Information About this Share a Caravan Ride Travel Europe Site

This site is intended as a means for travelers to hook up with those willing to share a ride, bed or couch in their caravan, while offering caravanners the means to save on gas costs and meet fellow travelers. It can also be used as a regular share a ride site, but preferably for travelers. Based on demand I may eventually add more cities to each country (I just didn't want the dropdown list to be too long, and it will require restructuring the form), and I can expand this database to other continents if there is interest. I will try to expand to North America in the near future.
The reason why I set up this site was because several years ago I moved myself and my translation business into a caravan truck so that I could freely travel around Europe and the world. I left a comfy existence in Prague but one of the things I lacked was all the friends I left behind. It was difficult hooking up with fellow travelers so I thought this site could help me with this purpose.
historic coastline

If you own your own caravan you might be interested in my caravan survival tips, how to hook up electricity in a caravan, or internet connection while traveling. I'm pretty tech savvy and can get pretty creative with my survival, so hopefully you'll find something interesting and useful there. Through the flash presentation at the top you can link to my cheap travel Europe tour guide page if you'd like to hook up with me during my crazy travels, which you can read about on my travel stories.
This is a much more interesting way to travel than by some standard bus tour. Those can be expensive and they'll always stop to feed you at some expensive greasy place where they probably get extra commission for bringing you there. My favourite is a more random approach, because this is how you can find the real jewels off the beaten track. And you can always jump on the beaten track anytime you like, but I prefer to stay mostly off those and discover the real authentic Europe, in villages where people are genuine and nicer. Nature is also lovely everywhere and tends to be nicer away from the beaten paths. It is truly nice to bob in the bouncing truck, cool music playing, perusing a gorgeous coast or watching the nature roll by. The large front window is like a wide-screen TV! Or park on a beach, go for a jog/swim, watch the sun go down and cook a fantastic meal right by the sea. The flexibility of this way of traveling makes it a much richer travel experience.
Imagine finding a secluded lake somewhere, setting up the volleyball net, outdoor grill, write a note to back home while powered into the solar panels, or surf the internet to find some interesting places to visit. An autonomous, self contained unit in paradise. No bus tour will offer you anything like this.

Soon I hope to set up a forum where travelers can post ads they are looking for a ride or seek out travel information in general. And where caravaners can do the same.
Below I have compiled some links which I thought might be useful. If you have any suggestions feel free to contact me!

Links to Other Share a Ride Travel Sites in Europe

Links to Caravan Sites in Europe

Some Keywords Relating to Share a Caravan Ride Travel Europe

Well, for you to enjoy this great website you'd have to find it, which requires getting it to the top of the search engines in the appropriate keywords, for which I needed to apply my robust search engine optimization skills and the following text shouldn't really be interesting for you to read but just a bunch of blabber with the right wording. So you can totally ignore this text below!

Traveling by caravan and sharing my ride in Europe has been great. My pilot travel trip was from Vancouver to the southern tip of Baja, and the natural scenery along the way was absolutely fantastic. I made a great caravan travel flick but there are some copyright issues so I couldn't submit it to any European film festivals - although several people said I should. I wanted to do a better movie about traveling by caravan and share a ride for Europe while paying attention to possible copyright issues (background music etc., dancers who didn't want their choreography publicized), but the nature just wasn't stunning enough to duplicated the caravan travel trip I filmed in North America. Sure, the nature in Europe is still beautiful, with all its quaint villages, great pubs and genuine peaceful locals, but the nature driving bit just wasn't doing it. Which is when, after almost three years of traveling by caravan and ride sharing, it finally dawned on me that I could film the people and culture instead. That is the richness that Europe has to offer and makes it a pleasure to travel by caravan through it, while occasionally picking up hitch hikers along the way. Grandmas in some village somewhere stuffing animal intestines with various ground animal parts, spices, garlic and secret ingredients to create sausages by the side of the road. But if you think that's gross, try not to think of the plastic and saw dust fake hotdogs you're given at your baseball stadium. Real sausages have been made this way for hundreds or thousands of years and it is real cool to witness the peculiarities each village's has quirked and settled into over the ages. From their type of attire to the way of saying something or dealing with things. Europe is a sort of hub of civilization which has impacted much of the world. Sure, we all come from Africans, as is explained on this Jobs in Africa page, and Chinese civilization has been developed so much earlier than any mosquitoes in Milwaukee (drawn from one of my translations about beer when Czech Budvar was ridiculing American Budweiser for claiming any intelligent property right), and one could say that the real hub of civilization started from where Abraham was told to flee (which was eventually plundered by surrounding states - explanation in my article about time). It's all true, but Europeans got on the exploitation vengeance more than any others (read or watch "Guns, Germs and Steel"), and our "culture", be it in the form of Coca-Cola or the very language of English, has largely been influenced by Europe because that's where the Euro white trash first started traveling from. It is like a fist hammering down onto the earth, starting in Greece, then Rome and spreading and traveling outwards, sending a wave which spreads out and reaches every corner of the planet. If it wasn't for Euro white trash invading every last island on the planet, the Chinese and Japanese might still be existing in their regimented routines of slow technological advancement.

Do we thank the Europeans for giving birth to a nation that gave us Coca-Cola and McDonald's? That's beside the point. What I find interesting is to see how each village displays its tradition and history in the very way that it breaths. Perhaps the soil was exceptionally fertile that it could feed so many people and spark a technological race in a sustainable way, contrary to the ancient Egyptians, who may have exploited their soil and perhaps for this reason fell as a great civilization. Perhaps the European population exploded because of the good soil and temperate climate, the growing population leading to perpetual tribal wars and a competition for ever better technologies and systems of government. Once the land was running out they built ships and started traveling elsewhere, which is the wave emanating out from the original fist.
But what is interesting is, as these people were squeezing against each other in ever increasing numbers, their local tribal traditions would compete as well. Only recently has Europe managed to join as one without wars, but each locale proudly holds onto its roots and history. And hence you have a giant playground where the various people shun the reverberating echo of its original fist punch in the form of another cultural influence. Sure, Europeans embrace McDonald's and the new globalization era like any other culture is forced to, out of the need for survival. Africa and the rest of the world has its own particular tribal peculiarities. But there is something deliciously decadent with the European flowering of local traditions. And what's more its safe and stable. I'd love to travel by caravan out of Europe to Africa and the rest of the world, sharing my ride and picking up hitch hikers all along the way, but I think my truck is just too tasty for many poor regions. Not to mention undeveloped internet and the hassle of crossing borders with a vehicle, caravan or not. So I'll stay and travel only in Europe for a while. Certainly plenty to see. And hope that within five or ten years things will stabilize so that I can start venturing with my caravan elsewhere.

This same site but share a caravan ride in North America.