The grinning idiot on the side of the road

Five weeks ago I packed my backpack, left my family's house in Rotterdam and started hitchhiking. I had less than €10 in my bank account, and for over a month have lived off the kindness of complete strangers and friends. I have traveled nearly 8000km over central Europe, slept in bushes and forts, hitchhiked across the channel to the United Kingdom and walked along the French highway drunk and in the rain.

I've traveled the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, France, Spain and am currently in the United Kingdom. I've been to the cathedral in Cologne, seen Prague's old town and castle, spent a weekend playing tourist in Vienna, walked along the river ring of Bordeaux, took a Captain Morgan picture at the Eiffel Tower and slept in a fort in Dover. I've visited beautiful, relatively unknown places like St. Lunaire, traveled and stayed in several smaller and bigger cities and swam in crystal clear lakes.

I've seen (well, listened to) Mumford & Sons live in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, slept in a park in Prague with bunnies, reached 270km/h on the German Autobahn, sped out of Vienna in a convertable Mercedes with Dire Straits playing loud enough to wake up Australia, met up with people I only knew online, walked more in one day than I have in a year and learned about everything from the fall of the iron curtain to the economic downfall of Greece. I've had lifts with hippies, heads of banks, auditors, sound engineers, stay at home moms and veterinarians.

I've done all of this, spending less than €100, over thirty seven days.

A couple of days ago, my hiking partner and I arrived in Reading on my 80th lift. Eighty people were willing to stop for a complete stranger standing next to the road holding out his thumb and smiling from ear to ear like a complete lunatic, and then give him a ride somewhere. Sometimes I used a sign for a specific destination, sometimes a sign that read 20km, sometimes I just used my thumb. I have jumped trains, metros, trams and buses but have sticked to hitchhiking as my method of transportation. I ate what I could scrounge, afford or was offered (which for me is a big deal), slept where I found space or was offered a bed, and traveled wherever I wanted to.

A German frat house my friend in Wurzburg organized for me to spend a night at.

I am completely broke, unemployed, homeless and happy. It's a strange concept to explain to people, so stay a while and listen to the adventures of a shy guy that never left his room turning into the grinning idiot on the side of the road.

I've always been quiet and introverted - ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you what I'm writing here. I did not go downstairs if there were strangers in the house, I never introduced myself to new people and I have had the same core three friends since I was six years old. I've always been unwilling and uninterested in leaving the safety and calm of my room. In short, I was a complete shut in that wanted nothing to do with the world. A combination of fear, loathing and disinterest kept me from ever experiencing something new, something exciting.

Since I was very young, I have been exceptionally picky about food. It's not the taste that's important, but the texture. Anything that wasn't fairly smooth was a no-go for me - I didn't (and still don't) eat any vegetables, nor most fruit. I ate pasta with meat and ketchup - nothing but those three together. I used to have a separate section of the food my parents made that only I would eat, due to not eating anything that had anything in it aside from the main ingredient.

So how on earth did I end up hitchhiking? And what does that mean anyways? Two days before I headed out, I came across a blog by a guy named Jamie. He traveled over 23 000km in Europe for six months by hitchhiking, and inspired me to do it. To read some of the amazing things he's done, head over to Great Big Scary World.

If you're not familiar with the concept of hitchhiking, allow me to quickly explain. You stand next to a road, hold out your thumb in the universal signal of someone looking for a lift, and wait for someone to pick you up. There are tricks to getting rides faster, there are more efficient spots, but at the end of the day it all comes down to random numbers and luck. Hitchhiking is not a science, nor is it an art - I have been picked up literally on the highway in traffic that speeds by at 140km/h, and unable to catch a ride at a perfect spot. It really comes down to the people traveling along the road you're hitching on.

When I started, I had no idea what I was doing. I chose a random spot, stuck out my thumb and asked people who stopped if they we're going in the direction of Belgium. Three days and five rides later I was in western Germany, so its been a learning process. Since then I've gotten the hang of it (sort of) and managed to go in the direction I was aiming for at least.

We managed to hitchhike a ferry from Dunkirk, France, to Dover, the United Kingdom.

On average, I meet five new people every day - sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours. I spend so much time talking that I have to rest my voice every few days and drink a crazy amount of water to not lose it (around 3L a day). Most people mishear my name (Roald) as Rob, and assume it's short for Robert. After about a day, I decided to just go with it and go by Rob. I've been doing this with work for a while anyways. I like my name, but its very inconvenient.

How did I manage to do this? I left the front door and just started. It's as simple as that - there's nothing more to it, honestly. One morning I woke up feeling the same way I have been for years, worrying about the same issues and thinking of the same solutions. I was tired of it and wanted to change something dramatically, so that's exactly what I did.

Why hitchhiking? I was afraid of people; not so much in the sense of afraid of what they could do to me, but afraid of being judged and found wanting. I was tired of this fear of how the world perceived me to be, tired of being afraid of meeting strangers, tired of feeling awkward at social events because nobody wanted to talk to me (not that I wanted to talk to them either). I was also rather broke, wanted to see Europe and had no desire for starting a career.

If you're broke, where do you sleep? What do you eat? To answer the first; anywhere. I have a sleeping bag and roll, when I am done hitchhiking for the day (for whatever reason), I find a nice secluded spot and sleep there. I've slept inside a bush in Germany, underneath a tree in Bordeaux, France, in a field next to a lake in Austria, in train stations and in a fort in Dover, in the United Kingdom. This is called free-camping. Technically, its illegal in most places in Europe. I've never been asked to move nor gotten in trouble for doing so. I follow something my grandparents taught me - leave nothing but your footprints, take nothing with you but pictures and memories.

Sleeping a few hundred meters from a lake in Austria. I was wished a good night and a good morning by three different people walking past my camping spot.

I always hated and avoided camping, but for the majority of my trip so far I've slept outside underneath the stars. It's been absolutely fantastic and I've never felt so free as I do now.

To answer the second; anything I can afford, am offered or can scrounge. Whenever I can afford to do so, I buy bread and chocolate spread - I can go a long way on these two. If people offer me food, any kind of food, I take it. I've had fast food, home-cooked traditional meals and all sorts of interesting stuff so far. My motto is; never say no and try everything twice. It's been a strange and wonderful journey.

Food shopping and repacking in France. We got some weird looks.

On average, people are incredibly wasteful. If you have a look inside a few dumpsters or trashcans in the morning you'll often find enough edible food to last you the rest of the day. It sounds disgusting, right? It really isn't if you know how to do it. Jamie described it perfectly:

"...think of it like this: if you were at your friends house and they had too many yoghurts that were about to pass their expiry dates and they said, “Hey do you want these yoghurts? They are still in date, but I’m not going to be able to eat them all before they are out of date…” I am sure that you would probably take them without hesitation. Essentially when skipping for food, it is a similar procedure."

You can skip for food in different ways - checking bins before they are cleared, asking for leftovers from the previous day at bakeries or catching half-finished meals at restaurants.

My hitchhiking partner and I took a few hours in a McDonald's in Reading and tested how much food we could get from people who didn't finish their meals. In the space of two hours, we have found and eaten:

2x 500ml Coke
2x Chicken wrap
3x BigMac
Iced water
Raspberry juice
3x Fries
Chicken burger
Caramel Latte

This was all from unfinished meals. We had lunch and dinner for two simply by eating leftovers. Again, it sounds disgusting. Again, what's the difference between finishing a mate's burger and a stranger's burger? The only real danger is in diving a bin - be careful of opened packets and meat. Bread is the easiest thing to find and eat safely. I'm not an expert on this yet, but you can find a lot of information about it online with a quick google search.

I don't recognize myself anymore. I have changed so much in the last month, in so many different ways, that I'm not quite sure who I am anymore. It's not a bad thing - it's all positive change. I am quite curious what my family and friends will think of me when we meet again.

Arriving in London - err, I mean Paris.

To end off this rather long piece, I'll be writing about specific parts of my adventure from now on. All of the stories I've briefly mentioned, all of those I haven't, and everything to come. I have about two weeks of travel left, up to Scotland, before I will settle down a bit. I'm not tired of traveling, of meeting incredible people and seeing incredible places. Rather, my body and mind needs a bit of a break until I can manage another trip of this magnitude. I'll be staying in the UK after I'm done - I have no idea what I'll be doing but I've gotten this far. "Real life" should be a walk in the park compared to my journey, right. Right?

I leave you with a quote from Nelson Mandela, or Madiba as we fondly known him:

"There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

Happy traveling,
Rob