My real name is Rafał Paluszkiewicz, but since I was a kid everyone calls me Paluch and I prefer to be called like that wherever I am. I was born and grew up in Złocieniec, a small town in northwestern Poland. I studied Geography at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and that's the time when the idea of hitchhiking the world first came to my mind. After graduating I moved to Galway in Ireland, which I knew before as I was working there every summer during my university years. I decided to live abroad because my dream of hitching the globe started to change into a plan. I spent nearly four fantastic years in Galway mostly bartending and driving a rickshaw, having loads of fun and saving money.
My first hitchhiking was with my parents when I was seven or eight. As a teenager I was thumbing to the lakeside on hot summer days or running away from school and going to towns nearby driven by curiosity. At twenty-one I hitched for the first time abroad and I was on the road for three months, visiting eight European countries. I still remember the excitement I felt that time. Different cultures, different languages. My brain was like a sponge for knowledge about the world. After that I was hitching every time I had a break from my university or work. Before the round the world trip I'd made more than 100,000 km by thumb in most of Europe and Turkey. And it was just the beginning!
