Hitchhiking around Europe: four months, two backpacks, fifteen euros a day
In 2019 I set off from the Principality of Monaco with Tiziano to cross Europe by hitchhiking, sleeping in a tent and on strangers' sofas. How it really went, with the numbers.
1 August 2019 · 5 min read
Home travels on two legs and a raised thumb. That is how Il Gazzettino described us in the summer of 2019, when we had just arrived in Spain. We were twenty-three, with two backpacks each and a simple plan: hitchhike around Europe, from Monaco to Trieste, spending no more than fifteen euros a day on food.
Tiziano Maset, a videomaker from Conegliano, and me, with a video camera in the backpack and the idea of telling it all day by day. Not a holiday: a challenge, and a diary.
The plan
Sixty cities in six months, fifteen countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia. Getting around only by hitchhiking, with Flixbus or a ferry as the exception. Nights in a tent or couchsurfing. One backpack with the essentials, the other with the video gear.
For the gear and a few museums we had started a fundraiser on Produzioni dal Basso: we got close to five hundred euros. Everything else was supposed to cost nothing, or almost: food saved from supermarkets and bakeries at closing time, whenever we could.
How it went
We left Monaco heading for Nice and Cannes. In Nice we slept two nights in a car turned into a bedroom, at a campsite I will never forget. After ten minutes on foot, our first ride came from two women wearing headscarves. Tiziano put it better than I could: never judge by appearances, kindness is out there and it belongs to us.
In Saint-Raphaël our couchsurfing host cancelled on us at eight in the evening. No food, no water, and a walk until midnight before we found a public beach to pitch the tent. We were not organised, and we learned it that night.
The Principality of Monaco, then a week in Puget-sur-Argens with the family of Sylvie, Franck and Charlie, who adopted us. Avignon, Toulon, Aubagne, La Ciotat, Marseille, where a guy from the harbour gave us a ride. Montpellier, and the motorway entrance at Perpignan to cross into Spain.
Barcelona with my cousin Emilio, Tarragona, Valencia with Pablo, Viky and Isabel. Alicante, Murcia, a week in Granada in a travellers' commune. Málaga, Tarifa fourteen kilometres from Morocco, Seville, Huelva. Then Portugal: three weeks in Olhos de Água, in the Algarve, on a mattress that became home. From there up to Vigo, Galicia, Santiago de Compostela.
On 7 October we were in Madrid, at the Temple of Debod. Day one hundred and fourteen. It was not the full trip we had planned, and we did not finish it: that is how it went, and that is fine.
The people
The best part of the trip was the people: those who pulled over by the road, those who opened their kitchens to us, those who shared a beer with us in the shade of a cliff. When you hitchhike you don't choose who you travel with, and that is exactly the point. We are not the places we visit, but the people we meet.
The numbers
| Item | How much |
|---|---|
| Duration | 114 days, from June to 7 October 2019 |
| Countries | France, Principality of Monaco, Spain, Portugal |
| Finish | Madrid |
| Food budget | 15 euros a day, often less |
| Nights | Tent, couchsurfing, a car in Nice |
| Backpacks | 2 each: one to live out of, one to film with |
| Fundraising | about 500 euros, for gear and museums |
What I take with me
Hitchhiking forces you to trust and to let yourself be found. It teaches you to ask, to smile at whoever slows down, to accept a no without taking it personally. It brings you back to a human scale: one person, one car, a twenty-kilometre conversation.
The photos and videos from that trip are the basis of everything I have done since with a camera in hand. And the way I look at people in the street today comes from there.
The video diary
We filmed every stage and edited it along the way. These are the episodes of the first part, from the French Riviera to Marseille. The videos are in Italian.
From Nice to Cannes with one euro fifty
Camping on the French Riviera
Hitchhiking challenge and last-minute couchsurfing
Hitchhiking from Toulon to Aubagne
La Ciotat
Arriving at the Vieux Port of MarseilleFurther reading. The Il Gazzettino article of 31 July 2019, in Italian: Tiziano e Paolo, l'avventura in giro per l'Europa in autostop. The video diary is on the YouTube channel.
