I had been playing around with this idea for a while now but here it is… my first vlog! Some fans had shown their interest before in me making a video of a day in the life of a hitchhiker, but I never really went for it until now. It took some nerves to use that ‘recording’ button for the first time with my face in it, but what’s really the difference from taking a photo? That’s just beside my complete lack of video editing skills until I tried with the help of Windows Movie Maker and what Youtube provides,Continue reading
Miscellaneous
Yeah, you did it! You found the least-findable category page: miscellaneous!
Miscellaneous (adjective)
mɪsəˈleɪnɪəs
consisting of a mixture of various things that are not usually connected with each other
On this page, you’ll find all sorts of things. Anything I’ve written that doesn’t belong elsewhere belongs here.
Some posts don’t belong in a very specific category, such as ‘Danube’ or ‘Africa.’ Of course, some posts can belong to multiple categories, and ‘miscellaneous’ can be one of them. Some posts are deeply personal, some of them are goofy. And I guess I tried to make some of them useful and generic. The pattern is that there is no pattern. Categorizing stuff is hard for people like me: an agent of chaos.
Who knows, I might one day find that I have no use for the category of miscellaneous anymore. Perhaps I’ll change it. But I think you deserve a badge for finding this page at all. Kudos!
5 Essential Online Security Tips for Vagabonds
I would like to thank Iris for publishing this article. Her blog is a great place to follow her fearless and epic solo adventure and an amazing inspiration for female travelers looking to get over the fear of traveling alone. After reading this I recommend you check out her post on tackling sexual harassment when abroad. But first, learn about these online security tips: For backpackers, hitchhikers, squatters, and couch surfers, we spend such a large amount of our time listening to the fear-mongering of others pointing out the dangers and flaws in the way we chose to live,Continue reading
Old Interview for CatchAWish: Heute Mal Hitchhiking
This old interview about my hitchhiking trips originally appeared on the German website Catch A Wish back in January 2016. Saddia’s website has since gone offline, so I took my interview and republished it on my own blog for posterity. These words were true for me at the time and don’t necessarily reflect how I think about things today. I edited the spelling and formatting a bit to make this interview a little more readable. What were the reasons for you to decide to try hitchhiking? I was on a semester abroad in Aarhus, Denmark, and quite a few ofContinue reading
My Evolution of Packing: A History of My Baggage
I wasn’t always a backpacking traveler. Being from a tiny affluent country in Europe, it’s pretty normal to go on holidays abroad (privilege!) and I personally don’t know any of my fellow same-passport holders who haven’t been abroad. Travel has been a part of my life since birth. Normally, we’d travel by car, giving us plenty of room to bring Stuff™ and sometimes we’d go by airplane. Packing light or efficiently wasn’t a concern for the car trips Only for the plane, we’d have to really think about what to pack as there are limits to how much Stuff you can bring. 0. The Carry-A-Corpse Suitcase Amsterdam Schiphol Airport,Continue reading
Street Harassment Abroad: An Introduction
Share this piece if you think it matters! Keep traveling. We know the drill of catcalling in our hometowns and countries and possibly have set up our own systems of avoiding the everyday comments and ‘compliments’ from strangers on our commute. As women or individuals perceived as women – as a collective – we know and even expect street harassment to happen. Once you travel, whether solo or in a group, things become different. Men scream things at you in a foreign language and instinctively you know that it’s street harassment, but as you don’t understand the exact meaning ofContinue reading
A Letter of Advice to Solo Female Hitchhikers
Dear (self-identifying) women and (aspiring) solo female hitchhikers, I usually don’t have solid advice as hitchhiking is very different from woman to woman. Heck, I don’t even identify as a woman per se. Above all, I don’t think of myself as someone in the position to give you advice, especially the unsolicited kind. While traveling – whether that be by hitchhiking or not – you’ll be in situations I have never encountered. Some of my experiences will never happen to you. That’s in spite of our general similar experiences of going through life (being perceived) as women. The advice I’veContinue reading
Inspirational Quote: Not All Those Who Wander Were Told to “Get Lost!”
Time for an inspirational quote about travel: Not all those who wander were told to “Get Lost!” ~ Iris the Hitchhiker I’m really on a creative roll for the whole inspirational quotes kind of thing after finding peace, love, and tranquillity in the south of Spain 🙂 first of all, you should know that I find a lot of ‘inspirational’ quotes very uninspiring. They’re often vague, promote airplane travel, or sound like the ramblings of someone who just rage-quit their job. Secondly, I like to mock shit occasionally. When scrolling through my Facebook feed, it’s literally full of stuff likeContinue reading
They Told Me I Could Be Anything…
I think it’s time to hop on the bandwagon of inspirational quotes on pictures. My first attempt is the “they told me I could be anything” meme-format. It’s to expand the blog and do silly shit to go viral on the internet. I’m not sure if it’s working. I took this photo when I was hitchhiking in Iran from Lar to the great city of Shiraz. The Farsi hitchhiking sign says ‘Shiraz’. No thumb. Because anyone who’s read Iran’s HitchWiki knows that a thumb means something similar to a middle finger in the west. Now let’s post this picture toContinue reading
Check, I Hitchhiked the Millau Viaduct (France)
A couple of days ago I was still in France completing one of my “Hitch Bucketlist Masterpieces of Human Engineering”: the Millau viaduct! One of these pillars that keeps it all standing is taller than the Eiffel Tower and it spans the entire valley. My French driver spoke good English as he had just been back from a five-month backpacking trip himself. He told me more stories of the bridge as there were loads of protests against it. A one-way voyage over the bridge costs a whopping €9.40, so I offered to contribute. My driver rejected the offer. This bridgeContinue reading