Coffee on the Keyboard

Hitchhiking

There is one inherent problem with Eurail passes: they are mother-fucking expensive. So, while It would be great to get a two month, unlimited rail pass, I simply can’t afford it. (They do exist, for those of you with the money.) What I think is the most common is the Eurail Flexipass, which allows you 10 or 15 days of travel in a two month period. That’s also what I’m going to get. But it creates a little problem: with only 15 travel days, how do you make sure you don’t end up stuck in Slovakia for two weeks because you need your last day to get you back to the airport? And this is why I think hitchhiking in Europe might not be so bad.

I’ve read that train tickets are substantially cheaper in southern and eastern Europe than in the north and west. So while it might be cheap enough to pay for an individual train ticket from Rome to Milan, I might just not have the money, or the trains could be booked. Certainly it’s too expensive to take the train from Monaco to Aix-en-Provence without the Eurail pass. Out of 15 days, though, is it worth the trip? Sure, if you can get a ride.

It’s–apparently–only illegal to hitchhike while actually on a major highway in most countries. Which makes sense: you don’t want to be standing next to free moving traffic on the Autobahn. Cars on the highway itself will probably be moving too fast to size you up, consider stopping, and stop before they’ve passed you. The solution is gas stations and on-ramps, places where cars congregate and are going slower.

One thing you can get hitchhiking that you really can’t get anywhere else is a chance to talk to a native for an extended period of time. I don’t know how well that will work across the language barrier, but it still has potential, especially if an English speaker picks you up. You can also see different scenery than you would on a train, and different parts of a city.

There are downsides, of course. Less secure than a train; fewer people around to talk to. If you don’t like the driver, or neither speak a common language, I’d guess it could be pretty boring. And of course you get to carry your stuff on your lap for however long. (I’ve read that you should never let anyone take your pack away from you while hitchhiking. And it makes sense. It’s only too easy to throw a pack in a trunk and then drive away with it.)

Overall, I don’t think I’m going to seek out opportunities to hitch, but I also don’t think I’ll avoid it if it comes up. If I really need to get across Rome in a hurry and can’t figure out the bus, or don’t want to waste a train ride to go 70 or 100 km, I think hitching could be a really viable alternative.

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Europe ‘06

As promised, some more info about my upcoming EuroTrip.

The goal is to head out pretty soon after school’s done, around my birthday. I want to bum around for a while, and end up in Germany to catch some of the World Cup. I’m aiming for coming back around the 3^rd or 4^th week of June, just in time to start up some classes for the second half of the summer semester.

The cheapest tickets seem to be flying in and out of Dublin. The fees added to the ticket price seem to be about half of what it would be to get to London, and there’s no $100 Chunnel ticket to worry about. There’s a discount on the ferry from Ireland to France–though I’d probably have to hitch or take a bus to get to the port–from where I’d ride the rails, trying to travel at night and sleep on the train. I’d probably head to Paris, first, but maybe not. My goal is to just bum around, deciding where I go next when I’m ready to leave. No plans or schedules, except for arrival and departure.

One other interesting idea has shown up… I could hitchhike. I probably wouldn’t do it the whole way across the continent, but I could try to get around town or around the smaller countries. Rome to Venice: Why waste a Eurail trip, when I could hitch? Spend money on the bus, or stick out the thumb to get to the train station? Depends, I’m sure, but you never know!

Towards the end of the trip, with maybe a week or so left, I’m going to end up in Germany, probably in Hamburg with my German Brother Christian. (We housed him for a year, so his mother insisted she owes us a place to stay.) I just want to be there for a while and soak up the World Cup atmosphere. Drink beer in a pub and watch the games with real football fans. Who cares if you speak the same language? “Ya” and “boo” are all you need. Then I’ll just have to save a train ride or two on my Eurail pass and enough money to get back to Dublin for my flight home.

Now how to pay for it all? The way I figure it, it should cost between $2500 and $3000. I currently have about $600 saved. Damn! If I had never spent money on anything, including gas, from every job I’ve ever had, I might have enough. Unfortunately, the first job paid for the roadtrip. The second job has just evaporated somehow–and wasn’t that much, anyway–and I’ve managed to save a little over half of what I’ve made this summer. I can try to put away every cent of my earnings from the Lab this year, but I doubt that’ll amount to more than a couple hundred, even if I can resist the urge or need to buy anything, ever. So my plan right now is to ask my family to loan me the difference. I have two aunts who are both doing decently, and who will both, I think, remember that I’m the only family member left who’s never been to Europe. Plus I said loan, not give. I will pay them back, even if it takes me a couple of years.

So that’s the plan, Stan. And I think it will be the trip of a lifetime if I can pull it off.

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