Eastern Europe 

The article says: "For example, many eastern European governments firmly supported hitchhikers and in many eastern European and developing nations it is still a very mundane and ordinary occurrence, with hitchhikers a part of the ordinary social landscape, in some places crowding one another out waiting for rides."
What proof is there of this claim? In communist Romania (as in before 1989) hitchhiking was ilegal and now people are still very reluctant to take on hitchhickers. In fact it has a very bad name.