Europe on Five Dollars a Day

I arrived in Berlin from the Trans Mongolian with $200 US to my name. I figured that if I could live on $5 US a day, I could last 6 weeks. But I would have to economise. Fortunately, travelling through China had suppressed my appetite. Most days I lived on a litre of multi-vitamin buttermilk (in Germany) or drinking yoghurt (in France). I lasted two months.

I hitched down to Eckental to Wolfy’s place. He had just fallen off the Master’s Edge and hurt his back so couldn’t get up the stairs to his bedroom, so I occupied it, and Kurt showed me the delights of the Frankenjura. The guys there were great and I sponged off them for a week, but then headed south before I wore out my welcome. Kurt assured me I could live at Fontainbleau on nothing but oranges.

The problems of living on $5 a day became apparent the day I left Eckental. While hitching on the on-ramp to the autobahn a Polish guy wandered past and asked why I was not hitching on the autobahn itself. I said I thought it was illegal, but he said no, he did it all the time. I followed him up onto the autobahn, walked a respectable Australian distance ahead, put down my pack, picked it up again and walked back to meet the police that were talking to him.

They wanted to fine me 10 Deutschmark for hitching on the autobahn. I insisted I was leaving Germany and had no Marks. They decided to take me to their station. I asked if they would take US dollars and they assured me they would, as I suspected, losing on the exchange rate. So I was down my US dollars for the day and it was early.

Later in the day, a guy who gave me a lift took me to Zingen, assuring me that it was OK to get off the autobahn because he would pay for a train ticket to Basel. He was horrified when we arrived in Zingen to find the trains had stopped at 6pm. I said, “no sweat. Only 90ks to Basel, I’ll be there in an hour”(fool). In an act of contrite generosity, and despite my protestations, he gave me the train fare of 20 Marks. I was now $5 US up.

I was then to learn that hitching in Europe is a different proposition to Australia, especially if you have to cross a border or two. I did not arrive in Basel until lunch the next day, but I’m jumping ahead. I tried hitching in Zingen that evening, but as it got dark, the largest most vicious mosquitoes I’ve ever experienced came to chew on my face. Eventually, I said fuck this, and shouldered my pack and walked back into town, I went to a bar and drank Weissen beer, spending ten Marks. I staggered back to the road, and slept in the forest; my inner sheet pulled over my head and kept open with my Indian umbrella to keep away the mosquitoes. As I sweated in my hot bag I did the maths. On paper this was a zero sum day. I had not spent a cent, and I was pissed. But I had not eaten anything at all.

In Basel I went to look up an old girl friend but she was off at the Mediterranean, but her house mate let me doss in her room. A respectable amount of time later I headed off to France, to Font, where I spent some time sleeping in the forest.

After Font I went to Paris. Someone told me that it was not illegal to steal food in France, because of the revolution. This did not explain why there were lots of French beggars with signs that said Pour Mange Si Vous Plait (for food, if you please). Despite this, I decided that to supplement my budget I would steal food. I would buy a baguette, and because I didn’t want to get into too much trouble would pocket something cheap like sardines. But then I’d think, hell, I need some wine with this and if I was going to get done for stealing wine it might as well be good wine. Being the middle of summer in Paris most people had left and the little supermarket around the corner from the Youth Hostel where I was dossed used to leave the back door open to let the air (and me) out.

I’d go back to the YHA and offer alcohol to strangers. Not surprisingly, not many wanted to drink with me. I fell in love with a girl from Stuttgart who did. I then met an American guy Tim, who said he only showered there but had a room over looking the Opera. “Can I stay with you” was about the first words I spoke after learning this fact. He said no, he had two Germans staying with him, but they were leaving tomorrow so then I could. The room was a bed and about the same area floor space. I don’t know how the Germans fitted in there. Tim and I would drink my stolen wine and crawl out his seventh story window to sit on the roof and admire the view of the Opera. In Paris you can walk for miles on the roof tops and Tim and I spent a week running around, jumping walls and leaping across voids. His night vision was not that good so he had to trust my judgement at times.

During the day I walked all over Paris. Tim had given me a map of the subway entrances that did not have guards, where you could vault the turnstiles and travel for free. One afternoon, I was walking into a station and the guy in front of me vaulted the turnstile, and out of the shadows stepped two controllers, who maced him to the ground. I was only a metre behind him and was also on the ground coughing. I crawled to the ticket box and bought a ticket, for the first time.

While I was in Eckental, I’d met Jerry. Later Kurt told me that Jerry had taken the train from Paris to London without paying. I was getting sick of European hitching and figured this would be the way out of Paris. I’d heard stories of people being thrown in gaol though. I went to Gare Nord and put my pack on the train, then got off to have a cigarette on the platform. A little wizened African guy walked up to me.

“You takin’ the train.”

“Yep.”

“I did that once.” He seemed to know I had no ticket. I must have stuck out like dogs balls. “They caught me.”

Horrified, I asked “What did they do to you?”

He looked at me squarely, and then smiled. “No, I’m not going to tell you what they did to me.” And with that he walked off.

An Australian couple on the platform said they’d taken the train before and that they didn’t check the tickets until near the coast, so I figured if they threw me off I’d at least be out of Paris. They only check the tickets late if you are at the front of the train. I was skulking at the back. One minute after we pulled out the conductor started walking along the carriage checking tickets. I walked into the next carriage and watched him, and then ducked into the toilet. I was in there for what seemed like hours, but was probably only ten minutes. Someone tried the door and I sat silent. The blood was pounding in my head. I stuck my head out eventually and he was way down the end of the next carriage. At the coast I had to buy a ferry ticket and I was so hyped up that I didn’t sleep all night, and stood out on the deck feeling the wind on my face; ah freedom.

I hitched up to London and spent my first night in the great city, sleeping in the railway station. I went to a climbing shop that owed me twenty quid from copies of Screamer I’d sent them two years previously. There was no way they were going to refuse given the way I looked and that I’d come all this way to collect. They coughed up the money.

I hitched up to Sheffield to Woodstock Ave and when Jerry turned up I said, “I did what you did, I took the train out of Paris with no money.”

Jerry looked perplexed. “I’ve never done that.”

Published in Crux magazine.