How to travel Europe for Free
By: Charlie Rogers
Tags: Travel, Couchsurfing, Adventure, Hiking, Hitchhiking

My friend and I travelled 2,478km from Budapest to Belgium in 17 days and paid only £11.47 for travel, an average of £4.36 per night for accommodation and a total budget of less than £500 that included significant beer costs and completing 10/15 of the challenges on our original bucket list as well as doing so much more.

You can read about one of our many adventures, written by my travel buddy Charlie, here.

However, I’ve learnt that you can actually travel for FREE in Europe.

The two Charlies with our 2 bag setup, including a one man tent that would prove itself useful several times over the trip.

When travelling, you can end up spending a lot of money on what my step-brother calls ‘shit you don’t see’. In particular, this can include travelling between locations and putting a roof over your head, while necessities like food and drink can also add up on top of this.

We both originally budgeted around £1,000 for this trip, expecting to reward ourselves with meals out and spend most of our nights in hostels. If this had been the case, the accommodation cost per night would have been closer to £15 a night. Then add on-top the obvious bus choice between locations and we would have reached a number much nearer our original estimate.

In this article, I will go through the different costs of travelling and how you can ensure that they are the lowest cost possible. We didn’t know about all of these before travelling, but have found out so much on our journey across Europe.

The Travel Cost

When moving between multiple locations and aiming to complete a bucket list that spans the width of Europe, the travel cost might seem like a necessary evil. The obvious options available are Car-hire, Trains, Flights, Buses or Ride-sharing that all offer levels of ease and flexibility in accordance with price, with buses the favourite option for many travellers.

However, there is a hidden fifth option for inter-city travelling if you’re willing to sacrifice ease and flexibility. It will require some planning, a lot of smiling and a decent helping of luck. In return, you will hear stories from locals all across Europe, be able to practice the local language and of course travel for FREE.

This option is called Hitch-Hiking.

Wasn’t this what people did in the 80s? Yes, but it’s also very possible to do now and perhaps even easier with the advent of HitchWiki and Google Maps.

How does it work?

There’s a lot of factors that will increase your likelihood of getting a hitch in the shortest time possible. We’ve experienced both sides of the spectrum in the 33 hitches we received on the journey from Budapest to Belgium, waiting both 2 hours and less than 30 seconds. However, on average we waited only around 10–15 minutes for a hitch each time.

Sometimes hitch-hiking is all about patience and waiting for enough cars to pass you. However, it is often about the most important factor…

Location

A great location has:

Traffic only going in the direction that you want to go.

Enough seeing, reacting and stopping distance between where you stand and where you intend for them to pull over.

A safe enough location for the driver to pull over without blocking traffic from behind — safety lanes on slip roads or pull-ins are perfect for this.

A lot of traffic flow — not required, but will increase the speed at which you are picked up on average.

The best places to look for lifts are often at the slip-roads to motorways (although toll roads in France won’t be as successful for this) or at petrol stations along the route.

Petrol stations enable you to speak directly to drivers and ask them if they are heading in your direction and wouldn’t mind bringing you along. This might seem weird at first, but speaking to strangers gets normal fast.

To help you find the best locations, there are two tools that we used countless times throughout our travels.

HitchWiki

The map on HitchWiki picks out specific locations that have been tried before by hitch-hikers and will help you get out of cities if you’re stuck for a spot. It lists the average wait time, hitch-ability and comments on the location from previous hitch-hikers.

Here’s how the map looks — click on a dot to see previous experience with the location.

See the map here

Feel free to use the map where possible and convenient. However, don’t feel like this is a complete collection of all of the possible spots where you can hitch-hike.

Google Maps

If you want to find your own locations for hitch-hiking, I would definitely recommend using the satellite view on Google Maps that will show you if there is enough room for cars to safely pull over and where there is a good spot.

Verdistrasse West is the obvious route from Munich to Ulm and here is where the city road becomes an A road. The spot pinned will have high traffic volume, a good sized stopping area and low speeds so drivers can stop a lot easier.

With these two maps you will be able to find yourself a good spot to stand or speak with drivers. This is THE most important factor. However, we think there are a few other contributing factors that could speed us the process.

Interaction with driver

The more you can smile and get the driver to at least acknowledge you, the more you will be humanised as a person. This will help the driver feel comfortable enough to pick you up and will subconsciously reinforce that you are a nice person looking for a lift, not a murderer, psycho or anything equally as scary.

We also found that a simple love heart sign could help the driver to realise that we’re nice people and gives them a second chance to think again.

Signs

This one is a hit and miss. Signs provide relatability if someone is travelling through or to the exact location you are requesting. However, you might miss out on shorter journeys down the motorway that could complete half your trip if the person thinks ‘they are not going that way’, when in-fact half the distance is still great.

Definitely prepare signs on cardboard with whiteboard pens that are easy to read, but also try just putting out your thumb if you’re having no luck. It’s always better to have the option of either, rather than being forced to use no sign at all (and it looks like you’ve put in some effort).

It’s not always your fault

Sometimes you get unlucky and no drivers are going in your direction, or their car is full or they’re just having a bad day. It’s not their fault, and you have to remember that they’re doing you a favour by stopping. Choose a length of time at the start that you want to commit to the spot and try both with a sign and without before moving on.

You will normally know if you’re in a bad spot by the reactions from drivers. The hand wave can literally mean anything, but if you aren’t holding a sign and are seeing it frequently, chances are that driver feels uncomfortable stopping in your location.

How do you stay safe?

In the 33 lifts we had across Europe, we felt more than safe on every ride we had and found that only kind people picked us up. However, we were two guys and I appreciate that this could be very different for 1 person or if you are a female.

Stick to pairs — travel with one friend max. Anymore and the driver either won’t have space in their car or will feel uncomfortable picking you up. They say that the boy/girl pairing is the best as it enables you to get picked up quicker while avoiding potential weird people.

Don’t travel at night — we only travelled throughout the day and recommend this. You will have a higher number of normal people driving between places and traffic in general.