What if Everyone did It?


On a Good Friday hitch to Berlin a friend offered me a ride part way. He offered/insisted to drop me off at the first services on the A6 toward Berlin, a 20 km detour from his route!

We pulled up for petrol though, at the last services in the A5 before the turn off and found there another hitcher, signing for Nurnberg, which was on my way to Berlin so we pulled over and offered him a kick start around the corner so to speak, where my friend was about to drop me.

He'd been standing there an hour and a half already, having come from Strasbourg, heading for Poland. Man, was he was happy to hear I was headed for Berlin!

A little less happy of course, to hear the car wasn't, and we'd be hitching together as of the next services. Even less happy I imagine, as I was, to find another five hitchers at those services! I hadn't seen seven hitchers in one spot in a long time!

It got me to thinking of numbers. Imagine a conversation among hardened hitchers in some bar:

    I remember when I hitched 17 years ago from Nijmegen to somewhere on a Friday evening, I had to queue up with another 15-20 people.

    I've only ever seen about 20 in one spot, at Dreilinden in Berlin.

    At Three Ways in the Northern Territory, some 20 years ago, I once counted 31, heading in different directions.

    The largest number of hitchers hitch-hiking in one place I saw was 50! It was in Vilnius, going in the direction of Riga.

    Friday afternoons in Prague heading towards the north-east there are maybe more than 50 hitchers to be see in one place (actually along the way a 3-4 km long line of hitchers is usual).

    Well, once I counted hitch-hikers in Kaunas (Lithuania)... me and my girlfriend were 87th and 88th... not funny...

    I think it was during the "Nida's" festival, was not it? I've counted 200 hitchers during 3 hours of hitching in Nida.

These are actual quotes, most of them lifted from one thread on a mailing list of hitch-hikers, which started with a first passing comment that hitching was a dying art. The writer reminisced how 17 years ago he had to queue with up to 20 other hitchers, but today, he sees no-one. Others were of course incited by this passing comment to demonstrate his error. Very contemporary acccounts from eastern Europe put the 17 year old experience to shame.
The copyright of the article What if Everyone did It? in Hitchhiking is owned by Bernd Wechner. Permission to republish What if Everyone did It? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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