Hitchhiking 6 countries 10 days part 2

...After we paid off the cops we noticed that the car wasn’t doing anything. The night before we used the headlights to light up the area so we could put the tent down and that killed the battery. We pushed the car back a bit till we were close to a main road. There we found someone who could jumpstart it and the guys took us back to town. From here we hitchhiked towards Italy. A woman took us through the mountains to Tarvisio. It was probably one of the most awesome and horrible roads ever. The view was just stunning but the road was like a rollercoaster and made us all feel pretty sick. We got dropped off at the highway entrance in the direction of Villach, the first city in Austria. The sun was still burning and we had no place to hide from it, which seemed to be the theme of the trip. Doris leaned on a small plastic pole on the side of the road, which turned out to be hollow. I heard a snapping sound and Doris was laying on the ground, laughing like a crazy person. The big canon camera that she had around her neck fell on her mouth so she looked like she just got out of a fistfight. Luckily an old Italian guy saved us from the heat and brought us to a gas-station on the highway at Villach. A truck stopped to take us to Vienna but he only had place for 2. Doris and Laura went with him and I tried to catch another ride. After half an hour or so an A-Team van pulled up with 4 guys from Sweden who were completely drunk (except for the driver of course). I knew I had to catch a ride with these guys even though it would mean taking a de-tour. They were on their way to Prague so I could drive with them till Linz, about 200km away from Vienna. They had lots of booze and beer in the car and they told me they just got kicked out of a camping in Italy because of all the noise complains towards them. They invited me to go with them to Prague and when I told them that I have to catch up with my girlfriend and another friend in Vienna they offered to take me there, which was pretty sweet. Then they asked what our plans were after Vienna. Laura had to take the train back to Romania from Budapest the day after that so then they offered to take us to Budapest the next day. Probably one of the most awesome hitchhiking experiences so far. When we got in Vienna we parked the car at a camping that was already closed for the night (which meant we couldn’t check in, which meant we didn’t pay) After going out that night we found the camping again at 03:00AM. Sleeping with 7 people in one car isn’t something I can recommend to everyone, but it sure was fun! The next morning at 8 we left before the camping opened again and we we’re on our way to Budapest. The Swedes wouldn’t go anywhere before buying beer somewhere though so first they restocked their supply and we hit the road again. In Budapest they wanted to park the car somewhere at a secured parking lot and when they couldn’t find it they decided to go to Prague anyway. They took a 2 day de-tour just to bring us to Budapest. Some people are still genuinely friendly! We slept in the same hostel as the one where we were before. I felt so relieved to finally be able to take a shower again and to sleep for more then 4 hours. The next morning it was time to say goodbye to Laura and for us to go towards Linz. The ride to Linz went really fast we had some drinks with our hosts and the next day it was time for the street performance festival. It was a lot bigger and diverse then I imagined. It’s a once a year event so if you’re in the area next year be sure to visit! Here we met a blues artist from New Orleans who was on a hitchhiking trip through Europe, completely funded by his street-music. We hung out with him for a while and he got us a beer and gave us a city. For anyone into blues/country go check out Outdoor Protestant Blues-band! After Linz we went to Wankham to visit our friends there and to finally relax a bit after this tiresome trip. In conclusion this trip was probably the best one so far. Met a lot of great people, had a lot of fun, suffered a bit every now and then but it was worth it in the end! I hope we can do something like this in the near future again and this time stay on the road for a longer period. Pictures of the trip are on the facebook page for those interested. Till next time!

Hitchhiking 6 countries, 10 days part 1

Hitchhiking from Prien am Chiemsee to Budapest went surprisingly smooth and just 4 cars later we were in the heart of Budapest where we met up with Laura, a friend of Doris from Romania. From the central station we began our mission of finding a cheap hostel which wasn't as easy as we thought. All hostels seem to have Western-European prices. After following some dutch girls who had navigation software on their phone for a while we couldn't find the hostel they were looking for. They took a cab to find another hostel and 20 seconds after they were gone we realized we were standing infront of the hostel. Doris and I could share a bed and one of us only had to pay half price, which is pretty awesome. We stayed there for 2 nights while seeing the city. Budapest in summer looks really nice, but the heat was just a bit too much so we mostly hopped from shadow to shadow. Of course we had to try some Goulash while we were there and in the hostel they recommend us a good restaurant nearby with affordable food and beer. When you chance your Euro's to HUF be careful that they give the right value back. We've seen everything from 250 HUF for 1 euro at an ATM till 293 at a money exchange place. It seemed that the small shady looking exchange places offer you more than banks so watch out for that! Hitchhiking out of Budapest was easy. It took us a while to find a good gasstation at the end of the city but once we found it there were lots of local hitchhikers. Our goal for the day was Bratislava in Slovakia. After a few minutes or so of waiting someone took us til somewhere in the middle of Hungary since he was going back to Vienna. This was a bit of a mistake on our side. It's the best to hitchhike straight to your destination out of Budapest cause once you are at a gasstation in the middle of the country you should expect to be stuck for hours. The traffic sign in front of our hitchhiking spot was covered in testimonials of people who were stuck there for up to 8 hours. Luckily for us it only took 2,5 hours before someone took us to Vienna airport and from there we took a countryside road to Bratislava. We dropped our luggage of at the train station and explored the city for a while. Bratislava in summer is full of Dutch and British high-school graduants who want to get as drunk as possible for almost no money and the city itself is nothing special. We went back to the station to get our luggage and from there walk into the forest on the hills outside the city to find a place to put the tent for the night. Sadly after walking for what felt like hours up a steep hill we were still in the city and couldn't find a place where we were hidden from sight. We walked back into the center and got a hostel instead. The next day it took us 3 hours to leave the city but then we finally got closer to the Czech border. The ride we got into Czech was probably the craziest of the trip. We got picked up by a couple (husband and wife) in their 30's. The first think they asked was " You're from the Netherlands, do you have anything to smoke?". When the answer to that question was no the wife didn't want to take us anymore but the husband convinced her. About 20 minutes later the wife started screaming in English that her husband had to pull over on the side of the highway to let us out. He wanted to let us out at a gasstation and her response to that was yelling WHERE IS THE PETROL STATION!! after some more screaming we got dropped off at the side of the highway. We walked for about 10 minutes to the first exit we found and from there hitched a ride to Brno with a man who worked on the wine fields. Again we got dropped off on the side of the highway cause he thought it would be the best place for us. He sent us on our way with a 2 liter bottle of wine fresh from the barrel. The goal for the day was Prague but after the police came and sent us away from the highway it became clear that we should focus on getting a place to sleep. We took a random bus to the middle of nowhere and we found the perfect location in a forrest to put a tent and make a small fire. When we jumped off the bus we realized that the bottle of wine was still inside the bus so sadly we didn't have a chance to enjoy it. We weren't bothered by anyone or anything and had a good night of sleep in the tent. The next morning we wanted to walk to the first gasstation on the highway in the direction of Prague. It seemed closed from the busstop where we got off, but that wasn't the case. We had to walk through a field, go over a small creek, walk through thorns and dense bushes, walk on a railroad-track, climb an overpass and then walk on the side of the highway to the gasstation. When we got there we were tired, itchy and sweaty. We grabbed a coffee and then a couple asked us where we wanted to go. We answered Prague and they drove us straight to the center. In Prague we found a hostel in a schoolbuilding. In the summer they just put old iron hospitalbeds in the classrooms and call it a hostel. There were about 200 drunk people in that place screaming and breaking stuff all night so we woke up pretty tired. We took the countryside road back to Austria to visit some friends there. We then got picked up by the vice-mayor of a small town who showed us some local architectural projects, bought us ice cream and then invited us for lunch in a local fish restaurant. It seemed our luck finally changed. It was a really relaxing way to spend the afternoon. Later that day we got a ride with a girl from Linz who told us about a street-performer festival the next weekend and offered us a place to stay during that time. From Linz we took a train to Wankham to visit our friends. The next day it took us a loooong time to get out of Linz, but when we finally did we got a direct ride with 2 guys who were going on a canoe trip in Slovenia. They took us to Bovec. They had a big tent, which we put up on the side of a river. They brought lots of beer and Jagermeister and at 3:00 AM it was finally time to sleep. After sleeping like babies for 4 hours we were awoken by two people saying: Polizia, Documenta (or something like that) It wasn't an official campsite where we put the tent and apparently that is illegal in Slovenia. Luckily for us the cops were corrupt and we only had to pay 40 euro's in cash. 8 Euro's a person isn't that bad to camp at one of the most beautiful places I've been so far. Wanna know what happened next? Stay tuned for part 2...

Tomorrow it's Eastern-Europe time!

Tomorrow morning Doris and I will leave for Budapest. We will meet up with a friend of her there and then the 3 of us will hitchhike through Czech, Poland, Latvia and the other Baltic countries. We only have 10 days for the trip so we'll just see how far we can get in the limited amount of time. It will be interesting to see how it is to hitchhike with 3 people, hope it'll work for us. It's gonna be cheaper for us to be on the road in those countries and to be here in Germany so that is also a plus of the trip. The blogpost following that trip will probably be the last travel post in a long time. Once we're back in Germany we will need to make as much money as we can to afford the move to Vienna mid August/early September. It's getting a bit stressful when we think of how much we have to work to make it happen but it is possible :) It will help us out a lot if you, the readers, could click on that nice shiny yellow button on the top of the blog to contribute to this latest adventure ;) Living in Vienna together will be a whole new trip and I really look forward to that experience. The next blogpost will be a longer one with all the pictures and other goodness of the trip and an update on the 'move to Vienna' hustle. Take care and see you next time!

Göteborg v2.0

Got back from the trip to Göteborg about 2 days ago so I guess now I have to write about it. Here it goes! We left early on a sunday morning, thinking we will make it to Göteborg around Tuesday, maybe even wednesday morning, since it is about 1500km from Prien. When the first ride of the day took us all the way to Nürnberg it started to look like we might make it sooner then that. When we got dropped off at a gasstation before the highway exit we had to go on we quickly got a ride again by the wife of a German bigshot politician in a fancy BWM. We flew with 200km/h over the highway and you couldn't notice it inside the car. The engine was quiet, the seats where comfortable and we saw the the road as a blur from the window. During our attempt up north we met more interesting people and the day ended in Denmark. We got stuck at the opposite side of the highway from the gasstation where I slept the last time I went back from Sweden. The gasstation on this side was an exact copy and they let us crash there for the night and gave us a cup of coffee the next morning at 5:00 AM when we had to leave again. Denmark seems to be hitchhikers paradise and almost everyone is willing to help you out. If they can't give you a ride they are always friendly and give you tips and directions on how you can reach your destination as fast as possible. We made it to Fredrikshavn at around 9:00 AM and an hour later we were on the ferry to Göteborg. It was awesome seeing my friends there again but we were very tired from hitchiking and only sleeping a few hours on a floor so I have to admit I fell asleep at a bar when we went out in the evening. The next few days were spent hanging out inside when it was raining and walking through the vast parks in the city when it wasn't. The nighttime activity usually involved going to a bar and being shocked again by the insanely high prices in Sweden. We went out to camp on top of a hill one night when it was warm. We had a campfire and roasted some marshmallows while seeing the sunset over the city. It's great that you are allowed to camp anywhere you like on public domain, as long as you clean the potential mess you made. Another thing that I can recommend to visit if you are in Göteborg is the sailors-museum in the district Majorna. The museum is free of charge for people under 25 and only 40kr (about 8 euro's) for people over 25, and then the ticket you get is valid a whole year and you can visit as often as you like. The next sunday morning we tried to hitchhike the ferry back to Denmark, since people who buy a car ticket can take up to 5 passengers with them. Sadly after 6 hours and 2 ferries we had no luck so we went back to our friends. The next morning we tried to hitchhike the highway down south to Malmö and then go back to Germany from there but after 2 hours of waiting we hadn't succeeded in leaving the city. This and my last hitchhiking experience in Sweden (waiting +-6 hours) makes me conclude that you should not try to hitchhike there. We decided to just pay for the ferry to get out of the country but we gave hitchhiking it one more shot and to out surprise it worked. Some old German people who were on a roadtrip with their campervan took us so that saved us about 70 euros. We hitchhiked back south from Fredrikshavn and guess what? We ended up at exactly the same gasstation again so now I've slept there 3 times in about a month and a half. Again we got a nice separate room and a coffee to go in the morning. People working nightshifts are awesome! The next day we got a lot of short rides to get out of Denmark but once we were in Germany we had luck with 2 truck drivers who took us a long distance and one man who went past the gasstation only to see if there were hitchhikers and he took us to Munich where we arrived at 23:30. From there we took the train back to Prien and finally were able to catch up on sleep. For all the pictures go to my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DrifterInEurope If you like what you read don't forget to like and share the facebook page, the blog and maybe even support us through paypal! The next trip will start next week. We will meet up with a friend of Doris in Budapest and hitchike from there to Estonia. See you next time!

back in Germany

Last sunday we went to the SummerJazz festival to spend our last day in Leiden. The plan was to leave the next morning to go back to Prien. When we got back home from the festival we saw that the area around Prien am Chiemsee completely flooded was and both the highway and the railroads were closed down. Those aren't the most ideal circumstances to hitchhike so we stayed a few more days till saturday morning. The day started out with short rides and around 19:30 we weren't even close to Prien yet. Then we met a dutch trucker who took us 230ish km to Würzburg. When we were in the truck we thought "It would be really sweet if we can find an Austrian car that can take us all the way." Well that happened so at 2 AM we finally arrived in Prien. The flood is gone and there isn't much evidence left that there even was one. The next day the sun was shining so we could finally go swimming in the lake. In about 2 weeks we will go to Gothenburg in Sweden for about a week, then we're going to Budapest to meet up with a friend of Doris with whom we will hitchhike from Budapest through Czech, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It's gonna be one epic summer if all goes according to plan. I will leave my laptop here during those trips so I won't update that often I guess. Pictures and everything will be thrown on facebook as often as possible for your viewing pleasure. You can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/DrifterInEurope

Home sweet home

We left Prien am Chiemsee on a sunny thursday morning. It was already around 20 degrees at 9:00 AM when we left and it promised to be a good day. The day started with a few short rides but we found an old BMW which was coated in rust. The car looked really awesome so we went to check it out up close. There was Motorhead blasting through the speakers and the guy inside looked pretty cool so we asked for a ride. He took us about 150km further north, which was really sweet. From there we got a 500km ride to Cologne. The next ride took us about 50km from the Dutch border. We wrote " wij willen naar huis" (we want to go home) on a piece of cardboard and the first dutch car that passed by stopped and took us to the first train station in The Netherlands. 924km and 15 hours later we were home. We've spend a few days walking around the city, showing my girlfriend all the sites and pubs that are worth seeing. Of course it was mandatory to take the bicycles and go to the beach as well. We will be here for one more week. We still have to visit Amsterdam and we're going to Summerjazz festival (if weather permits) next sunday. The weather has been pretty shitty since we've been here which is too bad. After this week it's back to Prien and then back to Sweden to visit Gothenburg again. This time we will go together. That's it I guess. Till next time, Chris

Left Sweden

Well last friday it was time to leave Sweden (for now, I will go back to Gothenburg to visit my new friends there for sure!). At 16:00 I got on the ferry to Denmark. A one way ticket was 225 kroner but a back and forth one was 29.. So I took that one and on the boat started asking people for a ride. I found someone who was willing to take me to a gasstation close to Kolding. From Kolding I was well on my way to Germany and only about 1300km away from Prien am Chiemsee. On the boat there was taxfree alcohol, which meant a lot of people were completely smashed. I managed to sell a lighter to a drunk danish guy for 200 (about 25 euros) and that bought me dinner, a drink or 2 and left me with some spare money for the ride. When we arrived at the gasstation it was 22:00. The highway was deserted, and those who did stop for gas were not planning on taking a hitchhiker at night. I decided to put my tent behind the gasstation in the forest. Sadly a strong wind in combination with complete darkness weren't the best conditions to put up a tent on your own and I almost lost my tent again... I went inside the gasstation and asked the guy who was working nightshift if I could crash on the floor. He opened a small room where I could sleep till the next shift started, which was at 05:00 AM. He was also nice enough to give me a few beers so the floor would become more comfortable. After 4 hours of sleep he woke me up and I was on my way again. The day started slow and the rides I got weren't more then 50km. I thought it would take me atleast 2-3 days to get to Prien in the south of Germany if it would continue to go like this. Then my luck changed and a guy took me over 600km to the border of Bayern. In Bayern he dropped me off at the first train station. Here I bought a Bayernticket for 22 euro's. This ticket allows you to travel by train through the whole province for one day. After 3 connections and 4 hours I was finally in Prien. I made it in one day. It took 20 hours and 1300km but I guess this is my new personal record. Right now I'm typing this while sitting in the sun on the balcony. The 15th of may we will go back to the Netherlands. The day before that Doris has a concert here in Prien. Go check out her youtube channel to see her music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2G7nxZm_f8 In The Netherlands we will visit friends and hang out for a week or 2 before traveling again together. Also I will try to sell some old junk in order to have more pocket money on the road! See you soon!