Hitchgathering/2011/news

April 2011 Newsletter (draft)

Here in Magdeburg the summer hitchhiking season started just in time while the Magdeburg (Pre-)Meeting took place. Hopefully the sun shines on your faces as well!

The day before, on thursday, the poll for the location voting was closed and the clear winner is Kara Dere, a huge remote beach at Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. The beach borders with a marvelous forest, where it's cool all day long and in the night it's not windy and sandy and which offers shadow as well. Water supply is covered by a natural spring with drinking water.

In Magdeburg our group consisted of Julien, Elsy, Benjamin, Patryk and Jona - less people than expected, but the advantage was that discussions quickly lead to results.

We talked about the issues and topics that had been put down as an agenda and tried to evaluate the feedback from last year, but also talked about different random topics.

Some of the ideas and points we talked about were

- the what, why and how - make the website easier to use and understand (especially for new visitors) - have a person (or two) to check if things in need to be done are actually being done - some program points to define in advance or gather ideas and realize as open space spontanously at the Gathering - promotion and social media - having an early (maybe partially organisational) pre-meeting end of June or beginning of July, but way before the actual gathering

to get a better overview we recommend to have a look at the minutes http://hitchwiki.org/en/Hitchgathering/2011/Magdeburg_Meeting/Minutes/Day1 and http://hitchwiki.org/en/Hitchgathering/2011/Magdeburg_Meeting/Minutes/Day2

We hope that many people will participate in taking over jobs on the to do list :)

Lets make this a great gathering,

Happy thumbing till August!

March 2011 Newsletter (sent out)

Better than s... chocolate?

"Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get." said Forrest Gump's mum. Well, for a hitchhiker life on the road is like a full-blown chocolate factory: you never know if Charlie is going to pick you up and what kind of Oompa Loompas you make friends with along the way. When you let the destiny decide where you go next, every day is as sweet as the best (vegan) chocolate.

Last year some 80-90 unique individuals from all over the world were having fun, connecting with each other and sharing more than mere travel stories in Sines, Portugal. That was the third European Hitchgathering.

Now the Fourth Hitchgathering, infamously referred to as 5-8-11, is organized by the hitchhikers for the hitchhikers. As the name states, the event starts on 5 August 2011 and takes place somewhere in Europe. Where? That's for us to decide! Go on, vote for your favorite location right now!

You can choose between cities such as Bristol, Berlin and Lyon and far off places like Nordics or Turkey. Some of these spots have well defined locations while other proposals are still less clear. By the time of writing "The Black Sea, Kara Dere in Bulgaria" is leading with a whopping 40% of the votes!

And you know what's so great about the gathering? You don't have to be bold and beautiful or have thousands of kilometers of thumbing experience to attend. Hitchgathering calls for all wacky road warriors, former couch potatoes and other amazing travelers who won't shy away from a little bit of adventure.

Come and join us 1st of April in the pre-meeting in Magdeburg, Germany to reach consensus about the location and to contribute what you can to our common success. Or if your hitch-itch is not yet fully developed you can just keep your eyes open at our website http://hitchgathering.org and sign up to let us all know you are coming to 5-8-11 in August.

May your travels be as sweet as chocolate!