Hitchgathering/2025

Celebrating the introduction of deposit on cans and plastic bottles, the 17th European Hitchgathering will take place in Austria from August 1st to August 15th 2025. Yay!

What? Hitchgathering is a DIY hitchhiking festival that has been organised since 2008. It usually happens in August and sees a bunch of hitchhikers congregate at a different spot in Europe. Usually the bulk of the food is obtained by dumpsterdiving and cooked on the fire; everything else is open to everybody's imagination. Usually there is swimming, music, games, story-telling, workshops... whatever you can come up with! Everybody is welcome without any need to announce your presence or register yourself anywhere beforehand. The main organisation platform is this wiki page; there is also the Hitchwiki Signal group. Often there are pregatherings (see below) where people can meet beforehand and perhaps already start a caravan towards the main gathering.

Where? There is no location fixed, yet. Do you have any ideas?

Communication

• Main organisation platform is this wiki page. Here you can collect/present proposals and use the talk page
• Other communication channels are the mailing list, Signal-group and the Facebook group. Please transfer all relevant info to the wiki page.

Proposals

Southwestern Norway

Well, it’s on the coast, in Southwestern Norway, on a beach, on small island, right off the highway, but far enough into the trees that the highway noise is insignificant, if even audible. It’s also a very short walk to a side of the highway bus stop, with 24h bathrooms. And, since it’s so near the highway, hitching to nearby dumpsters would be super easy 😃👍 And the location is right here: 59°44'19.0"N 5°24'25.8"E

Malga Chiampis, Northern Italy

The same location al last years Hitchgathering/2024

+Amazing location and surrounding

+tested

-no dumpsters nearby

-5h hike from the road

Gura Apelor, Romania

Location already scouted for the Hitchgathering/2024/proposals by K and L

+already scouted

+big lake

-no dumpsters nearby

-tourists might frequent location

Baltics

"I would like to suggest one of the Baltic countries for the gathering this year! I'm in Riga and could do some scouting around this area. There is lots of uninhabited forest. For example, last year there was a small rave at this spot and I thought it could be good for a gathering by the sea: https://osm.org/go/0asfml--?m=

Or this spot in Lithuania is really nice, in the forest with a big roofed seating area and picnic tables, but hardly anyone goes there besides a few mushroom-hunters. https://osm.org/go/0lRl6hk?m=

I'll keep an eye out for more suitable spots near Riga as I'm cycling this summer. I think there is a lot of potential for a nice lake-side spot in the forest (think 2016 Norway vibes). If anyone else in this group is in Latvia, we can go scouting together." "I'll check out a couple of lakes near Riga next week when the rain stops, but I think being near the beach would be best to escape the mosquitoes. So maybe we can go scout the coast when you're free.

I have several spots in mind where a river flows into the sea so we could have a fresh water source and a beach nearby. A plus of Latvia is that wild camping is allowed in most forests, but the downside is that people get fined for making campfires pretty often so we'd have to be pretty far from civilization to make a fire (or stay at a designated wild camping spot, which are nice but pretty popular at that time of year)."(T)

Also, there’s lovely spots in Estonia, wild camping is also easily done anywhere and there is no problem with making camp fires (of course keeping in mind the weather). I know lots of lovely places with beaches in the southern part of Estonia near the border with Latvia for example (Kabli area for example) or it’s also lovely on the islands or in Võru county etc.

Poland

S might have a collective in Poland that would host us

Denmark

S and E might scout places there.

Pre- and Postgatherings

Some rumours about a potential pregathering at somebody's parents' place have been spread.

Further Proposals

This article is missing geo information. Ideally done with a <map> tag, alternatively use this template. It could also be that the article is including a template which has missing geo information.