Hitchhiking Forever ! – let’s state the truth !

Hitchhiking Forever ! – let’s state the truth !

Looking at it we have to see that hitchhikers are usually young people, generally aged between 16 and 30, and only occasionally older or younger.

Hitchhiking can be regarded as an activity that helps us to form ourselves in a certain period of our life as young adults. Apparantely we have courage and will to travel independently compared to those who rely on their private vehicle or the train. For hitchhikers it is sufficient to take advantage of the property of others – cars. Probably a car is usually the most expensive physically existing object private people own.

According to Bernd Werchner, hitchhiking may be regarded as a course in personality development. This implies that the phase in life in which one hitchhikes comes to an end after completion of the course. Perhaps this is one of the more viable explanations why most hitchhikers are people of under 30 in a society with an average age of 40-50 years.

For one young people do not always have as much to spend as do have more aged adults. Little money may be another factor, however, also in the groups aged over 40 years many people live in comparative financial poverty. And they do remarkable not often pick up hitchhiking anymore.

As a matter of fact most of the people do try just once or twice to hitchhike or do never pass the phase of considering it to bring hitchhiking then into practice.

The hitchhikers career seems to have a short duration, although a small share of thumb travellers keeps practising hitchhiking for many years. But still very few hitchhikers are aged over 30, thus it seems that frequent hitchhiking is mainly practiced by people between 18 and 30 years old.

How do you look at that matter yourself…

Me for instance, I have been hitchhiking actively over the past five years. This year I will turn 30. I am not constantly looking at the sports in the same way!

Before 2003 I have hitchhiked only occasionally, mostly during summer holidays for distances up to about 25 kilometer, usually to get back to a starting place after a day of hiking.

In 2002-2003 a then good friend often told me about his hitchhiking experiences in the Netherlands and Germany, as he was travelling on thumb quite often.

So, in 2003 I started with more active hitchhiking; the first time going back on a Sunday from a visit to that friend, who lived on the other side of the country. On Sunday the card giving free use of public transport to students in the Netherlands was not valid and thus I decided: hitchhiking one hundred kilometer, why not!

I also went from my town of studies near Arnhem to a friend who lived and lives near Maastricht in February 2003 for the same reason: it was weekend, the card for public transport was not valid, and I considered hitchhiking a good, cheap and fun alternative. So I went off for another 140 kilometer, and had another good experience, in three cars, waiting 10-30 minutes each time.

It was the end of the years in which I studied and the first half of 2003 I did not combine work with finishing my studies, thus I felt more that I had less to spend.

At that long weekend near Maastricht I met a great woman who then became my first and as yet my best lover. From Poland. In May she came along with me when I returned from my fourth holiday in Poland and she stayed at mine until August (and back then I realized such could bring me into trouble, offering a stay for months in my small, cheap rented room). Her name was Anna and we hitchhiked often together as she as well loved going on weekend trips, anyway, if one of us wanted to go somewhere, we would simply go there together. We chose hitchhiking as to her a low budget mattered; she only had some “black” cleaning and gardening work then. Before Poland entered the EU in may 2004 Poles had little opportunities to work here, unless they had German ancestry, which Anna did not.

I felt perfectly comfortable with hitchhiking in the first half of 2003; what’s better than hitching with your sweet girlfriend!

After Anna was back in Poland –we kept intense contact– I kept hitching to family, friends and meetings of our young nature lovers’ club. I enjoyed it less and waiting times were and felt sometimes longer.

In the years 2004-2005 and to a lesser degree I have from time to time felt quite bad with hitchhiking, and until about the middle of 2004 I have often thought about giving up hitchhiking up anyway completely. In 2005-2006 I have only felt unconfident with hitchhiking after those more scarce periods that I did not practice it for a couple of months.

Also the feeling that I would on some term stop hitchhiking faded away more and more until just one question came up more – when to stop hitchhiking – it’s easy, you know the techniques, it has become your way of travelling, but you will become old…

Nobody ever explicitly advised me to stop hitchhiking altogether nor do I hear stories that people “fear” about me personally – just the “common sense” feeling widespread in our society that hitchhiking is or must be dangerous comes to my ears from time to time. I’m male, I’ve experience, some nice stories, am environmental engineer… so why the heck not.

Summer 2006 I felt that I should not hitchhike because it discriminates as it is essentially less safe for females and as I suspect hitchhiking in Western Europe essentially less efficient to people from non-Western races.

Also from summer 2006 I started feeling that hitchhiking is not an activity which I should stop to practice by when I become 30 (which was suggested to me once in an internetforum, and which age I also recall because the editor of Autostopguide to Europe describes hitchhiking for people over 30 years old less easy in the Netherlands and Belgium). I can keep going with it as long as it is a nice activity, at least until I’m 35, and perhaps till “the end of time”.

Since I am back from my last holiday on 14th January this year I have not done any serious travelling; I have been hardly out of the area Maastricht-Lüttich-Aachen and did by far most of the kilometres on bike. My mind and body do not long for hitchhiking at the moment; hitchhiking is BAD for the environment; long distance hitchhikers adopt a mobile lifestyle.

Regards,
Frank