Couchsurfing and Hitchhiking!

Of course it’s really hard to travel completely without money. But there are ways how to travel very cheap, it can give you freedom of moving where ever you decide.

I’ve chosen Couchsurfing as a way how to meet people, get to know their culture, experiences, travel stories and I found many good friends there.

CS is not the only hospitality network of this kind, but it’s the biggest and probably the fastest growing, which is his positive and negative at the same time.

“Couchsurfing is ultimately too large of a network to trust. There is no community on the planet with 10 million people.” kernelmag.dailydot.com

You just have to use a common sense and it will work just fine for its purpose. It’s history goes in 2003 when it was founded as a non-profit organisation. Later in 2011 it turned in “Delaware for-profit corporation”.
After all the trips and CS meetings and people I’ve met thanks to CS, I can totally recommend! 🙂

As for transport, hitchhiking (autostop) was quite easy to choose, because I did this few times before in Czech Republic for shorter distances around 30–150 km.

Hitchhiking, also known as thumbing, hitching or autostop. From historical point of view HH was possible to see even in 1940s in USA. During 70s it was very popular kind of transportation also in Western, affluent countries. Later in 80s the popularity dropped down especially in Western Europe and North America, most probably due to misleading media massage and spreading fear, plus the influence of capitalism and property protection.

During these days, there are communities which are supporting this kind of travelling, such as Hitchwiki.org and similar. Also everyone of new HH who is spreading positive energy and behave, can support the regrowth popularity of hitchhiking! 🙂

If you wonder how all this works in details, after my first HH trip to Poland I decided to make Project: Low Cost Traveling

Originally published at www.splinar.cz on September 24, 2015.