Word: autostop
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...benefactor in case of accident, and gets maps and a small national flag. Drivers who help a hiker get a coupon toward membership in the honorary "Brotherhood of the Highway." In Italy, more cars and better roads have raised the country's ranking on the autostop circuit, though the hot-blooded national temperament sometimes makes hitchhiking a perilous means of transportation. Italian men are markedly hospitable to foreign girls ("Because you never know how it might wonderfully end," says one driver...
...called hitchhiking, and although many a student with a sign (GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST ALBUQUERQUE PLEASE) can still be seen, express ways and police are driving the custom out of style. But in Europe, the autostop, as hitchhiking is known in internationalese, is a thriving student institution. In universities across the Continent, and on many U.S. campuses too, college kids are about to dust off knapsacks and take to the open Autobahnen, routes nationales, carreteras and autostrade...
West Germany is a favorite for practitioners of the autostop. At border crossings, West German police have been known to halt a car and order the driver to take aboard a wholesome-looking stoppeur. Neatness counts, since it denotes respectability; so does a pair of knobby knees (male), because Germans like outdoorsiness. The thumb is a U.S. import; native custom dictates an erect forearm and a vigorous loose-wristed wag of the hand. One student last summer became king of the Autobahnen by carrying a sign that said: I KNOW A THOUSAND JOKES...
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