We arrived later than we expected, hungry and tired and desperate for a place to rest our feet. Our backs needed rest as well, as our way-too-heavy backpacks had been weighing us down the entire way here. ‘Here’ was Milan; Italy’s most fashionable city and foremost financial center, a true hub of luxury, art, impressive architecture, culture and overpriced beers. It was the last place anyone would expect a pair of broke twenty-year-olds to end up on purpose, but here we were.

The ‘when’ was a muggy evening in the summer of 2005; a time of flip phones and Blackberries, of emo culture and the likes of 50 Cent, The Killers, and Green Day dominating the charts. It was a time when a guy named Mark Zuckerberg was only just getting his Facebook project out of its infancy, and Youtube was just some unknown site for watching obscure videos. Roaming internet for mobile phones was expensive, so we secured our night’s rest from a late-night internet café we’d claimed as our temporary field H.Q.

The place was cheerfully lit with cold white fluorescent lighting and packed with good people from every corner of Africa, all screaming into payphones as if the marvels of modern technology didn’t allow for their voices to reach over the Mediterranean in any other way. All this wasn’t exactly improving our impoverished spirits, so as soon as we secured a dingy, cheap hotel room three blocks away, we got out of that noisy dive and made for our night’s accommodation.

Once freed from our backloads, we spent the rest of the night roaming the streets of Milan, enjoying the sights of a beautiful old city illuminated by countless streetlights, flashy posh storefronts, commercial signs and homeless people’s lit cigarettes. We dined on a pile of 50-cent McDonald's burgers and were promptly set back 10 euros each when we ordered a beer in a deceptively fancy bar on a deceptively fancy square. Naturally, we got nervous, tried to broker a deal with the bartender, failed, and decided to have another round in a different bar across the square, only to be set back the same amount of money. We learned that night that the Milan nightlife probably isn’t the best for a duo of ratty hitchhikers bumming it through Europe on a shoestring budget.

Great undertakings

Earlier that year, my high school buddy Bruce and I got it into our heads to see Europe. As our financial stability could be called tenuous at best, we decided our bank accounts would be best served by an epic hitchhiking adventure across Western Europe. Just us, our backpacks, and 250 euros each to see us through three weeks of traveling through Belgium, France, Italy and Austria. Our main goal: to make it to the Austrian city of Innsbruck in time for Bruce to join a family holiday there. And so we found ourselves near the Netherlands-Belgium border on a foggy Monday morning, our spirits raised higher than our thumbs while we eagerly fished for our first ride.

Bruce already had a good week of hitchhiking experience from an earlier trip; besides making him a valuable asset in avoiding a lot of trial-and-error, his insights also facilitated something of a social experiment. Both of us were on an extreme budget, and I looked the part in baggy pants, surplus military boots, and old t-shirts. However, Bruce decided on a different approach by dressing in what could only be described as ‘roadside business casual’: dress shirts, casual dress pants, and a blazer to match. The idea was to see if a well-dressed young man would get picked up sooner than his ratty-looking companion hiding on the verge of the road.

He might have been on to something, as our first two rides got us all the way through Belgium and into northern France. Our adventure now well underway, we continued on to Paris the next day with raised spirits. We dropped in on our Parisian friends quite unexpectedly, but were treated to a royal welcome in their city nonetheless. And while we spent the previous night in our cheap little tents on a basic municipal campground, our second night was spent in a luxury Parisian townhouse in comfy, antique beds.

We knew our friends were well off, but we never expected our adventure to actually land us in luxury this easily. Little did we know that the trip had countless unexpected adventures in store, even more so because we had no detailed way of knowing what the road had in store for us.

Paper maps, unspoiled experiences

In those days, before Instagram brought us destination feeds filled with expertly edited travel photography, travelers had to rely mostly on guide books and local knowledge to get an idea of what to expect in a new destination. The golden age of travel blogging was only just beginning, so unless you sat through extensive photoslides of a family member’s latest holiday, you generally wouldn’t know the ins and outs of a destination until you visited it yourself. All we had was a paper roadmap of France and a general idea of which direction to head for. To leave Paris, we gathered info from our local friends to find a suitable spot from where to lift our thumbs for our next ride. After a short metro trip to the outskirts of the city, we decorated a piece of cardboard with the word ‘Sud’ and continued on our way.

Blissfully unaware of what we could expect in each new place, every experience caught us pleasantly by surprise and solidly in the moment. We were picked up by a man driving around with all his earthly belongings in his trunk, who said he’d only take us along if we helped him yell at his ex’s house as we did a ‘drive-by shouting’, as he called it. True to our word, we felt obliged to help him out. We met a balloon flight instructor living in a converted van, long before ‘van life’ was even a term. We were picked up by a courier in his work van, who gave us the longest ride of our trip as he drove us south for 500 kilometers, straight to the Mediterranean coast. We then spent the evening with him and his girlfriend, sipping margaritas on a terrace overlooking the sea.

Our trip brought us across the great national parks of southern France, past meadows, mountains, and sunsets. We spent our evenings under fields of stars we had never seen before. We cooked inefficient meals on our cheap, inefficient camping stoves, our backpacks filled with a varied assortment of random food items because there were no hiking foodie vlogs to teach us anything.

Our youthful enthusiasm allowed us to get into all kinds of random adventures with an open mind, as we weren’t influenced by the experiences of others and we weren’t trying to recreate some idealized version of what a hitchhiking trip should look like. We weren’t busy with documenting our trip in any way other than a few pages of hastily scribbled notes that Bruce was keeping up with in between rides.

Not that we were too aware of this, though; it was just the way we enjoyed our adventure at the time. If we had the option of instantly sharing our adventures with the world, of documenting each and every quirky interaction or dodgy ride, we probably would have done so. Would it have made our shared sense of adventure any more meaningful? Or would we have been less present in each moment as half our attention would be focused on the myriad ways it could be shared with the online world?

The Rhône rendezvous

After we made it to the Mediterranean coast, we decided we would head northeast to meet up with friends staying near Grignan, a place described to us as a charming town in the Rhône valley. Google Maps did exist at the time, but it wasn’t yet equipped with the vast amount of information it lays claim to these days. And besides, we didn’t have mobile internet to use any of it anyway. Because of this lack of detailed information, we often found ourselves marching on the verges of byways and highways as our paper map didn’t quite cover the needs of two young bums traveling on foot.

On one occasion, this even scored us a ride in a police car, as they caught us crossing an overpass while precariously hanging from the safety railing. In hindsight, the heated lecture the officer gave us was probably completely justified. It would have made an impression too, had it not been for the officer’s near-comical short stature, his oversized hat, and his female partner’s contrasting, mesmerizingly charming presence. It took whatever little restraint we had to not look at each other and burst out laughing while riding backseat with France’s finest. They had the last laugh though, as we were dropped off on a forgotten on-ramp in the middle of nowhere.

The lack of freely available online resources meant we simply had to trust in our friends’ recommendation of their holiday spot near Grignan. A few pictures glimpsed near the start of our trip promised an authentic small-town-in-southern-France atmosphere that sold us on the idea of visiting, but we had no way of really knowing what to expect. When we finally did arrive, we were immediately greeted by the sight of an old monastery perching on its hill and the idyllic town spread out underneath like a cascade of sandy brick and historic rooftops. I would never forget that scene, the postcard-perfect scene surrounded by lavender fields as we approached the town on foot.

The few days we spent there would be one of the highlights of our trip, passing time in the company of friends, meeting new ones, visiting local festivals, and enjoying late nights besides campfires in secret forest hideaways. It almost proved too much of a contrast with the often harsh routine of hitchhiking, as I almost took up an offer to extend my stay there, potentially leaving Bruce to find his own way to Austria.

Life on the road

Thankfully, the call of adventure and the voice of reason conspired to convince me that it would not only be a selfish idea, but also a terrible shame to let the potential for new adventures pass me by. So after a few days spent in comfort, Bruce and I waved farewell to Grignan, strapped on our heavy backpacks, and exercised our thumbs in anticipation of more hitchhiking and strenuous road life.

We were still doing great when it came to spending our limited funds. The occasional seaside margarita somewhat dented our budget, but these sporadic splurges were offset by our strict, low budget routine. We ate raisin bread and marmalade for breakfast and lunch, the monotony only broken up by the occasional gas station sandwich. For dinner, we would use our camping stove to cook a very basic pasta mixed with pieces of canned ham, tomato sauce, and a strange mixture of random herbs picked up in stores along the way. To say our diet was Spartan would probably be an injustice to Spartan cuisine, but it did allow us to live off less than 10 euros a day.

The downside was that even though we made good progress –both in distances covered and in terms of budget– we had to stick to a wearisome routine of constant travel and endless small talk conversations with our generous hosts. We would pack up our campsite each morning to then spend some time hiking to a good pickup spot, followed by nearly ten hours of standing by the roadside, negotiating destinations, talking and entertaining our drivers, and more hiking in between rides. Near sunset, we would start to look for suitable camping spots for the night. If we couldn’t find a cheap municipal campsite, we would hike into the nearest field or forest until we found a secluded spot to secretly set up camp in the dark.

We were enjoying ourselves for most of it. However, if we had more time to reach our Austrian finish line we would have probably taken it slower. Hitchhiking on highways offered a fast way to travel, but traveling the byways and provincial roads would have resulted in a slower, less intensive journey. So when we crossed the Alps into Italy, we were relieved to discover that Italy’s government-run trains were dirt cheap.

In fact, they were so cheap that it would cost us less to cross Italy by train than to hitchhike the same route to the Austrian border. Today, this information would have been a quick Google search away, but I like to think this discovery was made more precious by having to read the information off the faded notice board of a remote, weather-worn train station in the foothills of the Italian Alps.

Il Vello d’Oro

And so, two days later, I found myself in Milan. It was our last day in the city, and Bruce had set his mind to finding a new pair of Italian-made dress shoes to ‘upgrade his hitchhiking game’. After more than two weeks on the road, his once-fancy footwear proved –as expected– unfit for the rigors of road life. And seeing as how we already visited half a dozen stores, his quest for a replacement was still far from over.

I couldn’t complain much, though; the richly ornamented baroque facades around me offered plenty in terms of distraction while Bruce zipped in and out of one store after the other, ever onward in his quest for his Golden Fleece, that perfect pair of Italian shoes. The sun shone brightly, cheerfully illuminating the sights and sounds of an unknown city. Someone was playing soft music somewhere, barely audible on the edge of my hearing, offering a soft musical narrative to what was turning out to be a beautiful summer afternoon.

It was then I realized our train to Verona was set to leave somewhere in the next two hours. Bruce’s quest and my romantic musings on our surroundings completely made us lose track of time. With me urging him on, Bruce found his leathery prize and we jumped on the first tram car we could find to carry us through the chaotic Milanese traffic. We ran into our hotel, gathered our backpacks and checked out so fast the reception clerk must have thought we were a pair of fugitives on the run.

Running short on time, we jogged, hopped and jumped from tram car to tram car until we got to the train station, where a giant set of stairs formed a last, majestic hurdle in our race against the clock. We made it to the finish, if only barely. The train moved a split second after we jumped on, out of breath, covered in sweat, and laughing so hard the conductor came to check in on our sanity.

The finish line

That train took us to Verona, from where another train ride towards Bolzano helped us cross the border into Austria. Bruce changed his shoes, completing his deluxe hitchhiking outfit into what he described as ‘definitive’. Whether it was his confidence or his impeccable (if somewhat worn) ensemble, I couldn’t say, but it must have done its part on that final stretch to Innsbruck.

With two days to spare, we walked into Innsbruck’s charming city center after our last ride dropped us off. We’d done it, traveling for three weeks with a minimal budget across four countries. It was one of the great adventures of our young lives, and as far as we were concerned, it was only the first of many to come. Despite the youthful boastfulness in which this prediction was made, it thankfully proved to come true.

At the time, that youthful confidence led us into one final mishap before we parted ways for the summer. We were set on climbing to the top of a nearby mountain, woefully under-equipped and naïvely unprepared. We left all our equipment at our hostel and went up the mountain in nothing but our thin, summer hitchhiking clothes. Thankfully, the adventure was cut short when we encountered a local mountain dweller, who took one look at our lack of equipment and Bruce’s elegant, Milanese designer footwear and promptly forbade us from going any further with a stern “Aber nicht mit diesen Schuhen!”. Somewhat flustered and thoroughly humbled, we made our way back down the mountain while nibbling on our provisions: two dry rolls of bread we stuffed into our pockets at breakfast.

I could blame our unfortunate preparation on a lack of available online resources, on a deficiency in hiking blogs and listicles full of starter tips for wannabe mountaineers, or on the limits of the digital world in 2005. Instead, it would probably be more conscientious to simply accept that some things will simply never change.

Youthful brazenness and the overconfident antics of young men will always win out over careful planning and common sense. No matter the times or level of technology, with the entirety of human knowledge at their fingertips or nothing at all, an impulsive pair of twenty-year-olds will always be an impulsive pair of twenty-year-olds.