The Most Beautiful Country
Turkey is beautiful, Jo Magpie proclaims, but “the most beautiful country”? Hmmm…
Jo Magpie, and her husband, Hrach, hitchhike across Europe.
The Storm that Stopped the Boats
With but a day left on Hrach’s visa, Jo Magpie and her husband find themselves seemingly unable to leave Turkey.
Two Old Friends
Istanbul is caked in white icing. It glitters in the early morning sun. Street dogs nuzzle empty plastic bags in the bus station where we arrive, bleary and sleep-deprived, after 12 hours shifting into ever-decreasingly comfortable positions on the night-bus from Marmaris. We make our way to Taksim Square as the city awakens and bustles […]
The Stinging Nettle in Barcelona
Like the stinging nettle, this community germinated without sanction or permission, and provides healing and precious nourishment. It does so for both its dwellers and the surrounding communities, through its vast vegetable gardens that are open to the neighborhood, their convivial social and cultural activities, their full and radical implementation of sustainable practices, and by their sheer example of what the world could be like. And like the stinging nettle, it has had to and will defend itself against uprooting, if necessary.
Just a Weird Camping Holiday
Hitchhiking in Spain proves more difficult than Jo recalls from her youth…
How Capitalism Stole Hitchhiking
Jo ponders the differences between paying for rides–via sites like Rideshare–and old fashioned, free, hitchhiking.
The Place Where North Meets South
Granada is a city of travellers. Hippies stroll through town barefoot with long swaying dreadlocks; buskers strum on street corners. The squares and dry brown parks are filled with young people playing drums, reading books, or drinking sangria. This is a meeting point, geographically close to the point where Europe almost touches Africa, but culturally […]
Train Ride on a Blue Moon
Goodbye Spain, goodbye Hrach as Jo Magpie heads north on her own…
The Last Hitchhiker
I navigate my way clumsily around the train station, bumbling my way onto the wrong side of a security fence and getting ticked off by a very uptight woman in uniform. Barcelona’s morning rush hour chaos engulfs me. Following the directions on Hitchwiki, I buy a one way ticket to a station just outside the […]
The Meeting at the Bottom of the World
Jo’s adventures in hitchhiking, this time trying to find a hitchgathering in the dark.
Hitchhiker’s Heaven
Jo revels in the sheer number of hitchhikers at the hitchgathering, and finds plenty of interesting women to interview for her upcoming book.
The Perfect Hitch
Quintessential female hitchhikers dwindle one by one as they go off in their respective directions, until Jo Magpie eventually catches the perfect hitch from a tattooed punk rocker back to England.
Trapped in Essex
Like every service station, Thurrock Services is an alienating and frankly quite terrifying place. Crowds of people swarm around ignoring each other and giant signs assault me with information in garish colours. I have packed away my tent and wandered into the service station. I’m in need of coffee, a plug socket, and most of […]
The Adventure Travel Film Festival 2015
Jo inspired this year’s festival organizers to theme the event around hitchhiking!
The Train to 1950
Jo, our resident hitchhiker, revisits her mother’s town of Filey in the UK.