Changes

[[Image:Hitchhiking across the creek.jpg|thumb|250px|There are many creeks in the Netherlands and they can make it hard to get to gas petrol stations on the highway]]

Other good places are petrol stations along the motorways and the entrances to the motorway from larger cities (when there is a stopping space such as an emergency lane). On such a place the average waiting time is 5–45 minutes (same as Germany). A major difference with [[Germany]] is that many lifts are not longer than 50 km.At gas petrol stations you can try to talk to people, which will probably work out fine if you don't dress up like a hippie. Try to speak in Dutch or English. French and German often work too, but not as effectively.

In the Netherlands, license plates do not contain any marking about where the car comes from, but it does indicate the age of the car (although not in a straightforward way). Often though, the name and the city of the garage where the car was bought is indicated just under the license plate on the backside of the car. On busy petrol stations this may be useful information to look out for, as it may indicate where people are driving to. A normal license plate has three blocks of black letters or numbers on a yellow background. Every block consists of two letters or two numbers (so in total six letters and numbers). Since 2007 a new series of license plates is in use for the newest verhicles existing of a combination of three letters in the middle. Taxis' license plates have a blue background. The license plate of old timers is very dark blue with white letters. the The number of cars with such license plate or yet another kind is very limited.