After waiting anxiously for two hours outside the rest stop in the blistering July heat, pleading for a ride to Zagreb, it appeared I was stranded. To make matters worse, storm clouds were gathering overhead. I felt hopeless. I felt embarrassed, and I felt stupid I hadn’t just taken a bus from Ptuj, Slovenia, to the capital of Croatia, especially since, as a gainfully employed 60-year-old, I easily could have afforded it.
Until this point, I’d been lucky hitchhiking across Slovenia for a month, normally waiting a few minutes to be picked up, armed with a whiteboard and an erasable marker to identify my destination.
Hitchhiking is part of Slovenian culture. Many drivers who’d given me rides reminisced about their own exploits, including a woman who said as a child she’d hitched almost every day to and from school. In recent years, though, hitchhiking seems to have died down. Local theories range from the social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to ride-sharing apps to rising car ownership.
As the afternoon dragged into early evening, traffic at the rest stop — where a businessman had offered to drop me — was light and diminishing, so I was dependent on whoever happened to stop for gas or a stretch. Meanwhile, a few feet away, hundreds of vehicles whizzed by, prohibited from giving me a lift since it’s illegal to hitchhike on expressways.
Now what? I didn’t have the energy to walk 10 miles back to town, and Zagreb lay 50 miles away. Maybe I was finally getting too old for this hitchhiking nonsense.
Then I noticed a parked semitrailer truck bearing a Zagreb plate. This was my last shot. With a sheepish grin on my sweaty face, I marched over to the cab, waving my sign. The trucker hesitatingly nodded his head in the affirmative, and I was saved for another day.
Unlike in the United States, hitching is a common, accepted practice in several countries, particularly in areas with limited transportation. I started hitchhiking overseas in my 20s to save money on travel, but I mainly did it for the adventure. Nothing is more spine-tingling than opening the door of a stranger’s car not knowing what awaits. Almost always, I meet friendly drivers eager to share about their lives and culture, and curious about my background. Over the years, I’ve gained insights and visited spots I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Occasionally, a vehicular benefactor even buys me a meal.
Another practical reason to hitchhike: I hate waiting for departures. Why sit around half the day for mass transit when I can just as easily pick up my sign and depart on my own timetable — even if it means the possibility of getting stranded. In that case, I get another travel story, but more often than not, I still arrive before the bus or the train.
As I age, though, I’m drawn to hitchhiking for more philosophical reasons.
Someone once said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” I think most people are trustworthy, which is why I’ve got courage to stand on the side of the road. I realize the next person who invites me into his car could be a sociopath, but that’s highly unlikely, and the price I’m willing to pay not to live in fear. Hitchhiking lets me put my faith in humanity — especially strangers — to the test.
For me, hitchhiking is a theological pursuit as well. I was raised Catholic but decades ago stopped attending Mass because I no longer felt God’s presence there. I still believe in the transcendent, but now I most readily experience the divine when I’m seeking a ride. It’s the ultimate lesson in trust. Once I find a promising spot, I write the name of my destination on the whiteboard and recite a simple prayer: God, please help me get a ride to . . . No dogma. Just a tangible problem in need of a tangible solution. Usually, within minutes, I know if my prayer has been answered.
Sometimes the answer is no. And, sometimes, I encounter unsettling situations.
In Romania, two drivers both assured me they didn’t want money for giving me a lift. A few miles down the road, each demanded an exorbitant fee. I declined, insisting they let me out. Both acquiesced. In Ireland, a 20-something looked innocent enough, but after an hour or so in the car, exposed himself. I tried my best to ignore what was happening, calmly told him to pull over and escaped, bewildered but unscathed.
Still, though research on hitchhiking is scarce, two well-known reports — a 1975 California Highway Patrol investigation and a 1989 study by the German Federal Police — suggest its negative reputation for criminal behavior and causing traffic accidents might be overblown.
When I was younger, I wondered if it was selfish to accept rides, knowing I wasn’t paying for gas and might be inconveniencing drivers. I’ve come to realize hitchhiking is reciprocal. Drivers often tell me the reason they pick me up is because they suspect I’m an out-of-towner and may be American, due in part to my unusual whiteboard-hitching method. Regardless of their attitudes towards the U.S. government, foreigners are generally intrigued by America and ask my opinion on a host of political and social issues while offering their own.
In many respects, I feel like a cultural ambassador or an English tutor. I can’t count the number of times my patrons have expressed appreciation for the chance to practice their English — in particular, the kind they hear from Hollywood.
But it’s about more than just chatting. If we believe the universe is a friendly place, it stands to reason people derive satisfaction from being friendly to and helping others, especially when someone is in a bind. Who would ignore an elderly lady struggling to cross the street? Even jaded New Yorkers have been known to assist tourists fumbling with a map.
During the summer of 2025, I spent nearly five weeks in Europe — mainly Slovenia — hitchhiking most of the trip. I got picked up 21 times, covering 413 miles. When I was looking for a ride from Solkan to Kobarid, a vacationing German couple picked me up. I enjoyed our lively interchange about the state of the world and was grateful they drove me the entire 30 miles, dropping me off in the center of town though they weren’t headed that way. As I got out of the vehicle, I thanked them profusely. Yet the driver kept thanking me, too, saying it made his day assisting me.
A couple of weeks later, luxuriating in the tractor-trailer on the road to Zagreb, I was relieved I wasn’t getting drenched in the rain. All was right with the world — but as hitchhikers will tell you, rides can end at any moment.
The trucker left me at an exit a few miles outside the city. There were no taxis or buses, and I had no choice but to keep hitching. This time, I waited only a few minutes for a 23-year-old woman, a first-year kindergarten teacher, to pick me up. Since I’m a veteran middle-school instructor, we bonded instantly.
It’s rare that a solo woman gives me a ride. Later, I asked why she stopped for me. She grew serious, explaining how several days before she’d come upon a male hitchhiker and had wanted to offer him a lift but didn’t do so out of fear. Since then, she’d second-guessed herself and vowed to pick up the first hitchhiker she saw, who happened to be me.
Just outside the city center, she pulled over at a bus stop. Before I could exit the car, she asked to take my picture, since I was her first-ever hitchhiker. She was grinning, maybe because she’d conquered her fear and done a good deed.
When I hitchhike, I’m taking a leap of faith that also requires a leap of faith from the driver. I’d like to think I’m giving motorists a chance to build their own trust in humanity and an opportunity to nourish their souls by practicing kindness.
I’m fortunate to have seen some of the world’s most famous attractions, from Machu Picchu to the Taj Mahal to Angkor Wat, but it’s the journey to those places I cherish most, not the destinations themselves.
Over the years, the world has gotten more frightening and confusing. It’s begun to shrink as I grapple with my mortality, the loss of certain abilities, and a desire for what’s familiar and safe. Will I have enough money for retirement? Will I end up in a nursing home? Will those darn kids on my lawn damage my property?
But as long as I can fly abroad and carry a backpack, I’ll keep standing on the side of the road, seeking another ride and another adventure. Hitchhiking during my annual, overseas vacation reminds me I’m still young at heart.
Mark Dickinson is a teacher, former newspaper and TV reporter and freelance writer who has taught on three continents, visited 88 countries, scaled one of the Seven Summits, nearly been trampled by an irate elephant and once landed in a Honduran jail. His travel memoir, Sleeping in the Homes of Strangers: A Month-Long Journey of Trust, is available on Amazon.