Two Young Women Hitchhike to Serbia for Charity

This is the story of an incredible journey taken by two young women, Danielle and Morgan from the UK, who decided to hitchhike to Serbia for charity and bring awareness to the refugee crisis that has caused the displacement of millions of Syrians. Their journey had many ups and downs including harassment and a stolen passport, but what they achieved was something overwhelmingly rewarding and heartfelt. This is what you call travelling with a purpose. This is their story written in their own words. 

As housemates, Morgan and I often talked about going on holiday but the more we spoke about it the sooner we realised a holiday wasn’t actually what we desired. We wanted to do something that mattered, an experience that would enrich and challenge us. That’s when we thought about hitchhiking for charity.

Now that we had decided what we wanted to do, we needed to choose a country but we couldn’t agree on which one so decided to leave an element of the decision-making up to fate.

We scribbled down several countries onto pieces of paper and dropped them into a hat, and the country we pulled out was Serbia. We looked at each other with apprehension because from all the countries we could have pulled out, we knew the least about Serbia. In fact our knowledge of the country brought us to a blank. But Serbia was picked and Serbia it was!

We didn’t waste any time deciding which charities we would be raising money for: Guide Dogs and British Red Cross. I was raising money for the Guide Dogs because a close member of my family is blind and I’ve seen the amazing work the charity has done for him, and Morgan is a coordinator for the Red Cross’ Emergency and Event First Aid services which respond to hundreds of disasters and crises in the UK and overseas.

We set up a Facebook and Twitter page and came up with the name ‘WeGoSerbia’ so we could share our stories along the way. We also set up a Just Giving page and contacted the charities to tell them about our plan to hitchhike to Serbia and they supported us on their social media and invited us over to talk more about it.

Morgan and I visited Guide Dogs’ training ground in Redbridge, where they blindfolded us and got their guide dogs in training to walk us around an obstacle course, we got to feel what it was like being blind and guided by a dog! It was a strange feeling submitting all our trust into a dog; nevertheless they did a great job!

We also got invited to the Serbian Embassy in London as they were intrigued to hear about our trip to Serbia and give us lots of advice.

The idea of hitchhiking to Serbia filled us with excitement and trepidation, especially when the research started. We found out more about the refugee crisis, and through Morgan’s work with the Red Cross we discovered an initiative called Blazing to Serbia. The organisation that consists of Welsh firemen who drive old fire engines to Serbia for them to use along with dog food which they donate to animal shelters. We got in touch and discussed our plans to hitchhike as two women, and were given a lot of support.

Our adventure was soon enough making more and more sense, and through talking to the various charities and learning more about Serbia we were extremely thankful that Serbia was pulled out of the hat. Not only were we donating to charities that were close to our hearts, but also the situation with the refugees meant we could help out in any way we could when we arrived in Belgrade. Our challenge was getting bigger but so was our passion.

It also became clear that being women opened more obstacles for us. Closer to the time of departure for our trip we were both getting really nervous and scared, people were telling us that it’s not safe and we shouldn’t go. Our families weren’t initially happy with us wanting to do it either, but we refused to back down. Fear was not going to be a reason to stop now, especially after we had already invested so much of our energy into the project.

Departure Day

In the early morning, Morgan and I departed for our 5-hour bus journey from London to Lille and began hitchhiking from there. It took us seven days and six countries to get to Belgrade in Serbia, passing through Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and finally to Serbia.

We would have reached there sooner if the bag containing my passport and bankcard had not been stolen whilst I was sleeping in a hostel in Ljubljana. The only positive thing was that I had kept my phone under my pillow as I slept, and a larger bag containing my clothes remained. However, I would be going nowhere without my passport, so after I informed the hostel they called the police who came to take a statement.

Both the hostel and the police did little to try and help, they didn’t seem concerned in finding the person who stole my bag, and my request to see the footage on the security camera was postponed until the manager of the hostel would be in the following day.

This incident delayed us of a night while we sorted out my situation. The British Embassy in Ljubljana said I needed to buy an emergency travel document costing 140 Euros, money I obviously didn’t have immediately since my card had been stolen. The Embassy advised me to wait until the next day in case any news came forward. I wasn’t going to hold my breath, but I had to remain optimistic. And against all odds, later that afternoon I received a call from the police to say someone had found my passport in a dustbin and it had been handed in. My other belongings had not been handed in, but nevertheless I was reunited with my passport and that was the most important thing. We were back on track.

Shortly after we put out our thumbs we were picked up by an ex-hitchhiker called Peter from Ljubljana. Immediately we felt we were in good hands. He was great and gave us so many tips on hitchhiking and educated us about the history of Serbia and Croatia, before he dropped us off in a service station in Zagreb, Croatia, where it was the best place for ensuring we’d get our next ride to Belgrade.

We waited around for quite a while and turned down a few rides we weren’t comfortable with, but in the end got an offer with a trucker who said he was on his way to Belgrade. He gave us permission to take photos of his number plate to post onto our Facebook Page to those who were following our journey. Doing this gave us reassurance that our ride would be safe given that his details were now online. Around 20 minutes into the journey we found out he was a Turkish Trucker going back to Turkey passing through Belgrade.

He didn’t speak English well, but he seemed jovial and friendly. However, any positive impression I had soon evaporated when he started touching my face and stroking my hair, which made me feel really uncomfortable. At this point Morgan and I tried to talk to each other as much as possible as a way to distract his over friendliness. We were in the middle of nowhere so we had to be cautious. I didn’t feel too threatened at this point as Morgan was with me.

However, things took a turn for the worse 10km from the Serbian border when we spotted the long queue, he said it would take at least an hour to go through. Because of the waiting, he said he wouldn’t be going to Belgrade that day and we would have to sleep in his truck over night. Alarm bells started ringing and we tried to communicate with him through our phone translators to no avail.

When he then produced a screwdriver and began removing his vehicle tracker I asked him why we was doing it, and he replied saying it was broken. That was worrying enough but when he then pulled out a knife we were immediately scared. We don’t know what his intentions were by pulling it out, but we didn’t waste any time opening the door before throwing out our bags and jumping out. The trucker didn’t try and come after us but we didn’t exactly wait around to find out either as we ran to the border.

It’s important to say here that we’re not sharing these incidents to scare people away from hitchhiking or trusting strangers but it’s crucial to be aware that these things can happen. Always trust your instincts and if at any moment something doesn’t feel right, take yourself out of the situation in the best way you can. Don’t let these incidents put you off from doing what you want to do as we had such an incredible experience from this and learnt so much.

For these two incidents that happened we also met loads of other people that picked us up along the way who were very generous and kind; they had story after story to share with us and overall we felt very safe on most occasions. The experience of hitchhiking gave us more faith in humanity. However, because of our experiences, we would not recommend hitchhiking as a solo female in some countries, and we believe safety often comes in numbers.

After we crossed the border, which was overwhelmingly chaotic with masses of cars and traffic, we showed our passports and got one last hitchhike to the centre of Belgrade. We were tired but our journey had only just begun.

Our Arrival

When we eventually arrived, we met up with some of the organisers from Giving Back Serbia. Nothing could have prepared us for the amount of refugees we saw outside the train station and the surrounding parks, most were living in tents, but unfortunately tents are also in short supply so not everyone had shelter. However this is not the only picture of Belgrade, if you walked around the rest of city it seemed like two entirely different places because the refugees were concentrated in specific areas of the city.

Thousands of refugees fleeing war are passing through Serbia to get to Western European countries in hope of a better life, and the situation is changing daily. Since we have arrived back things have worsened since Hungary closed their borders just weeks ago, which means more and more are remaining stagnant in Serbia, one of Europe’s poorest countries.

It was evident that there was a lack in supply of aid and volunteers while there was so much more that needed to be done. However, it was really reaffirming to see many volunteers getting on with doing what they thought was right rather than waiting around to be told what to do, including a documentary photographer named Francesco Marchetti.

Morgan and I had been waking up really early and going to the Miksaliste, a bar that has converted some of its space to set up aid, before the gates opened for the refugees. We needed to organise all the clothes into gender and age, create a first aid section, and an area for the children with drawing materials and toys for them to play with, while their parents were getting supplies and helping out with distributing food, water, toiletries and other basic yet essential items.

 As I said earlier, the situation changes daily, for example whilst we were there 8000 refugees crossed over into Serbia for Macedonia which means the demand greatly outweighs the supply of aid. Children were getting sick because simple medicine like Calpol and Nurofen wasn’t available, and medical gloves for volunteers were scarce.

If you are interested in volunteering there are lots of things that need helping out with and your help would be greatly appreciated. We know it’s difficult to take time off work, but if you are already travelling through Serbia please consider helping out in any way that you can.

In my daily life, I’m a nanny living in Brighton and through Morgan’s work with the First Aid Services for the Red Cross we were able to use our skills working with children to offer support and understanding to those who are most vulnerable: children and women. Most of the time specialist help is not required; we simply offered our time and able bodies to contribute to a bigger mission.

What we’ve taken out of this experience is that you can take your own initiative to help other people in need, and that there are ways to travel without spending lots of money to see and experience different countries and cultures, as well as meeting new people which is possibly the best education in life that you can get.

We hope our story encourages you to take your own adventures not only for personal growth but to help others in times of need. We’ve also learnt the importance of sharing stories and experiences along the way, so more and more people will be aware of what is going on around the world and how we can all work together to build our faith in humanity.

We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported us on our mission, especially Constance and Nik, the couple who provided us accommodation throughout out stay in Belgrade. They opened up their home, gave us their bedroom, gave us keys and a bus card, coffee ready on the table the moment they heard us wake up, cooked us breakfast every morning, insisted we met their wonderful friends, scoffed at any tourist places we might have accidentally gone to (yes Nik! Ever the discerning hipster!), be our sounding board, gave us advice, shared their work with us, took us out for beers at the bar with the best barman in the city, got involved at Miksaliste, endlessly changed their schedule to help us out, were understanding when we never made it to where we said we would be, cared about us, stayed up late with us waiting for the bus to Budapest, gave us medicine when we were sick, and did not say a word when we rolled in at 5am from the beer fest. We will always cherish them and hopefully see them in the future!

WeGoSerbia has managed to raise over £1500 for the Guide Dogs and The British Red Cross and continues to bring awareness to the current refugee crisis. For regular updates follow their Facebook page.