So, to bootstrap some conversation, here's another post. What kind of things have you experiences while hitchhiking? Some might have seen more than me, some might have seen less than me, but it would be interesting to know what were your most interesting hitchhiking rides and experiences!
Some things that have happened to me...
Well, I did hitchhike from Finland to China, and then went 70 % by hitchhiking and 30 % by bus and train onwards from China to India. Living in a tent, cooking my food on the fire every morning and evening. I'll need to do something like that again in some 15-ish years or so.
During that trip I got three times a ride from long distance buses in public traffic. All other passengers were paying, but I was simply taken aboard for free. Except, one of the times was apparently a communication mishap, as the driver would have wanted money from me when I was alighting the bus. But, I had shown my thumb and he absolutely must have known there what it means. I told them that, wished them wide roads and went my way.
Then, I've had two rides in old Soviet bukhanka-style ambulances (or, well, shvidka dopomoha, but ambulance is the best translation for it) They are such weird things! Kind of ambulances, but more like a transport for a doctor to get to the patients' homes that can double as an ambulance in a pinch. The equipment was one suitcase of some medical stuff, and a kind of a bed that was about 120 cm long and maybe 40 cm wide. Otherwise it was just empty.
In Kazakhstan policemen kept blowing their whistles, telling me to come to them. They asked about who I am and what I'm doing, and after hearing that I'm a Finn on the way to China by hitchhiking, they just wanted to take selfies. Later I've learned that they actually had apparently been planning to invent a pretext for asking for bribes, but changed their minds when they heard about my trip.
Then, also in Kazakhstan, I had managed to pitch my tent into an area with a military exercise while waiting for my Chinese visa to be ready. The first four days were okay, but on the last day, the fifth, the excercise began. They arrived by a helicopter to check what the hell I'm doing there. After learning about my travel, they just took some selfies with me. I hitchhiked away from the area on a Chinese-built military truck. I figure they thought first that either I'm a part of the excercise and must be taken seriously, or I am a foreign spy and must be taken seriously. Anyway, now I know how it sounds like when the safety is removed from two assault rifles around the same time. Dum di dum :)
In Spain I've hitchhike across a farmer's field on the stairs/ladder on the side of a tractor.
In Georgia, I got a ride from a tiny tiny trash truck. It had the mechanism for lifting the dumpsters, just like the ones we used to love when we were kids, but it was maybe one third of the size. Such a cute thing!
And then I've managed to ask for rides in surprising places. Got a ride for a guest of mine by asking a random truck at a parking area a bit outside the center of the city. They told they were about to leave at 6:30 in the morning, so we arranged for my guest to get back to that place by that time. And they indeed got the ride for the first 100 km! As it typically takes me in the ballpark of four hours to leave Helsinki, I'd say that was a very very useful ride!
And some other cases where I've been told by the driver that they're having a pause and have managed to agree to go pitch my tent somewhere and come back in the morning at an agreed time. I've gotten a few rides of over 1000 km that way.
Once I got a ride from a van that had an express delivery to Scotland. Something that couldn't be transported by plane and had to be a the destination basically "by yesterday, if possible". The driver picked me up at the harbour exit in the centre of Tallinn and brought me to the German border. We had our first pause in Poland, just after the border for about 40 minutes. And somewhere around Poznań, another 40-minute pause. Those were used sleeping. Otherwise it was just drive-drive-drive. They would have been happy to bring me all the way to Scotland, had I had a need for it. But, somewhere near Przystanek Woodstock was all I needed :)
Some weird cargoes in trucks: One was coming empty from Varkaus, after having brought mixed waste from Helsinki. The landfill in Varkaus has so much cheaper rates than the one in Helsinki that the 320 km drive per direction consuming the salary of a driver for the whole day "makes sense" economically.
And then I got a ride on a truck somewhat south of Kuopio. It was filled by cheese en route to Canada. I wonder, do they not have cows in Canada? Finland doesn't really produce such special cheeses that it would make real sense bringing them halfway around the planet. Of course, good for Finland's economy, but... wut? The way I got that ride was also interesting:
- "Hey! You live in <name of district where I worked in Helsinki, right?"
- Yes? Why?
- I'm trying to hitchhike to Helsinki. Are you maybe going home and could take me with you?
- Well, why not? Hop on in! On the way, on a longer stretch of straight road, the driver then just abruptly stood up on his seat and started rummaging through a shelf above the windshield. I asked what they are looking for.
- The coffee machine. I want to make some coffee. You want some as well?
- What if we do this so that, since I'm around and can help you, I'll just do the coffee making?
- Okay. So, the coffee machine is in the far left of the shelf. It's a small one. Take it and plug it to that socket.
- Now, take the filters They are in the very right end of the shelf. Good. Next, take the coffee. It's around the middle of the shelf. Measure four measures of coffee. Then, there's water in (I've forgotten where). Add that to the coffee maker.
- (5 minutes later:)
- So, now open the passenger side door. On the second step, there is a litre of milk. Give me that.
So, I open the door, lean a bit outside the truck, pick the milk and give it to the driver. I didn't ask, but I'm still wondering... Was he actually planning to go and open the passenger side door while the truck was running at 80 km/h?! Does he do that often? Wut-wut-wut?
There might be more, but these are what come to my mind right now.
Ah, of course there have been a ton of conversations where I've learned about a million different professions. Some things I liked were the beekeeper who spend a few hours telling me about bees and beekeeping. I'm quite happy to know all that. It's fascinating information! And then, there have been a few guys whose job is to escort oversize trucks. There's also so much more to that job than one would ever imagine!
That became a long reply, so I'm adding another theme here: There are plenty of hitchhikers in USA. At least BeWelcome.org has a somewhat active hitchhiking forum that you could ask for help. A reason I founded this community was that BW is a hospitality platform and not everyone who likes hitchhiking wants to be hosted by strangers and host strangers at their home, so there are people who won't join BW. And then there are a few hitchhiking groups with over 10 000 users in Mr. Sugarmountain's Foolspy-ke.
But yeah, one common thing people keep saying is that the federal law of USA actually literally forbids "hitchhiking on a roadway", which sounds like a bad thing for us. But. The same law defines the "roadway" as the area between the two hard shoulders. So, the definition does not include the actual hard shoulders. The law just means "you are not allowed to hitchhike standing in the middle of a lane". That's a "no shit, Sherlock" law something can be called that :D So, the law is not a problem. But, some policemen have only read the "forbidden on a roadway", without checking out what is considered a roadway. So you might end up in stupid situations with police over there... It's just a hurdle, not an insurmountable wall.
For all the rest about hitchhiking in USA and Chile and Canada and other places in America, and also, how to hitchhike on boats, you can read in http://hitchwiki.org/ . That's been a great help for me. Although, sometimes its articles are ridiculously badly written. The article about trains, for example went on to explain how to properly dumpster dive in some specific cities in Finland, for example O.o I cut much of that away, but then I ran out of time and had to leave the rest of the article as it was.
My budget throughout my hitchhiking year was two to three euros per day plus visa expenses. That is, about 3 to 5 Canadian dollars plus visas. I tried to keep it at two euros per day, but sometimes I felt like wanting a bit of extra luxury and went for 3. And if I sometimes had to use more than 3, I considered that a debt to repay, so I made sure to live with less money for the next days until the debt had been paid off. And, if I saved money when not "in debt", that didn't count, so it didn't give me a "right" to spend more money on the following days. I was surprisingly able to live a very fulfilling year spending under 1000 € (under 1600 Mapledollars). So, if you're able to save 3500 dollars maple, then please do go for it! And maybe you need a bit more until you reach Mexico? I don't really have much clue of prices for rice, buckwheat, millet, pasta, dried lentils and dried beans in USA... In Finland the legumes typically cost 3,5 € per kg (that is: about 1 € per kg when soaked ready to use) and good quality basmati rice is about 3 € per kg if bought in amounts sensible for a hitchhiker. But once outside EU, the prices for both of those dropped to a fraction. I don't remember any other prices, but I remember that in 2015 a kg of potatoes typically cost around 5 Ukrainian Hryvnias on a marketplace, while back then 25 Hryvnias were one euro... That means, about 15 Hryvnias were one Dollar of the Reasonable Ones. (And a local bus ticket was 2 Hrn. In Finland I'd never get a local bus ticket for the price of less than half a kg of potatoes. Or conversely, a kilogram of potatoes would never cost more than twice as much as a ride in a city bus! It's fascinating how different the prices are in relation to each other outside EU compared to EU!)
Of course, before setting off for that trip, I learned how to reliably make a fire, got a low tent of dark-green colour, because I often had to camp in places where people... would prefer me not camping. And I had an army cooking pot of the Swedish army, which doubles as a low-quality rocket stove, which is good because it produces a lot of heat from a small amount of sticks, which means there won't be much smoke and I was often able to guerrilla-cook my rice-and-lentils in a relatively shallow ditch mere 30 metres from a busy road, unnoticed :)
Ohhh, and once thing I forgot to mention: I also carried a bit of salt, a small bottle with simple cooking oil, some garlic, a small bottle of soy sauce and five to ten different types of spices. That's the reason combining just two types of carbohydrates with two types of legumes was able to yield a sensible meal each day. Every time I was cooking a meal, I chose one ingredient that I must use, and one that I am not allowed to use. And then created a meal. When you keep altering both the type of legumes you carry and the type of carbohydrate you carry, and use spices to turn them into a different food each day, you get so many permutations that you can have a meal twice a day for a year without eating the same food twice :) (remember, you can also alter the amount of a specific spice you use, not only which spice you use. And, you can keep changing your stock of spices as well. They weigh almost nothing. Tea is also a nice thing to carry around, because it weighs almost nothing, and if you can find water that becomes safe by cooking, well, tea leaves make it both instantly drinkable without a need to cool it down first, and an actually enjoyable moment during your day.
Also, do remember to take some days off. Every now and then I searched for a place with drinkable running water. Mountain creeks typically have water you can just drink out of the creek, as long as it flows fast enough and there aren't any deers or such pooping into the creek upstream, so mountains are often good places for such a time-off. And then I spent typically about 5 days in that place, just doing nothing.
I also had a small and lightweight computer, an ASUS eeePC, that had a 7-hour battery life, and I bought a charger that can charge my laptop from a 12 V socket available in every single car out there. Another tool I carried with me was a USB car charger with two USB ports. Often the driver was charging his phone or GPS or whatever using the only 12 V port, so I disconnected his plug and connected mine with two ports, so he could still charge his device and I could charge mine :)
Washing your clothes is easy if you have a plastic bag, detergent and water. Mix those in the plastic bag and keep pressing it, until the clothes inside are clear. Rinse with water (for example by putting the clothes on the bottom of a creek over the night, held down by stones) and you've got clean clothes again! Also having a small bottle of dishwashing liquid makes sense.
Ah, and one more thing I did to train for that trip: I slept several Finnish January nights on the balcony. That was a good way to test my sleeping bag arrangement. What I had with me was one very small summer sleeping bag and one standard sleeping bag. Even in January, putting the two sleeping bags inside each other was enough to keep me warm when I had all of my winter clothes on. Of course, I didn't try it at the worst frosts – just the typical January weather. Probably no colder than -10°C any night. And I made sure not to be in Kazakhstan when it gets -50°C there, so I didn't need to find a way to safely test my gear for that. If your gear is okay, then you'll wake up fresh in the morning. If it isn't, you'll wake up shivering in the middle of the night and will go to your own cosy bathroom for a hot shower, sleep the rest of the night inside in your bed and then in the morning you'll figure out what part of your body was cold and what you can do to fix that. And then you try again.
But yeah, go read Hitchwiki. About hitchhiking boats. And other stuff. It's inspiring!
Thank you so much for the wonderful reply! All of this seems to be fantastic advice, and I'll definitely check out hitchwiki. After living in student residence for a year, I thought I had living cheaply down to an art - but the idea of subsisting for a year on 1.6k alone is pretty damn good. If you dont mind one more question, how necessary is it to know the local language? Would knowing the hundred most common words in spanish - plus english and a polite attitude - be enough to traverse spanish South America?
I've found it useful to have a blocknote and a pen with me. You can draw things there to explain or understand what you don't know a word for. If you are willing to learn, then yes, those hundred most common words will get you going. But... I'd recommend doing something like a Duolingo course anyway. Also, I found it useful to create my own little dictionary when I was living in Ukraine. Whenever I noticed there's a word that I keep hearing but don't understand, I wrote it in my blocknote with a pencil. Then, when I found a suitable spot, I asked people what those words mean, and wrote the meaning in Finnish next to the Ukrainian word. And similarly, when there was a word I didn't know but would have needed often, I wrote it there in Finnish and then figured out the correct translation basically by playing a combination of Alias and Pictionary and whatever you call it when you do the same with pantomime :)
I then kept having to check my mini dictionary for the word every damn time I heard it or wanted to use it. ...until I noticed that I no longer need to check that specific word. Then I erased it, thus having space for new words.
The nice thing about this kind of self-made dictionary is that it's super fast using it. It only includes words that you need. I had in the ballpark of 15 words there all the time, some of them always changing for another ones.
And of course, when learning languages, the absolutely most important thing is to incorporate that language into your everyday life as much as possible. When I've needed to learn a language, I've always set my phone and all kinds of websites that I really know how to use to function in that language. Lemmy is one thing that you can set to Spanish. You know where the buttons are, so you don't really need to understand the language, but when you see the same texts all the time, you do learn! It makes your brain understand that this language is important in your everyday life and kind of makes it open up.
One thing that has helped me several times when learning a new language has been understanding that all languages have been developed by toddlers. That's why they are often so moronic. You learned English in the ages of 1, 2 and 3, reaching the level of speaking it at the level of a mother tongue around age 6. But, you put the pieces of the language together in a way that made sense to you in the age of 1 and 2. And a little bit 3. And then you use that concotion your toddler brain created from the mess it was hearing. And of course it created a more or less correct interpretation of how English works, because it had been developed by other toddlers before you, so it's inherently toddler-compatible. This is how all languages all have developed, and this is why... um... embracing your inner toddler? (🤪) is an efficient way to learn a language. Follow how a toddler learns their first language and copy that. It worked for you back then, it will work for you now as well. Also, listen to music sung in that language – it helps you get familiar with the pronounciation, even if you understand nothing at all. Then, to learn the correct accent, I used to copy my colleagues mannerisms about 1:1. My German is a mix of at least Berlin and Sachsen accents, which sounds really odd when coupled with a Finnish accent I've got in the background. But, it got people to take me for a native speaker in just over two years. When you get your accent more or less right, it makes people assume you're more fluent in their language than you really are, which is good. Otherwise it will feel too cumbersome to talk with you, and a lot of potential conversations (that is: your learning material!) gets simply skipped. And when people correct your grammar or vocabulary, always remember to immediately thank them so that they feel safe and motivated to do so again! Sometimes their corrections can get a bit too much, but then you just need to say that "the flow of the conversation is important as well, and maybe the corrections should be turned down a notch a or two, as the interrupt the conversation all the time – but please, do still correct me in some amount. Just not everything!" I've learned Spanish, Russian, Estonian, Ukrainian and Polish almost purely this way.
And also, if you have learned any French, well, you already know most of Spanish grammar. That's basically how I learned my Spanish. I had learned the first 1½ courses of French at school before quitting that language because I needed the capacity for other stuff in life at that moment. And then, with that knowledge, it was possible to learn a reasonably acceptable level of Spanish in a relatively short time, when I ended up living there.