Today we went to the meeting of the regional Italian Circle, as we usually do each month. There is the mixture of activity you might expect …. coffee, a talk, food. The speaker today was recounting his first visit to Italy in 1968, hitch-hiking.
The trip seems to have been an accident, because he had to leave Czechoslovakia on account of some sort of political disturbance (!), and on impulse he and his girlfriend decided it might to be interesting to look at Italy. On the spur of the moment, therefore, they simply set off southwards. The next two weeks was spent thumbing lifts around the country.
The remarkable thing about this story is the fact that they could do it without any difficulty whatsoever. In fact, the more astonishing part of it was the fact that they teamed up at one point with a teacher, in charge of a party of school-kids, who had missed their train. The two of them organised the party into pairs and sent them off to their intended destination also hitch-hiking. All arrived safely and on time.
When did you last hitch-hike? For me it was as recently as 1983, in Macedonia, when the key broke in the lock of the friend’s car in which I was travelling, and I had to get to Ohrid on time for an evening event. (I made it. No problem!) Given these kinds of reflections, it is quite startling that you would never advise kids today to set off around Europe (or anywhere else, for that matter) in this fashion. Inter-railing is probably the nearest thing, and by all accounts that is so very tightly programmed and scheduled. Has life really become so dangerous? What have our children lost?