Caravan Hitchhiking Project

Friday’s Dutch late night news show had nothing better to report about, so an item passed about a Dutchman who’s hitchhiking around Europe with a trailer. Tjerk Ridder (the man on the picture) has a caravan, but no car to transport it. On January 3rd he left Utrecht with his caravan hitchhiking to the European Capitals of Culture of 2010: the Ruhr Area in Germany, Pecs in Hungary and Istanbul in Turkey. Under the name of ‘Trekhaak gezocht’ (which means something like ‘Wanted: Tow Bar’), Tjerk entirely depends on others willing to move him forward.

According to Ridder, the idea of the project is to show that you need others to go ahead in your life. On his trip Tjerk collects ‘fresh resolutions’ from the people who give him and his caravan a lift. These personal good intentions are conserved the old fashioned way in tin cans, and given to people as a present for their kindness and as a memory of their fresh resolutions. The expiration date is printed on the can and represents the date by which the resolution should be realized.

While traveling, Tjerk writes songs in order to produce a new guitar album when returning. The route and progress of this trip can be checked here. Updates about experiences are collected on a blog, on Flickr and on Twitter. One can support the caravan trailer experiment by donating, by pulling the caravan through Germany or by hiring Tjerk for a special travel story concert when he’s back. There’s also the possibility of buying the songs he makes produces while traveling, for every chosen amount of money.

Recently Tjerk presented at Pecha Kucha Night Volume 16 in Cologne. Hereby we’d like to invite him for our Pecha Kucha Night Amsterdam as well. For now good luck and we hope to see you soon!