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Hitchaboatawalkobusrail: The New Ecofriendly Low Cost Method of Travelling from Essex, UK to Ptuj, Slovenia
Once upon a time the cheapest flights were last minute. Now it is the other way around.
Suddenly I had to get back to Ptuj in Slovenia from Elsenham in Essex in time to stop Slovenia’s overpopulation of lawyers and bureaucrats swindling me out of my house over a dodgy gas bill, exploiting a combination of meaninglessly tiny procedural deadlines and my absence from Slovenia due to death.
Ryanair on the day being about £320 with more fares to pay at each end, I just went along the ground.
For about £100 you can too. Here’s how to do it.
Day One: Early in the afternoon, fill your rucksack with reams of heavy paperwork and electronic devices. Take the train to Bishops Stortford, then bus to Stansted Airport to catch £9 coach to Victoria. Disembark taking possession of 400 Lambert and Butler from the luggage rack, which some holidayed-out returnee has already lost. At 1900 join £14 coach to St Peters, home of many foxes and litter-crazed giant seagulls. Curl up on this bench.
Day Two: Walk to Broadstairs. Catch 0547 bus to Ramsgate. The ground stops here.
At 0630 hatch plot with two Somali pirates to board four hour ferry to Ostend for free. Refusing my pieces of eight for the car fare, one tells me whenever they say they’re Somali, people in London always say "Oh, you’re pirates then."
Dock, take a dump in a Belgian garage and walk to the station. Buy "Summer Special" 7.50 euro ticket and board train to cross wet Belgium, changing to a two-storey train at soggy Brussels, to arrive just before nightfall in the southeastern town of Arlon.
THE PIRMASENS COMPROMISE
Hitch in a backwards direction to the imaginatively named "Exit 29" truckstop, consume a well-above-average dinner, witness a massive midnight downpour, and eventually convince yourself you have been sufficiently successful/defeated to hire a room for 40 euros.
Shower off your stink. Catch a bit of a film in which a soldier gets his dick bitten off by a Russian resistance woman. Remember you have switched to the Catholic side of the Channel.
Wash what you have discovered too late to be your only travelling trouserware, a pair of khaki shorts, turn the radiator up full blast, open the window wide and sleep five hours, followed by coffee and Belgian bun.
Day Three: Around 8 a.m. get a fast car lift to Capellan services in Luxembourg. Here it is a public holiday and the roads are clogged with caravans covered in mountain bikes, family spacewagons full of bewildered-looking children, and outdoorsy types in purposeful moods who – ironically – are no use to hitchers whatsoever.
Fully laden, everyone is already as green as you can be in a 3.5 litre Audi. However I acquire a very snazzy fluorescent orange cardboard box for signage. Eventually get a ride with a happy-go-lucky Lithuanian lorry driver to Saarbrücken.
As well as costing up to 94 euros, the train from Saarbrücken to Munich goes a very very long way around. The line to Pirmasens pointed in the right direction and would get me out of the city so I took the Pirmasens Compromise at 11.70 euros for a little train.
Catch bus to the Saarbrücken Hauptbahnhof. Catch train to Pirmasens. Bus and walk to outskirts via Landauerstraße. Enjoy long fruitless wait on a very fast dual carriageway. Walk back to the correct spot in the layby beside the flyover and get a lift almost immediately in fast posh Peugeot to München via Augsburg. You are sailing through a major backwoods diversion due to autobahn closure – such exotic locations as Busenberg – which you just know would have been impossible to thumb.
Rejoin the motorway. Drive at high speed for hours and hours to Munich, occasionally waking up.
WHAT A LONG RANGE TRIP EXTREME
At 1 a.m. lurk in a small garage on the Innsbrucker Ring to collar a ride out southeast from Munich on the A8, for a rainy night of intermittent consciousness in a cafe with, unusually for Germany, fairly convincing tea.
For the first time ever I am asked to show my passport to get the ride, when at about 6 a.m. three German chaps going to Slovenia on holiday appear.
Reasonable enough. Who wants to kick off the hols getting dropped in it with Austrian or Slovenian cops by having some stateless person on board? They drop me at Novo Mesto. I take the bus to Krško, the train to Zidani Most, and another to Ptuj to arrive at the end of Day Four.
TACTICS
I took no map, and there was no plan except to keep going.
When necessary I took the locals’ advice and it mostly worked out.
I made up the rest as I went along.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Wilko’s for the felt tip, to the probably Turkish man in the takeaway on Buckingham Palace Road for my last portion of British chips, to Jama and Jama – the non-piratical pair of Jamas, to the athletic man driving to get an athletic insole from the athleticism doctor, Toby the pedagogical nurse, the man who is changing his job and reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, the holidaying Germans for frühstück, the frank and informative Townsend Thoresen ferry ticket lady, National Express, Belgian Railways, the helpful Saarbrücken DB lady, the Karawanken Tunnel, the nice lady in possibly the world’s most run-down bus station at Novo Mesto who let me charge my phone, Slovenske Železnice for their amusing "Inter-City" ticket surcharge exacted for riding on a slower, smaller train than the one I got on first, and of course Bob Weir for inventing hitchhiking.
SOUTHEAST ENGLAND TO SOUTHEAST EUROPE
Google Maps doesn’t do routes involving railways.
But here’s a rough approximation of the steps I took.
VITAL HITCH STATISTICS
I’ve been living in Slovenia for the last six years. Having hitched to it from the UK for the first time I now feel as if I actually know where it is. In a way by which flying never quite brings you down to earth.
Germany is no longer a hugely deceptive country, but it is still a deceptively huge country. Even by this fairly direct route, involving no train reservations and fewer than ten fares between 1.80 and 17 euros, you could not do this quicker for the price.
Although it was July, I was lucky not to get drenched. I pushed on through, and what kept me going was knowing my mother was right behind me all the way.
Start to end was 101 hours. My big walks (Ostend and Pirmasens) were each only about 2km. In a journey of some 1800km I averaged a respectable 18km/hour.
The total travel expenditure excluding food and shelter was 72.30 euros, or 4 cents/km, compared to Google Maps’ fuel estimate of 258.54 euros, a saving of 72%.
Plus I gave away 200 of the Lambert and Butler. I don’t smoke. In my risk-boredom calculations, hitching is low on the threatometer, tobacco is high.
Life, like hitching, is not so much a disposable tourism experience as the marriage of philosophy and necessity.
European Tour Packages- Cheap Vacations. Bilabo Spain
Beautiful Bilbao:-
Situated in the Bay of Biscay in the Basque country , Bilbao is the largest city of the region and is famous for its Gothic Cathedral. The city’s museum is in the shape of a Fish and is admired by many . The museum is adorned by works of great legends like Pablo Picasso and warhol
The city’s historical monuments have since gave way for modern buildings due to the rapid industrialisation and the town is trying to revive the few remaining archaic buildings .
The city of Bilbao and the country side around it can be explored by hiring a cab. The beautiful and small villages that surrounds the town are a visitor’s paradise, especially for those who love nature and the virgin country life.
Bilbao offers a variety of sumptuous food for the good eater. The airport is well connected to other destinations and hiring a car would be fine to reach the destinations fast.The city is surrounded by rugged mountains and one can explore the province of Vizcaya.
Many visitors may not Know about the small town “Gernika” that was chosen for the subject of one of the master piece paintings of the bygone century. Pablo Picasso the legendary artist from Spain depicted in Canvas the notorious massacre of the Spanish Civil War of 1937, in his large and , haunting painting titled Guernica. The devastating scenes were painted ,when the illustrious painter was 42 years..
Burgos, the city on the southern side of Bilbao, is a place worth seeing . Though extreme climate prevails ,the city is renowned for its landmark cathedral, a classical example of gothic architecture.
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Spain is Brits' Favorite Destination
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To top it off, many of these Brits had booked cheap flights and car hire to fulfill their travel needs. Mark Tanzar, who is the chief executive of the Association of British Travel Agents, said that Spain has been a favorite holiday spot for Brits for …
Cheap Car Hire question by jellytotscares: Where can I find cheap (ie:free!) car hire in the US?
I’m planning a 3 month road trip in the states for around November this year. I have heard that some companies require people to transport cars across the states which would be perfect as it would save me a fortune in car hire costs! Does anyone know how I would go about doing this?
Cheap Car Hire best answer:
Answer by ﷲProudﷲMuslimahﷲ
Find out if there is a ferry from where you are departing from. If not, take a ship. It will take a little while, but you’ll have your car. Good luck!