Would you take me in your car?

How I learned about trust while hitchhiking across Europe

My hitchhiking partner waiting for a lift somewhere in Macedonia. All photos by the author.

We were both in our early twenties, the summer was about to bloom, and we couldn’t feel the weight of our backpacks.

The setting was familiar — yet another gas station in the middle of nowhere. Since I first started hitchhiking, some 5 years and 12,000 miles earlier, I have seen a multitude of these, and all highways begin to seem like an open invitation for yet another adventure.

Marta and I were long-time friends and this was not the first time we were hitchhiking together: a boy with a confident smile and a beautiful girl dancing with a red contact juggling ball was the perfect partnership for getting a lift.

Both Marta and I felt that our hitchhiking journey to Greece would become an important chapter in our lives. As we stood on that windy gas station somewhere in Belgium, we could subconsciously sense the weight of the lessons ahead.

Our hitchhiking route plan. Image from Google Maps.

When I first told my mother that I would like to hitchhike, she gave me a straightforward and non-negotiable “no”. Being a somewhat rebellious soul, this didn’t affect my plans and a few weeks later I was on a plane to Paris from…