A new experience lay ahead of me. I’d never hitchhiked long distances before, but I at least wanted to have tried this way of travelling. So I did. I made my way from The Netherlands via Slovakia into southern Italy, and found that hitching is in fact an art of its own. There’s a lot more to it than you’d think.
First of all there’s the hard task of finding a good spot to start hitching. An onramp to a highway or a gasstation along your route are the best places, but unfortunately it usually takes a lot of walking to get to such a spot. You should expect to have some blisters or at least sore feet after a day of hitchhiking.
Then there’s of course the issue of arranging a good place to get dropped off, which unfortunately doesn’t always work out too well. Traffic doesn’t always allow the driver to pull over, so sometimes you get dropped off a dozen miles away from the highway you so desprately wanted to stay on. Twice I got dropped off in the middle of a highway where cars sped by with at least 120 kmph. Needless to say most drivers aren’t too tempted to pull over for some backpacker at such a spot. One of those times I was forced to walk all the way to the nearest city and find a hostel to crash in. Another time I was very lucky: within minutes a truck screeched to a halt and took me with him for six hours. That was a great ride.
My waiting time to get picked up usually hasn’t been more than up to half an hour, but at times the wait can be awfully long. Thank god for the ancient hitchhikers’ tradition of leaving messages on road signs. Reading those and then adding your own is fun. You just might encounter one of mine if you ever go hitching yourself :). And standing along a road with a sign in your hands often evokes fun reactions from the drivers (like, they’ll laugh, shake their heads, point out that they’re turning left and wish you good luck), that kind of communication makes the wait quite entertaining.
The hitches I got were really from all sorts of people: the average nice guy going home from work who turns out to speak Dutch fluently, the international trucker, a family on holiday, and of course I’ve had some quite bizarre rides too. For example the German guy who offered me 15.000 Euros to marry his Rumanian daughter for their permanent reunion. “Well… no. But thanks for the offer, man!” And even though he’d said that he’d take me all the way to my destination, after that reply he suddenly dropped me off at the next gas station for some reason. Yep, I sure did meet some funny people on the road.
But hitching in general is a lot of fun, and I’m very glad I did it. There’s really a lot of nice people out there, you always end up having a nice conversation, and sometimes they even offer you food and shelter. I personally think hitchhiking is one of the most fun ways to travel within Europe, as long as the weather cooperates that is. Which brings me to my final point. If you ever decide to go hitchhiking yourself: go in the summer!!
