomato-fructose if you did.
About five years ago, day before Thanksgiving. I took half the day off work to help get food ready, and I stopped at the liquor store on my way home to pick up some beer and wine for the next day. As I came out, a woman approached me from a nearby bus stop and asked if I knew when the next bus was. I told her I didn’t. She said she had just hitch-hiked into town and was trying to get to the shelter near downtown. It was bitter cold and windy, so I offered her a ride – it was only about a five minute drive from there. So she hopped in and was very thankful when I dropped her off in front of the shelter.
Aside: I’m saving that name for my next cat! 
Carry on.
Holy crap! What an amazing experience.
I hitchhiked around Japan a whole summer and met quite a few people who gave me rides.
I was even invited into people’s homes to stay the night.
One guy I met rented this really cheap apartment for a month so I had a place to stay in Tokyo.
Another time, a guy gave me a ride and dropped me off at a campground. He then went and bought a bento box dinner for me and came back to give it to me.
OTOH, I met a scammer in Singapore. I was walking among and he started talking to me. He claimed to live in Hawaii, which he said after I told him I was going to visit Hawaii at the end of the summer. He said I could stay with him there.
There was a long story but he tried to borrow some money and pay me back the next day. If his money didn’t come in, he could pay me back in Hawaii.
Yeah, right.
The question if I ever picked up strangers rather than being picked up, well yeah, most often at bars . . .
Magic is 魔法 mahō with a long o (long as in pronounced twice as long as a normal o) and the girls’ name is with a normal length o. There are scores of different kanji combinations for the girls’ name. It’s such a common name that it’s seen as quite ordinary.
When I was 17, I borrowed my parents’ car to drive to a church committee meeting in rural Saskatchewan. The engine broke down as I was nearing my destination (the magic black smoke leaked out of the tailpipe) and I didn’t know what to do; this was before cell phones. I flagged down the first vehicle to drive by and asked them to give me a ride into town so I could find a garage.
The driver took me to his house, gave me a cup of tea, drove his own truck out to our car and towed it to a garage himself, and then he drove me to my destination. 35 years later, I still get a bit choked up thinking about how nice that family was at a time when I was in trouble and freaking out.
Ah, so “mahoo” as I learned to Romanize. Thanks for the correction. 
(Doomo arigatoo.)
A little over a week ago, myself and my wife were in Nova Gorica, a small town in Slovenia, while on a rail trip through Europe. Nova Gorica is a new town right on the border with Italy, and was built right next to the ancient Italian town of Goriza during the Yugoslavian era. (Nearby is the massive Solkan Bridge, the largest stone arch in the world, but we didn’t know about this until the day before).
There is no rail connection between Nova Gorica and Goriza, and we planned to take the bus for the journey (several kilometres, depending on the route). But there was no bus, and the bus stop appeared to be disused. We faced a long walk.
A middle-aged couple local passed by, and informed us that the bus stop had been moved several hundred yards away, but they offered to take us to Goriza station anyway in their car. On the way they gave us a guided tour of the twin towns of Goriza/Nova Gorica. I never really determined if they were Italian or Slovenian; in modern EU times, this distinction seems to be largely academic, and it seemed impolite to ask too closely..
Before I got my South African ID, I was working in South Africa illegally. Never asked for ID but I did not want to be deported. So the default “guest” visa is 3 months.
So every three months I would hitchhike from Cape Town to Harare, 2500km so I could cross the border and then reenter (I switched between Zim and UK passports…), then hitchhike back.
Now I am a full citizen I don’t have to do that anymore, although those trips generated both hilarious and scary stories…
So in a “pay it forward” way, I often give hitchhikers lifts. My kids live in a place poorly serviced by public transport, so when I visit I often see people needing a lift over a steep mountain pass.
One of my more amusing lifts was a bunch of dirty bedraggled young Germans, who I found in a light industrial area. Incredibly, they had hitchhiked from Germany though Africa to end at Table Mountain in Cape Town, so I took them to the mountain for their final hitchhike.
Many years ago my sister-in-law’s BFF “Nancy” was getting married. Nancy had spent some time as an exchange student in Japan during college, and she invited her host family to the wedding. Since everyone was busy with other pre-wedding things, it fell to my wife and I to pick them up at the airport. Of course we don’t speak Japanese and they spoke little to no English and we had no idea what they looked like (other than that they were likely the only Japanese people getting off the plane) and they had no idea who was picking them up. And this was pre-cellphone days, so it had the potential to be like a Seinfeld episode.
My wife worked with someone who spoke Japanese and taught her a couple phrases. One was “You must be tired” and I forget what the others were. We managed to find the Japanese family and get them back to town. After they got back home from the wedding they sent us a nice pair of hand painted china mugs as a thank you.