Voyage à Paris

A spontaneous trip. An adventurous ride with a Dutch trucker and 14 hours of hitchhiking later, we finally made it to beautiful Paris! I never desired to see this city, the allure of romance and history never really appealed to me. I came with low expectations and left filing this little trip as one of the best holidays I’ve ever experienced. Maybe it was because I was there with some really cool people, or maybe Paris is all that it’s cracked up to be.

Now, 8 months later we finished editing the footage from our trip. Music by Arun Sood, and the sexy French voice is Julie Fraysse.

What I Learned From Hitchhiking Europe

I’ve always been very scared of hitchhiking in America. I’ve been told that it is really dangerous and something horrible would probably happen to me if I went in a stranger’s car. I’m not really sure if that is the case in America but in Europe, hitchhiking led to one of most friendly encounters I’ve had with people. A couple of weeks  ago I joined a hitchiking contest where 40 international students hitchhiked from Amsterdam to the Ardennes in Belgium for a weekend getaway in the countryside. I didn’t know what to expect but I did not expect that all 40 of us would make it across borders into a tiny village town all by hitchhiking within 12 hours. So based on what I have learned hitchhiking in 14 cars back and forth to Belgium, here are few tips when hitchhiking Europe.

1. Go with another person if you are a female but try not to be more than two total, there’s just not enough room in most cars.

2. Carry cardboard and markers to write your destination.

3. The best places to start and be dropped off are gas stations. It is a lot easier to walk up to someone and ask if they are heading in the same direction and join rather than hold a sign on the side of the highway.

4. Make sure you are being dropped off somewhere safe with lots of people. It can be a nightmare trying to find another ride if you are dropped off in the middle of nowhere so be clear about where you want to go before you get into a drivers car. We made that mistake in one car and it got us off track about 2 hours.

5. Leave early and don’t plan to be somewhere by a certain time. Hitchhiking is all about luck, it might take 3 hours or 9 hours to get to a certain destination based on who picks you up so don’t expect to be somewhere within a certain time frame.

Yeah thats about it. Hitchhiking in Europe is really really easy and fun! Here are some pictures from my trip.

Pumping gas with a trucker on the way to Maastricht.

Got stuck at a rest stop until..

Was rescued by drunken Belgian footballers!

Our final destination, the beautiful Ardennes, Belgium