Today I planned what I will be doing next summer. Hitchhiking.
The last couple of days I have been seriously influenced by reading Jamie Bowlby-Whiting’s plea for freedom and adventure, for life itself. As an experienced adventurer and author of greatbigscaryworld.com this awesome English dude taught English in Korea for a year and in Turkey for several months, hitchhiked more than 20.000km through Europe, cycled from the UK to Slovakia on a 30£ bike and floated more than 250km down the Slovakian/Hungarian Danube river on a self-made raft during two weeks of ‘pirate life’.
Reading Jamie’s stories reenforced my belief that after graduating in july next year I need to do something crazy. Just like Jérémy Marie, the Frenchman who hitchhiked around the world in 5,5 years (read his stories here) Jamie’s tales convinced me that there has to be more to life than walking in line and doing what everybody else does. Like he says: Nothing is impossible and everything is always ok. Until it’s not.
I decided I will try to hitchhike around Europe during july and august with nothing but a backpack, a tent, an e-reader filled with all the books I am desperately trying to catch up on and a camera to record the journey. A nomadic solo voyage through time and space where all that counts is the present. I want to be flexible with the food I eat, the itinerary I take, the places I sleep and everything that happens in between. I want to meet people, speak languages, read books, make photographs, record video and write everything down. I want to be young, wild and free.