Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg
Fakultäŧ der Geistes-, Sozial- und Erziehungswissenschaften
English Presentation Course WT2010/2011
John Bateman
Hitchhiking: A lost art?
by
January 31, 2011
The first image of a hitchhiker that comes up in a random person's mind is most likely to be a lonely, shabby male with a long beard and a crumpled hat standing next to a desolate country road sticking out his right thumb, his backpack dropped to his feet, hoping for a car to eventually slow down, stop and pick him up.
Depending on the person, it continues in two possible ways: Either the new passenger is well-travelled and has lots of stories to tell or the hitchhiker will pull out a battle axe, katana or any other deadly weapon out from under his jacket and slaughter the driver in the most barbarous way possible splattering blood all over.
That at least is how the typical stereotypes about hitchhiking looks like nowadays. The perception of hitchhiking in the society used to be different though. In the sixties hitchhiking was a common practice. Young people in Europe or the United States started on the road with their thumb out to start exploring the world or to just simply substitute a non-existing public transportation.
Those days, as older people often tell, hitchhiking was as easy as falling off a log. Most people would stop and pick up the poor student standing at the side of the road.
However, the downside of hitchhiking being so popular was that there was a high competition. Like in a supermarket one had to stand in line and wait until these other twenty to thirty fellows who arrived at the spot before you did had been picked up. If a girl showed up though, she would probably not even have line up before a car stopped just for her.
Even earlier in the fifties hitchhiking was a means of transport especially made popular by the Beat Generation. A great summary is the book 'On the road' written by Jack Kerouac in 1951, a partly autobiographical work of that period featuring mostly spontaneous road trips around America and up to this day widely read by thumbing travellers.
The actual origins of hitchhiking are not absolutely clear, but it makes sense that with the invention of the car also hitchhiking became possible, especially with the begin of the auto mobile mass industry in the beginning of the 20th century. Somebody came up with the idea of asking for a lift to town and the proud new owner of a car would not deny a possibility to show off.
As soon as highways had been built not just the next town seemed closer than ever before, now the far and unknown was luring the more adventurous to just follow that road to somewhere. Newspaper articles from the early twenties first report the practice of flagging down a car to get a free ride.
It is hard to imagine from our point of view that cars back then were driving a mere twenty-five miles an hour which obviously made it fairly easy to get a motorist's attention.
The moving spirit that made people try to get around the world in 1920 presumably was not very different from the reason why most hitchhikers today are choosing to get around that way.
The most obvious of all reasons of course is that hitchhiking is about getting a free ride which makes it attractive especially to those who are short of funds, be it students, school kids, tramps or hobos, or as in the time after the Great Depression simply people on the move looking for a job.
Moreover, the lack of public or other means transportation attributes to quite a few people in need for alternative means of mobility, but often they are rather hitching for small distances. Environmental reasons may play a role for some, because travelling with cars which are on the road anyway obviously have an eminently lower impact on your personal carbon dioxide footprint than the enormous amounts of fuel consuming jet planes.
Beyond that however, hitchhiking is for many people just a great adventure, or even a challenge in contrast to daily, normal life. The simple, but amazing fact that being invited into a stranger's car who could have all kinds of possible malicious intentions, but on the other hand could be subject to murder or robbery creates a very special atmosphere of trust.
In turn, this delicate atmosphere often leads to a proximity between driver and passenger that is somehow very different from meeting strangers in a train cabin. Besides, in trains you are usually annoyed with the ones who have smelly feet or force a discussion on you.
Nonetheless, the talk goes that the average number of hitchhikers on the road has declined in the last few decades. Without doubt this is the case and there are several reasons why. Firstly, the amount of people owning a car has drastically increased. Even most youngsters get their own car as soon as they turn eighteen and are entitled to drive.
Not to mention the United States where teenagers acquire their drivers license even earlier. Secondly, budget airliners have conquered the market and offer cheap transport for Everyman to almost anywhere. It is not just that everybody is now able to travel very fast for very few money, but also there are more and more locations available to choose from, be it a short trip from London to Kuala Lumpur or Honolulu.
Last but not least, the mass media celebrates each single time that something actually does go wrong, because bad news sell and good ones do not. The few times that a driver was robbed, murdered or a young girl hitchhiking was rapped, like the case of a French girl in Great Britain in the early nineties, are reported in newspapers & television and cause an increase in fear and a widespread negative representation of hitchhiking within society.
Despite lack of scientific evidence, due to the fact that reliable numbers are almost impossible to acquire, the likelihood of being involved in a car accident while hitchhiking is definitely much higher than being a victim of crime against hitchhikers (or the other way around).
Besides, does the occasional crash of an aircraft scare people off flying?
Regardless the apparent decline the tribe has not died out yet. There are still people hitchhiking out there and especially in summer quite a number of travellers try to get around by thumbing for a lift. Even though many drivers tell you they have not seen a hitchhiker in ages it is very likely that you encounter backpackers all around Europe at service areas or often frequented spots like gas stations and the places known for the ability of catching a ride in a certain direction.
Not to mention Russia where hitchhiking is seen as a kind of sport and some very ambitious travellers are even planning to organise a world championship in hitchhiking.
For the last three years the German Hitchhiking Club Abgefahren e.V. has organised the so called Deutsche Trampmeisterschaft, the German Hitchhiking Competition. Connected with the help of the internet like-minded people from all over the world gather knowledge, tips and tricks on a wiki website, similar to wikipedia.
In reference to the infamous book by Adam Douglas it is called “The Hitchhhiker's Guide to Hitchhiking the World”. On countless blogs and travel journals hitchhikers spread and exchange stories and pictures of their adventures.
It first took place right under the Eiffel Tower in Pairs on the 8th of August in 2008. As a matter of course, all participants arrived there by thumb. Consecutively the last two gatherings took place in Odessa, Ukraine and Sines, Portugal. Currently the next gathering is being planned by the community.
The meeting in Paris and four stories of struggling to get there in time was turned into a full film called “Paris 888 – A hichhiking documentary” which recently was published online. Many a book about hitchhiking as been written as well, for example the autobiographical “Round Ireland with a fridge” by the British journalist Tony Hawks, obviously telling the story how the author hitchhiked around Ireland with a fridge or “No such thing as a free ride? A Collection of Hitchers' Tales” compiled by Simons and Tom Sykes.
And even though I can recall times occasions where I waited up to 10 hours for a lift (actually, just once, the second longest wait was five or six hours and that under very bad conditions like in the middle of the night or at the last day of vacation), there were times when the first car passing by stopped and picked me up.
Of all the countless rides I got there was not a single bad experience, if I don't count freezing in a dark winter night, almost starving, because I forgot to pack food, realising I run out of water in Spain's hellish summer temperatures or being dropped in lonely, bad or dangerous spots such as somewhere on a motorway.
On the contrary, I have been invited to lunch by a Polish lady, camped several for days with Belorussian geologists on the beaches of Crimea, seen the interior of a Crysler on the way to Magdeburg, enjoyed the couch-like back seats of a Mercedes manufactured in1980 in Switzerland and caught a lift in a van with eight other hitchhikers in Portugal.
And yes, it is an art. And no, it is not lost.
References and further reading
the collaborative project to build a free guide for hitchhikers
books, articles and more about hitchhiking
“Paris 888 – A hitchhiking documentary”
stories, tips and advice
“A guide to hitchhiking's decline” by Joe Moran, published June 5th, 2009
References & Links
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