Summary of The Trip

WHY MAIA AND I WANTED TO GO ON SUCH A TRIP

At the beginning of this year's summer holidays Maia (my significant other) and I came up with an idea to hitchhike to Croatia through Budapest, and come back from there through Vienna. Our first common hitchhiking trip had taken place in May; we had gone to Czech Republic for 2 days then. We had liked the experience so much that we had planned to go on another longer trip, further from Poland this time.

Our initial plans had to be changed though, since Maia was going to have an important meeting for the participants of the "Vulcanus in Japan" programme in Brussels on the 6th of July. Should be hitchhike to Brussels instead? Why not!

HOW WE CHOSE THE ROUTE

We decided that it was going to be a hitchhiking-couchsurfing trip. On couchsurfing.com you can find people who want to host others in their houses for free. We spent a few days writing messages to people from different cities in Europe, describing what our plans were, and asking them for a couch for us. We left Poland still waiting for some replies.

We wanted to have better chances to arrive at our hosts' houses before dark (or at all), regarding the unpredictability of our "hitchhhiking luck", and to have time to sightsee places where we were supposed to stay; that's why we decided to cover only around 300 km per day.

In the end the route looked more or less like this:

The map of out trip, made by Maia

HOW MUCH MONEY WE SPENT ON THE TRIP

During the whole 18-day trip both of us spent together around 160€; that was around 5€ per day per person, only. Food and tickets for public transport (it would be hard to hitchhike in city centres) were our main expenses. 

The collection of tickets bought on our trip

WHAT IS DESCRIBED ON MY BLOG

While reading about our EUROTRIP you will find out:

• how extremely nice and hospitable people who hosted us were,
• how helpful some of the drivers who gave us a lift were (especially: Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 12, Day 16),
• how lucky we sometimes were − even when we were in a situation that seemed hopeless, everything turned out to be alright in the end (Day 1, Day 3, Day 8, Day 14),
• how we managed to get some things for free (Day 2, Day 8, Day 12),
• how we managed to hitchhike a bus (Day 8),
• what happened to us when we weren't careful enough (Day 10, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14),
• what kind of funny situations we had (Day 5, Day 8, Day 13),
• what kind of equipment we took with us (Day 1, Day 8) and how we managed to get something to eat with,
• in what places and how we were trying to catch a lift,
• how we managed to survive a heatwave that came to Europe at that time.