Quote:
Originally posted by VulcanRider:
Is there any sort of prize for winning the contest? And how do you know the winners actually hitched the whole way instead of arranging transportation ahead of time?
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They don't. You have to promise at the beginning of the tournament that you'll only use hitchhiking.
There are not any big prizes to be won. And international trains are quite expensive. So you'd be stupid to spend money on those just to arrive first and win. And besides, even if you spend all that money, you'll have to find a train that fits that timetable, and even then you won't have a guarantee that you arrive first: a hitchhiking team could still beat you and you could spend all this money on nothing. Of course if you want to you could still cheat and use something other than a train in a way to make sure you win (airlines, your own car...) but that is even more expensive and in the end you really are only cheating yourself.
As for prizes, This year the champions will get a souvenir cup and a some small prize, second and third place will get some small prizes, and everyone including the losers will get to visit a beautiful city, meet many interesting people and have lots of fun. And also this certificate.
Oh yes, and before in those competitions you could only use public transport in the starting and destination cities. Recently they started allowing the use of public transport within any city of population 100,000+. It's really good they allowed this because if you arrive at one end of the city and your destination is on the other side it was almost impossible to get through it. Now, you can use public transport to get to the other side of the city.
Just on a side notice, those tournaments are not relly same as normal hitchhiking.
_In normal hitchhiking you travel during day and if at night you're not travelling in a car, you find someplace to go to sleep. In the tournament time is a factor so you don't want to waste any second and hitchhike even at night.
_In normal hitchhiking you can normal transport to get through some sections of your route.
I just confirmed it with the other person that they'll be able to make it so my team is ready. I'm really excited about it, this will be great. [img]smile.gif[/img]