Yes, it is totally legal to hitchhike in Europe. No countries are forbidding this practice, however :. Most countries in Europe have highways, and these are the fastest way to hitch from one place to another. It might be easier, because cars have more place to stop and I feel like there are less rules to follow.
Using a sign on a national road would be clever, as you might come across a person willing to take you for a longer distance and not taking the highway to save money such asit can be the case in very often in Spain.
You can have access to toilets, shelter and expensive food. You just have to put on your best smile and talk to them. You can also make a sign and show drivers. When thinking about hitchhiking, most people think that mostly trucks are stopping! Private cars : The most common vehicle to pick up hitchhikers are private cars. They are usually fast and comfortable, although they tend to go shorter distances. This is very personal but in my mind, speed is an element of hitchhiking, and a truck will be much slower than a car.
Trucks are limited to 80 or kilometers per hour on highways. I also noticed that in general, people driving a car on a highway have usually a higher level of English than truck drivers, which allows us to have a deeper conversation.
The trickiest part about hitchhiking in Europe is to get out of the city. Think twice before entering a city, you should do it only if you really want to visit that place or if you have a host there. The concept is to find a spot with enough space for drivers to stop safely, and a spot where most cars will go in the same direction as you. Imagine yourself hitchhiking in the middle of the city center of Paris near the Eiffel Tower.
People are likely to go in any direction, and maybe sometimes just a couple of kilometers farther, but if you stand at the entrance of the highway in direction of the north, drivers are quite likely to go for a longer distance towards the north. Therefore the key to getting out of a city is to find a spot where you optimize your chances without losing too much time or money to get to that spot.
Have a sign especially if you plan on hitchhiking on a road with many possible directions such as near the center of the city. You can reuse the white board easily. You can stand right at the entrance of the highway. It works well in most cities, cars have enough space to stop and usually have a slow speed so that they can see you. It works perfectly in most medium-sized cities and smaller. Asking people there is a good way to get out. Previously I used this technique in the city center of a few big cities and it worked!
If the highway is a little too far to reach, you could try on the main road leading to this highway. Surely some drivers would take the highway, so you could use a sign to be clear. A few countries, namely the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark have created some official hitchhiking spots, I sincerely hope that this will become more common around Europe! By experience, I noticed that the more developed the country is and usually the hardest it will be for you to get out of the city.
Share your story, show them hitchhiking is not as dangerous as they think it is, get to know your driver better, inspire them to travel. You might be surprised that it might result in an invitation for lunch, or even an invitation in their home, sometimes a job offer, or one driver sharing this story with his friends who in turn might stop for a hitchhiker the next time they see one on the side of the road….
A positive attitude can be just a smile and enjoying the ride! In these situations, you could discuss general topics that can trigger a small conversation, such as talking about family, work or even football! Inside a car there are several things you should avoid to, unless the driver authorized or offered you :. Patience is the key. It can be a few hours, and sometimes a few days without getting a ride. Most travelers will try to combine hitchhiking with a way of reducing their accommodation cost.
Where would you sleep if you had no money? You probably never asked yourself this question, therefore this guide is here to show you the various possibilities you have in order to avoid hostels.
Sleeping for free in Europe : The Ultimate Guide. It would require to plan beforehand, but if you plan on visiting a specific city, you could use one of these hospitality website to find a host before reaching the city :.
Come and read our article about how to find a Couchsurfing host! In the biggest petrol stations, they have restaurants open for 24 hours.
The staff there is usually pretty kind with hitchhikers. You can sleep in the restaurant with a sign indicating your destination just in case! Once upon a time, I found a roof countless times just by asking random friendly-looking people on the streets. It has many advantages, first, locals know the city much better than you do, so they might be aware of a suitable spot for you to sleep at.
Less safe, less comfortable and often guards will wake you up very early. Parks — Opening a map and spotting the main green area is often a viable option. After the Civil War, if you were looking for work but without your own means of transportation, you'd hop on freight trains to travel long distances. By , the ranks of these hobos 1 had swelled to an estimated , — or about 0. While lots of people kept riding the rails throughout the 20th century 2 , the rise of the automobile provided a much safer and more flexible means of hitching rides to faraway destinations.
Hitchhiking 3 really took off after , when the Depression both limited people's options to buy their own cars and increased their need to move around to find work. By one estimate in , at least one adult American male in 10 had hitched a ride at least once. A Gallup poll conducted during World War II, when fuel-rationing and car shortages were keeping hitching popular and patriotic , indicated that nearly half of all Americans had picked up a hitchhiker.
However, there were problems with hitchhiking almost from the start. Early on, public opinion swung against aggressive hitchhikers, sometimes standing in the middle of the road, practically "demanding a ride". Reports of crimes - real or otherwise - committed by hitchhikers predisposed the public and the authorities against it.
After WWII, laws and law enforcement further discouraged the practice, as exemplified by these FBI posters, warning drivers against hitchhikers: they could be "a happy vacationer or an escaping criminal — a pleasant companion or a sex maniac — a friendly traveller or a vicious murderer".
In the s and s, a slew of highly publicised crimes involving hitchhikers to name just one: the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, — and a few movies playing on the fears they generated The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ; The Hitcher, — helped end its heyday. Add to that the generalised sentiment nowadays that 'stranger' equals 'danger', and the demise of hitchhiking seems logical. From the s right up to the s, thumbing a ride was a fairly common way to get around. These days, it's the option of last resort.
But perhaps the main reasons for hitchhiking's decline have less to do with moral panic, more with fundamental changes in infrastructure. For one, there's the post-war rise of the Interstate Highway System: bigger, faster roads that are unsuited to hitchhiking.
If you have a car, you don't need to hitch a ride. If you've never stuck out your thumb to get somewhere, nor picked up someone who did, you're now part of the overwhelming majority. Nevertheless, like vinyl, hitchhiking has survived the predictions of its demise and occupies a small but thriving niche. There's an entire wiki dedicated to the practice, including a map detailing hitchhiking spots around the world, rating each for 'hitchability' and providing a user-generated average waiting time for each spot.
Based on that information, Abel Sulyok has produced this map, showing average waiting times across Europe as experienced by hitchhikers themselves. The map provides a curious overview of the continent's hitchhiking landscape, indicating where it's easier to hitch a ride, and where your thumb is going to be sore before you're picked up.
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps gmail. Hobo : someone traveling to look for work. Term possibly derived from hoe-boy , i. Tramp : someone traveling, but not looking for work. From tramping , i. Bum : someone neither looking for work nor traveling.
Nevertheless, the lifestyle is definitely fading — see this article about The Last Great American Hobos. He would hitch the horse to a tree and walk on. When the first man [arrived], he would take the horse and ride past the other man to another predetermined spot.
In , that figure had dropped slightly to However, the U. Census figure for indicates car ownership has gone up again, to a record Frank Jacobs. Share Thumbs up?
A young Ernest Hemingway 17 in , freighthopping to get to Walloon Lake.
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