Europe

tagvolatile said:
how come in Italy and Spain, in particular?
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In Italy its forbidden to hitchhike even in truck stops etc, its only ok with Carabiniers(police) if you hitchhike on "superstrada's" local highways and not "via" roads etc...

In Spain, most of the time you cant hitchhike on "via" roads, because they are owned by corporations/private persons, so all is left crappy state owned highways, where no cars pass for hours.

+ Both countrys are way in south and the temprature can get upto +40 easy in summer, so think before putting your thumb up in the sun ...
 
Yeah, it does get hot in Italy i the summer. But damn, that's a shame, about the hitchhiking. Thanks for this information.
 
i have just been hitching constantly in spain for the past 2 months. never had any problems with the police, just the usual comedians honking horns and doing thumbs up. never heard about private roads or any crap like that, dont know what you are on about, every road is fair game. we found it much easier in the east, the further you move south west the harder it became. with patience it is possible to hitch anywhere. guess you know about hitchwiki.org. um longest wait was 2 days, mostly averaged around an hour with a guy and a girl. go to portugal, as soon as we got there had 7 cars stop in 60 minutes, and hitching was much more enjoyable with smaller roads and way friendler people, i dont think this is a generalisation either, the portugese are far more open minded, speak much more english, and the little villages in the mountains contain the sweetest old folks in existance. anyway have a look at hitchwiki for advice and people speaking from experience. good luck..anyway even in this thread there is alot of contridictary information so take what you want from that. i think iv spent 120 euros in 2 months.
 
I'm from the west coast too and have flown out on a ticket for 300 bucks one way to Frankfurt, Germany. Why do you think all the planes leave from the east coast? I just sat online an kept looking up specials on the internet airline providers such as expedia and orbitz and cheapoair. from what I saw dumspters in germany are about the same here. They seem to use more compactors but there was a punk feeding that happend everyday in berlin. It was awesome/
 
there are other options besides hitching in europe too, although in my experience france was a breeze (its practically part of the culture), and spain more difficult but do-able. but train hopping, not freight but passenger trains, is another easy and comfortable way to get around. all you have to do is go on down to the nearest train station, and walk on. there are security guys on every train that cheak for tickets part way through the ride most the time, uless your lucky, but all you have to say is you dont have any money and they will eather write you a ticket, which isnt a problem considering it costs more money to find you afterwords and make you pay than the ticket is worth, or just kick you off at the next stop, wherein you wait for the next one to come rolling along.

the only tricky part is major cities, which often have higher security and are more difficult to sneak on to.
but its nice in the sense of riding as far as you can and figuring it out from there.

an old homebum in marseille who told me about it came all the way from berlin with 3 dogs a rat and a bunny via trains.
 
Gigi said:
there are other options besides hitching in europe too, although in my experience france was a breeze (its practically part of the culture), and spain more difficult but do-able. but train hopping, not freight but passenger trains, is another easy and comfortable way to get around. all you have to do is go on down to the nearest train station, and walk on. there are security guys on every train that cheak for tickets part way through the ride most the time, uless your lucky, but all you have to say is you dont have any money and they will eather write you a ticket, which isnt a problem considering it costs more money to find you afterwords and make you pay than the ticket is worth, or just kick you off at the next stop, wherein you wait for the next one to come rolling along.

the only tricky part is major cities, which often have higher security and are more difficult to sneak on to.
but its nice in the sense of riding as far as you can and figuring it out from there.

an old homebum in marseille who told me about it came all the way from berlin with 3 dogs a rat and a bunny via trains.
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Yeah i wrote quite a few guides about fare dodging/passenger train hopping, i prefer riding trains than hitchin, cause there are always shops near the stations and its easy to shoplift something and just wait for another train... managed to get so drunk in italy that i blacked out and got back to my mind only in Germany :D Sometimes than there are only 2 track lanes and the train only goes like every 2 hrs or every 1 hr its the same train all the time and conductors wouldnt let you get on the train without ticket :/
 
How about Ireland or Scotland? For some reason I've been fancying these two countries lately, Anyone know how easy or not easy it is to hitch, busck, squat, or dumpster there? Locals friendly to traveler types?
 
xbocax said:
How about Ireland or Scotland? For some reason I've been fancying these two countries lately, Anyone know how easy or not easy it is to hitch, busck, squat, or dumpster there? Locals friendly to traveler types?
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Hitching in England (Great Britain + Scotland) isn't as easy as in the rest of the Europe, somehow people are afraid of hitchhikers and feel insecure, your best bet would be asking people for a ride in Petrol stations. Plus due to the fact that roads are inverted, you have to use your left and not right hand as usual, thats tiring atleast for me, don't know anything about Ireland.

Squatting in Scotland is quite a breeze, but there are many junkies and wreckheads who do nothing to help out to squatting community, just use ketamine all day long and drool. Dumpster Diving is also quite easy, but if you want to get something better from the dumpsters you need to get a bin key, cause all the good stuff is locked or behind a spiked fence. Friends had kind of a fights with other dumpster divers, you could say "turf wars", so early bird gets the worm... but you should be good..

Busking depends from city to city, for example in Aberdeen there are alot of immigrants from east europe, they won't give you a penny etc... but its a whole different story in Dublin where people are friendlier and warmer...

Because English is your mother tongue, locals should be more helpfull, because many people aren't very friendly to immigrants/travelers.

Haven't been to England for quite a while, so can't really help you out, just wrote my personal opinion...
 
Oh man this thread stokes me right up. I've been to Germany, Austria, and N. Italy through conventional means, and I have to say, they are hands down the nicest people I've ever met (With Vermonters a close second).

Wondering, what about Scandinavia? I'm considering going there sometime in the next few years. Iceland too?
 
xbocax said:
Cool thanks for the input, what's a bin key?
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Many dumpsters/trashbins are locked with a lock. The key varies from 3 cornered cone to 6 cornered circle and up to to a point where you can use a door knob... etc, you can get most the "keys" in hardware stores, just need to know what you are looking for.
 
Komjaunimas said:
Many dumpsters/trashbins are locked with a lock. The key varies from 3 cornered cone to 6 cornered circle and up to to a point where you can use a door knob... etc, you can get most the "keys" in hardware stores, just need to know what you are looking for.
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very interesting and def worth looking into, thank you much :]
 
xbocax said:
very interesting and def worth looking into, thank you much :]
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Well i briefly drew with paint some of the types of keys, their dimmensions may vary in diameter length etc.. i only drew the first example both male and female, but all the types has male and female locks.
I hope you'll understand something from the picture.

The reason they use this kind of locks is that you couldn't jam them with a burnt match or something like regular locks, + this kind of locks are melted directly into the trash cans so there is no way of cutting or doing damage to the lock without damaging the dumpster

Hope this helps

P.S. If you need any more specific info on something in europe just ask...
 
When it comes to historic and beautiful holiday destinations in Europe, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom is the head of the list..I have visited Europe in last vacation.That was the most memorable trip of mine.The castles, galleries and museums in Europe several places where you have to take the best of old world.
 
So I finally bought my ticket. Kind of late, I know. I'm leaving Sept. 1 and have a return ticket for Oct 4th, which I plan to ignore if I find a long term hitching partner. If anyone's interested in meeting up around that time let me know. I'll be landing in Paris, but you don't really have to be near to meet up.
 
If annyone wants to meet up my plans for summer and aphter the summer will be..
June 14 - first days of July = Amsterdam
First days of July - mid July = Checz Republic
mid July - First days of october - Germany
First days of october - mid august - Amsterdam
Aphter that either i'll settle in either Barcelona either London/Manchester for winter...
 
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