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== [[Austria]] ==
Freeriding trains in Austria works fairly good.
In '''long distance trains''' they usually check tickets of everyone only once during a journey. Usually in beginning of the journey. So if you manage to hide during the initial checking (toilet, luggage compartment, walking around the conductor pretending to be calling on phone…) you can then just sit down and pretend to be checked already. After the initial checking they will just ask for new passengers so you just read your book and don’t react. Also if you enter the train not in the first station you can just pretend to be already checked. Most long distance trains start either in Wien or Graz or somewhere in neighboring countries. So if you for example wanna go from Salzburg to Innsbruck the train comes from Wien and was most likely controlled already so they will ask just for new passengers.
If the train comes from other country they change the crew on the border so then the Austrian crew is likely to check everyone. With the long distance trains you can cross whole Austria without having any problem. Usually it is mostly about avoiding the one time they control everyone and then just ignoring them when they ask for newcomers.
Some of the long distance trains are the new fancy once (similar style as ICE or TGV) but some are bit more oldschool. For freeriding it does not make much difference. Unless you like to hide in a luggage compartment. The new fancy trains have usually shelves for luggage where you can hide behind your backpack. The older once often don't have those shelves and have just a shelve above the seats. So forexample the trains from Wien to Innsbruck and Switzerland are the new ones and trains from Graz to Salzburg or Innsbruck are the older ones without luggage shelves.
'''Regional trains''' are often without any control. But often they do control. Maybe 50% of time there is a conductor and 50% of time not. But that is very not precise estimation.
If you are lucky there is no conductor and you can just relax and enjoy your ride. If there is conductor there is not much you can do because the regional trains are quite small so it is easy for conductor to have overview about who they already checked and who not. You can buy a ticket just for few stations and stay in the train for longer.
Regional trains often have a ticket machine inside of a train. You are supposed to buy a ticket before boarding the train but in some little stations there is no ticket machine so you shall buy it inside of the train after entering. That can be very useful because you can just go into the train without ticket and if you see that there is a conductor you can go to the machine and buy a ticket. They might be unhappy about that because you are supposed to have ticket before but you can just say that you were super much in hurry to catch the train so you could not buy it before. They might be bit grumpy but nothing more.
'''If you get caught''' without a ticket they will probably ask you to pay and if you refuse they might ask for your ID or kick you out. The penalty is about 140 euros. IF you get fined and you don’t pay it you might get debts but you can not be put in prison for that. It is a debt to a private company (even though state owned) but not to state directly so nothing more than having debts can happen to you. If you are foreigner chances that something happens are even smaller.
If you are not aggressive or anything like that and you say you have no money and no ID they will most likely just ask you to get out on the next station. The chances that they will call cops to get your ID are very low. The few conductors that have kicked me out until now where quite chilled and polite. It is really not a big deal to get caught. They just kick you out and you wait an hour or two for the next train.
There is a lot of police controls while entering Austria from south and while leaving to Germany. So if you are '''crossing the border''' you maybe don’t want to be hiding in a toilet. Cops usually walk through and look for people with darker skin to ask them for papers. They are not interesting in tickets. But maybe if they find you hiding behind your backpack they might tell it to the conductor.
There are '''no gates''' to get into trains so you can always just get in. Same applies for public transport in cities. In cities you can also freeride trams, subway and most buses. Most of the time it will be relaxed. But of course you can be unlucky and get controlled but the controls are rather rare.
here is the '''old article''' with a lot of useless information:
Austria is not so big country in the middle of Europe and big part of this country is with mountains – Alps. There is big motorway '''A1 from Germany to Hungary''' ''(Munchen – Salzburg – Linz – Wien – Budapest)''. You can easily hitchhike there at exit of fuel stations. Another motorway goes to south – not so far from '''Rosenheim''' (Germany), the A1 motorway split to '''Munchen''' and south branch to '''Insbruck''' and '''Kufstein'''. And around Insbruck – the motorway spilts too – one '''direction to west''' (Switzerland) and one '''direction to Italy''' (Brenero, Bolzano, Verona). Insburck is big crossroad with beauty-full mountains around (up to 3300 m.n.m.). One hitchhiking place is fuel station before Insbruck. Many cars go to Italy (Sea, Skying), but there are only few cars in this fuel station, few cars go to Italy, and many hitchhikers waited there very long (few hours or even two days). Another possibility is hitchhiking with sign ''(Italy, Switzerland, Salzburg, Germany)'' before entrance to motorway in east Insbruck. Hitchhiking to Italy or Switzerland can be really bad here. If hitchhiking does not work, you just go to train station. Is it easy to jump on city bus inside Insbruck and taking it for free. (or another city in Austria) (penalty in city public transport can be for example in Wien 103 Eur) and you can go to train station or big road at the end of city.
