There are not so many girls who are solo long-distance hitchhikers, but we exist and some of us practise it as a lifestyle. We love it not only because it is free of cost, or because of the freedom you have to grab your bag any day disregarding the fact that there are buses out of town only on Thursdays and Sundays. Most of all - and I know I am not alone in passionately arguing this - renouncing hitchhiking would lead to missed opportunities. Through hitchhiking in the past we all have met gorgeous folks and been invited into their homes, and been lead down paths that we never would have discovered through any bus window or guide book. These encounters form the richest flavour of our travels, and they are what keeps us going back for more!

Many people automatically assume that hitchhiking is a death wish - and if the hitchhiker is a girl thrice so. Even reputable traveller’s guidebooks write unfounded, hyped up statements like, “Women should never hitchhike on their own” or, “Any woman hitchhiking on her own is making herself fair game for anyone”. This is, to put it bluntly, rubbish. Don’t buy the media’s brainwash that is trying to scare us all into obedient consumers -be self-confident, act responsibly and the road is yours!

I have hitchhiked in almost fifty countries on three continents and I have only encountered generosity and kindness. So although people may call hitchhikers foolhardy, in my experiences I have found that openness and a smile will melt away people’s misgivings about you, and allow curiosity to supplant suspicion. I have hitchhiked through some pretty unsavory places, and without exception had overwhelmingly positive interactions.

No matter what some self-assured male hitchers will tell you -whereas it is true that getting lifts is in part a matter of technique- WE ARE FASTER, there is no doubt about it. Talking to regular male hitchhikers, they without exception have longer average waiting times than a girl.

These days drivers often are afraid to take anyone on, and whereas some males have to go to great lengths to look benign (drawing smileys on their cardboards etc.) as a women you can almost look as scrubby as you want and you won’t be considered a threat. Many lift givers told me in fact that this was in fact the first time they stopped for any hitchikers at all.

I don’t want to clog this page with anecdotes but just consider the following: once I hitched together with a Scottish long-distance hitchhiker who had done the rather long stretch of cote d’azur-scotland by hitch-hiking umpteenth times. When the first car that stopped for us was a BMW he exclaimed “this is the first time I am going in such a nice car” to which I only could reply a truely astounded “really??”. In fact in western europe travelling businessmen’s fast BMWs and Mercedes’s constitute for me almost the majority of lift givers -at least counting out lorry drivers, whom for shortish distance you might give a miss because they are so slow.

You might very well find that you are making fantastic progress if you are going LONG distance with lorries though. Lorries sometimes fix you up with rides for the rest of a 2000 km journey across Europe. They take you as far as they are going, drop you at a servicestation and tell you to wait a few minutes. Shortly after another lorry will pull up who already knows your name and your final destination. And whereas they are also generous lift-givers when it comes to guys, a female voice over their radios works wonders, you’ll see.

If you are uncomfortable with just standing by the side of the road you can opt for asking around at garages (gas stations) - a tactic also many male hitchhikers resort to because for them it is easier to convince the drivers that they are innocuous and willing to exchange a chat for the lift. (This by the way, even if sometimes repeating the same old conversations can get tedious, is an etiquette you should follow -thereby leaving behind a happy hitchhikee who will pick up hitchhikers again!)

In most of Europe you will be noticeably quicker if you make yourself a sign, in the rest of the world just sticking out your thumb or hand, depending on local custom, will do just as fine.

Some people swear you will get a lift quicker if you wear bright clothes with high visibility.

If you prefer to wait for daylight, you can camp somewhere or find a place to stay with www.hospitalityclub.org, www.bewelcome.org or www.couchsurfing.com (check www.hospitalityguide.net for a good overview). If there are two of you, you might just hitch through the night from garage to garage. Prostitution essentially being a night activity though, it is advisable for a lone female not to hitch at night. For sleeping, bring a sleeping bag and crash out in the woods. You’ll be safer without a tent because no one will expect you there.

As for safety, there are a few tips that hitch-hiking girls can hand down to others:

• This is probably not really anything you have to remind hitchhikers of, but just in case: don’t, for starters, hitch in a short skirt, or you will be mistaken for someone looking for a lift to the next parking lot only. Generally, even in countries where prostitutes can frequently be seen standing along roadsides soliciting customers, a first glance at you will make it clear that you are there for a different reason: you will most likely be wearing something like boots and a flabby t-shirt, have a bag and sign (which in some places is indispensable for getting a quick lift anyway).

• When you get in the car ask them where they are going before you answer the same question. If you have time check them and their motives out in a minutes’ probing interlocution. Many neophytes often ask “how do you recognize if someone is not alright to hitch with?”: The answer is simple, the very few times I have refused lifts it made itself clear in a few seconds conversation that the driver had other ideas about the goal of picking me up than I. It is common sense not to get into a car with an old driver drooling over you or someone telling you straight away they’re not at all going your direction but still insisting you get in, for instance.

A general point you’ll quickly figure out yourself is perhaps that if you see a driver is pulling over his car to stop for you when he can impossibly already have deciphered your sign, it is a fair bet he stopped because of your female figure and not because he is looking for some company as well as doing someone a favour.

• When you decide to get into the car, make sure you know how to open the door in case of emergency. A good way to find it out is not to close the door correctly when you enter the car. So you have a good reason to re-open it, before the driver can start.

• Try to hitchhike with a bag as small as possible and keep it between your legs (at least until your feeling tells you, you can trust the driver). Sometimes drivers propose to put it in the back, but then I usually answer “Thanks a lot, but I have got my water bottle and my cell phone in it. So I can reach it more easily.” In case you have to get out, you won’t lose all your stuff. And the driver won’t know, what exactly you have got in your bag to defend yourself in case of an attack.

• In theory it is suggested to make a note of the car’s immatriculation, although in many moments you will be too excited and busy running up to the car the moment it stops to remember doing that. If you do remember about it you can do it ostentatively in front of the driver, so he has seen you will be able to track down his identity.

As a proposition for a more concrete safety measure: You can carry a mobile phone and send each licence plate number to a friend as soon as you’ve got into the car. In case the driver gets difficult, you can always tell him that his licence number is already in your friend´s cell phone. But remember, the greatest dangers of hitch-hiking are the dangers of the road traffic. So, if the driver is driving too recklessly, no matter how nice he otherwise happens to be, get out. If he doesn´t see, hear or understand anything in the traffic or if he thinks accidents happen only to the others, it ain´t worth dying with him. Your time can wait.

• Always say that you are on your way to a friends’ house who are expecting you around a certain time span (even if that is far from the truth) and if the occasion arises, nonchalantly throw in that you have a functionning mobile phone on you to ring them up.

• In general be on your wits, make sure your driver is going the right way, if he or she does not seem to be, make them justify their detour or show you the way on a map. If they won’t comply with your request, have them drop you there and then. Make no compromises about this.

• Counteracting unwanted “proposals”:

Since I feel there are good amounts of misinformation floating around with girls who always have heard stories from someone else, never experienced them themselves (like stories of girls having to hitchhike with knifes or the good old AIDS-infected syringe, “in case the driver acts dodgy”), I want to make it clear that these are hopelessly paranoid:

-any direct rude comments and indeed proposals are VERY rare. Physical “transgressions” (touching, grabbing) are even rarer.

-some men might at some point may think they can “try” and make some polite allusions, in this case: play naive, like you can’t even imagine anything else than your driver taking fatherly care of you and the man will get the point very quickly. It is a tried and tested fact that by the psychological pressure you are thus exerting on him he will soon change face, and trying to keep countenance will turn out just as nice as you want him to be!

-Many girls worked themselves a standard set of questions out that works wonders as a primer, setting the tone for the rest of the conversation. You will see that simple enquiries about marital status and progeny will usually not have him bother you anymore. After he told you all about his wife and kids that is just not the thing to be done. In case any unwanted advances are coming forth later on, just bluntly direct the conversation back on his family and he’ll get the hint. Most of all, be confident. If he is not married ask him why not, at his age, after all...-make it clear (implicitly) that your attitude is that at a certain age any respectable person should be married etc...

• Pepper spray may be a good idea to take with you, if only to make you feel more confident. Feel free to mention to your driver that you have it on you.

• Remind yourself that you are practically in the superior position compared to the driver’s. He has to keep his eyes on the road and his hands to the steering wheel whereas you have hands and attention free, after all. Don’t be bashful about laconically informing the driver about this.

• Remember that as a last resort you can use the handbrake.

I have used it myself once, and one tiny thing I want to hand down to others is: look whether there are any cars behind you when you perform that so effective sleight of hand. I myself had not, in the ardour of the moment, born in mind this minor precaution requiring but the turn of one’s head.I could have seriously killed both me and the driver as well as people in that well imaginable car behind us, since we were going at a fair speed, the sudden stop being the perfect invitation for a rear-end collision.

(In that case I don’t actually think the guy would have become any more than annoying by the way, but the dumbfounded look alone on the idiotic man’s face when I put such an abrupt end to his obscene babble was well worth another hour of waiting and easily made my day.)

• Don’t hitch when overly tired, since it will not only leave you physically weak and unfit to run away or defend yourself, but, moreover (and more importantly in reality in my opinion), your social skills will suffer and you might not be able to handle the conversation with the requisite verve and confidence and, seeming weaker in general, you might slide down the sloping side of the fulcrum, that is to say the one entitled (possible) victim.

This is the most important point I am going to make: Even in the occasion you meet that axe-murderer who is so ubiquitous in the mind of the frenzied masses, but very very rare in real life (in other words: you won’t meet him), it is a question of mental strength not physical one.

I will illustrate what I mean by quoting Bernd Wechner’s article “Hitchhiking: a course in personality development” [please read the whole thing on http://bernd.wechner.info/Hitchhiking/Suite101/?22 ], an article which helped form my opinions about the matter and which concisely sums up the gist of the idea:

[The passage starts of with a quote from the German Federal Bureau of Police who had done a report on murdered hitchhikers]

“They write:

. . . the risk of falling victim to a crime while hitch-hiking is strongly defined by the process of interaction between the driver and passenger.

What are they saying here? Well, I don’t want to present pages of extracts here, and you’ll have to accept my representation, I guess. Essentially, they argue that hitch-hiking crimes (with the exception of pre-planned crimes) don’t just happen to you, they are much rather the product of a process of interaction between the driver(s) and passenger(s) and each of the players has a hand in the game and a chance to control the outcome. They are describing a social game here, not a physical game. It has to do with a relationship (driver-passenger) and the evolution and management of that relationship.”

Another good quote : “Fear is something others can read on you, can sense. If you think a knife will protect you, maybe it will. But others can sense your discomfort. The mind is always the best weapon: the ability to carry oneself with confidence, to discern who to trust, to lead others to help rather than hurt you. I’m not saying that absolutely everyone has good intentions; I’m just saying that I’ve been out of a lot of sticky situations unharmed, and I do think it was mostly in my way of dealing with them. And despite being a tiny little girl, I don’t carry weapons other than simply my mind.”

* Instinct - it’s a wonderful thing. You will learn to trust it.

All of the bad stories I have heard from hitchhiking women happened with a driver that they had a dodgy with to begin with. Someone not well-meaning may wait around, try to cajole you into sitting into the car, talk other drivers out of giving you a lift etc. If a driver behaves like this after you have declined the lift, it is a pretty clear sign that he (rarely she) wants to make a problem for you. The most important thing is that you stay firm in such a situation and do not get into the car. This can be more difficult than it sounds, so I reiterate you have to be very firm: If you have a bad feeling -don’t set a foot in there.

If you have got into such a car, and the driver starts to act dodgy: be self-assured -it is better to be a little more on the aggressive site than to show fear. Make it clear that you are a traveller and just want to get to your destination -repeat “let’s just keep going straight” and/or keep pointing out the correct road signs. If it is possible try to pull the handbrake and get out of the car. From experience I can say that in these cases all violence starts with “psychological violence” -even if you made the bad move and got into that car, if you act strong enough, you will be ok.

I hope we have made it clear that such situations are extremely rare though. They are more common in places with strong macho traditions, and in the case that you are hitchhiking alone of course.

In most Asian or African countries native women would never be hitchhiking -or, in short, travelling- on their own, but as an outsider it is often understood that you have different status. Don’t forget that as a western female you are looked upon as a third sex. You don’t need a veil but long pants, long skirt and a longsleeved shirt is fine.

In a lot of these countries hitchhiking works so well, that you do not slow yourself down a lot if you try to stop cars with women only. This is a technique that may make you safer if you are alone, and will assure you a lot of overwhelming hospitality. Once you will have taken pictures of the kids and had long conversations with the women, no man will treat you with anything else than the utmost respect.

In fact, along roads with little public transport in the “third world”, or global south or what you may call it, hitchhiking is often both faster and more comfortable than taking a bus or shared taxi!

For a special article on Female Hitchhiking in the Middle East visit: http://kurdistandiary.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_26.html

Hitchhiking in Turkey for Girls -http://youarealltourists.blogspot.com/2008/04/hitchhiking-guide-to-turkey-for-girls.html

you can answer in this box now or write me an email at markus DOT bergmann AT web Dot de

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