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My hitch-hiking days were in the 1960s, a time when most of the members weren´t born yet. Was it a safe way of travelling then or at least safer than today? I wouldn´t say so. It has always been dangerous, not only because of possible sexual molestation, but also because of possible accidents. Did we know how well the drivers could drive in whose hands we put our lives? Were we insured? No and no. Why did we travel that way? There was no InterRail then, no Ryanair. Few students had cars, but the wish to see the world was there and so we did it. I went on two hitch-hiking tours with my girl-friend (I never hitched alone): a three-week trip through Scotland from and back to London and a three-week trip from the south of Germany through Italy up (or is it ‘down’?) to Naples. 1. In British youth hostels we met young men from the European mainland who told us that they loved the country. Either the drivers took hitch-hikers or they didn´t. There was no preferential treatment of girls holding up their thumbs. Indeed, in the mornings when the hitchers lined up along the side of the road, they were given a lift one after the other without respect of sex or age. We found that very British! One day when it was raining hard and a strong wind was blowing (it was in August!) we had the hoods of our anoraks over our heads. A driver stopped and told us to hop in as he needed ballast to keep the car steady. An odd reason to invite dripping people into a car, but we didn’t mind. When we peeled off our wet things and he saw that we were girls he became cross, he accused us of deceiving him. He said we had dressed up as boys to get a lift! He would have thrown us out again, but there were no other hitchers to be seen, so he kept us as ballast. :-) 2. Oh, the loneliness of Scottish roads! Where did the people live, where did they go to who took us a couple of miles and then dropped us in the middle of nowhere? The landscape is nice, no doubt. We had come to see it, but after two hours sitting on the grass beside the road, even the keenest landscape freak feels boredom setting in. So when a car approached we jumped up, waving frantically and before the drivers knew what was happening we had thrown our rucksacks and ourselves in. Once we ´kidnapped´ a young man who didn´t go our way, but we talked him into taking us to the youth hostel we had planned to stay the night in. What else could we do? We were desperate. This meant a detour of 100 miles for him. We must have been very charming then! We thought the least we could do for him was to invite him in and offer him something to eat from the things we had bought. He had supper with us in the main room of the youth hostel and then disappeared. The warden found our behaviour outrageous – bringing a young man in – and tore off a corner of our youth hostel passport in order to warn all other wardens of our immorality. No other warden noticed this, though. Ha! 3. Before we hitched to Italy we already knew everything about Italian men. An Italian had enlightened us as to the tricks his countrymen knew! We discussed how we could defend ourselves and decided to take knives with us. Why we took bread knives and not flick knives is something I don´t remember! What I do remember is that the knives were in our rucksacks and that the rucksacks were in the boots of the cars – safely out of reach! But we never needed them. Praised be the Italians we met on our tour! I distinctly recall a lift in the plain of the river Po in the North of Italy. We crawled along at a speed of 30 km, (not miles!), the driver had one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the dashboard. He found that relaxing. As there was no other traffic on the side roads we were taking, there was no need to brake suddenly. It was early evening, a slight mist was hanging over the fields and enshrouding the poplar plantations of the area. A red sun was setting. It was so romantic. Since then I´ve crossed the plain of the Po many times, always on the motorway, never again in the evening. Try as I may, I can´t recall the atmosphere, but I always think of that lift. 4. Girl-friend and I both wanted to hitch from Heidelberg where we studied to the north of Germany to visit our families. The first car (the south of Germany is not comparable to the north of Scotland traffic-wise!) was a Fiat 500 with two Italians. They were immediately smitten with us and wanted to stay the rest of their lives with us, only that they had to go to the west of Germany and not to the north. So we would have to part in Frankfurt. Instead of dropping us at a filling station they drove into the city. They wanted to invite us to have an ice-cream with them. They parked the car in the vicinity of the main train station. We had our ice-cream and then couldn´t find the car any more! This could have been a trick to steal our luggage, of course, hadn´t they themselves left everything in the car. A beige Fiat 500 in the 1960s! Together with the original Volkswagen Beetle this was the car one could see most often. How embarrassing! We walked up and down the streets until after an hour we found the tiny vehicle. What do we learn from this? Memorise the street name when you park a car. --- photo:Wikimedia, Roger McLassus