Hitchhiking is usually the last travel resort available. I’ve had to travel in such manner in a number of countries and was not only fortunate enough to have never run into problems, but actually met some wonderful people along the way (of course, I’ve never hitchhiked in America and I strongly recommend you don’t either).
And so it was with a bit of enjoyment that I ran across the following story about a Russian who was invited to attend a student conference in Lodz, Poland. Unfortunately, he lived on Sakhalin Island-an island in the Pacific Ocean just north of Japan that is actually closer to Seattle, Washington than Moscow. The poor student had only enough money to fly to Moscow and then he hitched it from there.
Take a moment to read his story. It’s not the most well-written piece, but it’s full of misadventures, bribery and even human smuggling. He didn’t wake up in a tub full of ice missing a kidney, but he did experience an entirely different level of hitchhiking than I ever did in places like Ireland.