Im back in the Netherlands..

I left Prien friday morning towards Bruckmuhl to meet up with the guy who would take me 500km up north to Mainz. After only 30 seconds of waiting I got my first ride. An old hippie woman who used to hitchhike herself brought me close to Rosenheim. From there I managed to get a direct ride to Bruckmuhl. After some coffee we hit the road. The traffic that day was horrible, it took way longer than we expected to get to Mainz. Managed to get a place to sleep close to the city and the next day the plan was to go north again towards Rostock and from there take the ferry directly to Copenhagen. Sadly my first ride of the day misunderstood me, and instead of taking me to the a5 highway, we got on the a60. At first I thought "o well, he's a local here, he would know the fastest route". Sadly I was wrong, and when I noticed we were close to Cologne I asked if he got let me out at the nearest gasstation. He felt really sorry for taking me into the wrong direction and gave me 10 euro's to put towards food and drinks for that day so that was pretty sweet. On the parking lot I found a dutch truck driver. I asked him how I can get back on track the fastest way. He replied I'd have to take a little de-tour through The Netherlands in order to get back on the right highway, and so I did. I drove with him to Arnhem and from there I hitchhiked to Enschede, a city close to the German border and with the highway a1 that goes in the right direction to Denmark. Here I will stay with a friend till monday morning, and as soon as the trucks hit the road I will try to join them. I arrived in Enschede just at the right time. It was the last day of the "Batavieren-race", a running competition for students all over the country. This meant I walked right into a BBQ and some beers. Good times! Till next time, Chris

Due update

After the night in the hostel in Trieste I walked through the city all day, enjoying the sun and amazing views. I met a french hitchhiker and we spend the day together talking about traveling and where we've been so far. I completely forgot that I still needed a place to sleep but then a friend of mine in Ljubljana texted me "call this number if you still need to find a place to sleep in Trieste". I called the number and after 30 minutes a guy showed up and asked "Are you from the Netherlands?" I replied yes, and I had a place to sleep for the next 3 nights. They showed me the city and I've had a really good time there. Thursday morning I left Trieste to go back to Prien in Germany to visit my girlfriend (where I am now). The bus I took to get to the edge of the city was extremely crowded and I couldn't move at all with my backpack on my back without pushing people over. Someone took this as a great opportunity to steal my tent from my backpack, which sucks big time. Tomorrow morning I'll go shopping for a new one, but budget wise it's not that pleasant. Tuesday I will leave to a friend I met last month, the guy who took me 500km from Mainz to Munich. He lives 30km away from Prien and next weekend he will go back up to Mainz again so I can travel the full 500km with him for the 2nd time, which is pretty awesome. After that I will be 500km closer to Denmark, which is my next destination. After Denmark I'll cross the bridge to Sweden and there I'll probably stay camping for a while and not leave the country a week after I got there. As always, check out my facebook page: www.facebook.com/DrifterInEurope for pictures and all that goodness. Take care, Chris

2000+ views and another update

When I checked this morning, the blog had 2043 views! I would like to thank everyone who checks out what I've been up to and a special thanks goes out to everyone who donated via Paypal, you are making this possible! Yesterday I hitchhiked out of Ljubljana in Slovenia to go back to Italy. This time the stop was Trieste. I Found a hostel here for the night and sent out a bunch of couchsurf requests in the hopes I can stay here a few more days. If all goes well a guy I met in Ljubljana can fix me a place to sleep for a few days here, so fingers crossed. Trieste is an amazing city and from my hostel window I have the best view in the world. Until next time, Chris

Hitchhiking tips and tricks!

Since my current host is still asleep and I have some time to kill I figured I'd ramble a little bit about my hitchhiking experiences so far. Hitchhiking is a great way to travel through Europe on a low budget. Not only that but you meet lots of interesting people everyday. People who are more then willing to help you out, talk about the place you where you are, or where you are going and above all who offer a break from the boredom. Being bored isn't uncommon when you have been waiting at a specific spot on your own for several hours. There're a few things I've come to learn that helped me get rides relatively quickly so I thought I'd share them. - The most important thing is to always smile at each car that drives by. People are a lot more likely to pick up a happy looking traveler, than a grumpy looking guy who doesn't look like he wants to get a ride in the first place. Specially female drivers who picked me up said they don't normally take hitchhikers, let alone males, but that I was smiling an looked like I could do no harm. - Another thing is to always look decent and clean. Shower as much as possible and put some effort into looking like you haven't slept in the woods for the past month. Try to look like someone who has more money than you actually have. It could be worth it to spend a little of your money on a shower somewhere if it means you can get a longer ride or if it means you won't be stuck somewhere a long time. Just drink one beer less in the evening and you'll be fine. - Alright let's talk about signs next. As you may or may not know, I tend to use a sign with just "Away" written on it, since I don't really have a destination to go to next. People offer me a ride just because they want to know the story behind the sign, they can't really believe I'm traveling without a plan. When I want to leave a city in a specific direction I'll just make a sign with North, South, West or East on it but nothing more than that. I try to keep my signs bright and colorful so that people are able to read it from a long distance. They have to be able to read it and have time to slow down before they have passed you. If you want to hitchhike across borders it helps to write town your final destination city even if it's hundreds of kilometers away. At the border of Germany and Austria I met another Hitchhiker who had a sign with "Zagreb, Croatia" on it. He got picked up before me by someone who was going halfway through Slovenia. Push your luck a bit and you will have great results with hitchhiking! - Looking clean and not like a homeless person goes both ways. If the driver looks shady, just don't get in the car. Even if you've been waiting a long time and really want to get out of a place. That's how I ended up in the car with a Romanian guy who, instead of going to Vienna where I wanted to go, said that we are going to Budapest and didn't let me out at the place where I wanted to get out. This wasn't only a scary experience, but also meant I had 2 hours of extra traveling to do before I ended up in my destination for that day. This is about it I guess, if I think of more stuff I'll edit this post later. Chris

Ended up in Slovenia

Well after the last blogpost I managed to get some rides and ended up in Venice. Venice is a beautiful city to visit for a day but there really isn't much else to do except for walking around. Since the center is very small, it get's old very quickly. So instead of finding hosts on couchsurfing in Venice me and a Canadian guy I met in the hostel decided to make it to Slovenia. We got stuck at a gasstation at the border for more then 3 hours, no one picked us up. We finally decided it was better to split up again and after that I got a ride within 10 minutes to a next gasstation further down into Slovenia. From there it took me 2 hours of waiting before I got a ride to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Here I booked a night in a hostel and next to the hostel was a squatted building with music coming out of it. I went up to the building and started talking to some students and they offered me a place to sleep for the upcoming week. All the pictures from the past few days are now on my facebook page and more will follow for sure because this is a beautiful city. Until next time, Chris

Italy

After 2 awesome weeks it was time to kiss my girl goodbye and go on the road again, with Italy as destination. We took the train out of Prien to the highway and from there I hitch hiked alone again. It took me 4 rides to get to Innsbruck, and surprisingly 2 of those rides were with a female driver. This was the first time I got picked up by females while hitchhiking alone. At a gasstation outside of Innsbruck I talked to a Bulgarian couple who were on their way to Verona in Italy, and I could join them on the 250km journey. I managed to get all the rides without much waiting. The cold helped me a lot because everyone said they felt sorry for me standing in this type of weather. In Verona I tried to find a cheap place to sleep, which is impossible in this city. It's a beautiful city but with that comes a price so I don't really recommend it to people traveling on a low budget. After walking through the city for 3 hours I finally found a "cheap" B&B thanks to my dad. Tomorrow I'll walk around the city a bit more and take some pictures and then I will hit the road again. I will craft another one of my famous "away" signs and from there I'll see. Now it's time to close my eyes and call it a day.

Slight change of plans...

Allright, there's been a slight change of plans lately. Sadly I won't be traveling together with my girlfriend, otherwise we'd probably be on the road again by now. Due to the fact that she has other obligations she won't be able to join me so I will stay here for as long as possible, which will be another week or so I guess, before I will head to Italy on my own. From this part in Germany, Prien an Chiemsee, it is possible to get over the Alpes and into Italy in one day, two days if I happen to have no more luck all of a sudden. In Italy the plan is to hitchhike around for a while and then give wwoofing a short. on www.wwoof.org you can find organic farms where you can work on in exchange for food and a place to sleep. Would be pretty cool to learn new stuff that way. Anyway this explains why I'm not on the road yet and gives you an idea of what will be next. Till next time, Chris