Sometimes when you drive a car, you can see a person standing on the side of the road with their thumbs up, a written sign, and the hope that a stranger will pick them up. As children our parents told us to never get inside a stranger’s car, so hitchhiking seems to be everything but responsible. Then why would people do that? 

Hitchhiking is a way of travelling out of your comfort zone. The concept of it has existed since there were moving vehicles. This way of transport was especially popular in the 1960s and 70s. In Poland, until the end of the 1970s, you could even buy a booklet called “Akcja Autostop”, where drivers could collect coupons for picking up hitchhikers. They could win rewards with that booklet if they collected a large number of coupons. There are multiple reasons for hitchhiking. The first that comes to mind is saving Money. Some would say: ”Sharing a ride in the same direction as you are going is part of the sharing economy“(hitchwiki.org). Other reasons are getting to know the world from a different viewpoint, trying something new, and connecting with many different people. Those were also the reasons for a couple from Germany who wanted to travel the world without flying. They went to the east, and after three years, they returned from the west. With their film “weit.”, which shows the whole journey, they proved that you can get anywhere in the world by hitchhiking.

Hitchhiking is not comparable to public transport. It is way more personal because you engage in conversation with strangers in their cars. You never know what the ride will look like when you get into the vehicle. From time to time, one car ride turns into a city tour and sometimes you meet the nicest humans on the road, and you end up turning strangers into friends. Often you have to improvise when they don’t speak the same languages as you. I experienced this the first time I hitchhiked in Montenegro in 2018 during a scout trip. I was travelling with a group of seven girls, with an age range of 14 to 19. The first time we got picked up, we didn’t intend to hitchhike. Two guys with a pickup truck stopped after they saw us going up a hill. They didn’t speak German or English, so we had trouble understanding each other. After a conversation mixed out of a lot of pointing, our map, and a bit of Russian, they drove us to a small village to meet a German, of whom they knew that he created our map. He helped us find the way from there. I remember thinking: “The world can be so small”. 

When a car stops to take you, you have to judge the driver and everything around him and decide in a few seconds if you want to go in the car. Through various movies, hitchhiking doesn’t have a good reputation. Some drivers drive under the influence and especially women experience sexual harassment while hitchhiking. I ́m sure a few of us had similar expectations, while we waited on the side of the road. We didn’t have to wait long until a white van stopped. We hesitated at first. In the van were three young people on their way to Belgium, and they had enough space for our backpacks and us. Some of us sat in the trunk. For the short time that we spent with them, we listened to German rap music that they put on for us. Our worries were unnecessary. In general over 90% of the hitchhikers’ experiences are good, and only 0.27% are bad or very bad. Hitchhiking with friends feels safer than doing it alone, because you can rely on others. Travelling to a country where the general mentality is more relaxed, which I think applies to most regions in the Balkans, will most likely result in good experiences with hitchhiking. Still there is always a risk that comes with this kind of free form of transport, where there is no guarantee for safety in an unknown environment. That is why it is important to trust yourself with your own judgement. 

Spontaneous, grateful and sceptical were some of my feelings while hitchhiking. It is unpredictable and that is what makes it scary but also exciting. Every day on the news we hear about people causing problems, destroying lives and making others suffer. So it’s hard to trust people, especially those we don’t know. And yes: you should always be careful while being in a car with a stranger. But sometimes it can be nice to experience your life in a different way. So when you occasionally lay your trust in strangers, you can see the kindness that humans are able to offer. So thumbs up! 

Fiona Schaumann

Sources: 

Weit um die Welt – Reise

Wikipedia – Hitchhiking 

globaldane – Is Hitchhiking Dangerous? Here are the Statistics (9,564 Riders)

Hitchwiki – General Info