Changes

'''Maps''' are essential to hitchhiking. Make sure you always have a good map with you, the scale should at least be 1:700.000.

You want to know were you are going. It also helps if petrol stations are marked, and you don't need city maps. Try and find a map that you don't have to open out to one large sheet of paper every time you want to use it; you will be using it often. Book-style maps are best.

=== Local Maps ===

Remember that petrol stations often have maps for sale, including very local ones. If you need to find out the geography of the local area, simply walk into the shop, pick up a local map, study it, get the information you need, then put it back and walk out. Many service stations also have large maps on walls or notice boards. Other local maps can often be found on public transportation stations and on the backside of free-standing advertisements in bigger cities. You can just take a picture of them with a digital camera or smartphone if you need to look something up later; check if the picture is sharp enough.

The following section contains maps for whole continents, series of country maps for a continent and maps that only exist for particular countries.

* [http://www.mapsworldwide.com/sku_33423.htm Collins Road Atlas: Europe 200] (1 : 1 000 000) is nice and has most petrol stations, even though it is a bit large (A3).

* The ''Berlitz Europe'' atlas includes petrol stations and has a ratio of 1:800 000, though many important cities are in the crease of the book and are difficult to read (e.g., Paris, Berlin, etc.).

* For Western, Northern and Southern Europe: ''one specific edition'' of the Marco Polo car map of [[Europe]] is great, it doesn't contain too much useless stuff like indices or city maps, and shows petrol stations on highways! Unfortunately [[User:guaka|guaka]]<small>^{[http://guaka.org site], [[User talk:guaka|wikitalk]]}</small> only found this one in [[Slovakia]]. This map could also be found in [[Germany]], [[Czech Republic]] and [[Poland]] - [[User:Tmoon|Tom]] has a copy of both Czech and Polish editions (both editions exactly the same but with different front cover), and he bought these in 2006. They are still the best hitchhiking maps he's seen - hopefully the more modern editions are still as good. The cost was around 10 euro.

* ''Philip's compact atlas Europe'' shows service stations in some countries, is pretty compact and was available for 7 euro at the New English Book Store in [[Amsterdam]], in June 2008.

|- valign = "top"

| ARAL || Straßen-Atlas Deutschland & Europa 2012 || 1:400 000 || book || 8.95 Euro || yes || {{Nowrap|978-3897643437}} || Also contains maps for Austria, Switzerland 1:500 000, Belgium, Luxemburg and Netherlands 1:400 000. City maps 1:100 000, Europe map 1:4 000 000

|- valign = "top

| Michelin || {{nowrap|Regional Deutschland}} || 1:300 000 || folding || 7.50 Euro || yes || - || Various regional maps. Six orange maps with numbers 541 - 546, price is for one.

|- valign="top"

| Tank&Rast || Rasthof restaurants booklet || - || folding || {{nowrap|0.00 Euro}} || no || - || Map of most of the country's Rasthof and the information about every one of them. Does only contain the ones belonging to the Tank&Rast corporation.

|}

[http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Taiwan_Power_Company_grid Taiwan Power Company grid]. Paper end e-maps incorporating it are available, or one can add it to an existing map.

There are a few ways to use [http://hitchwiki.org/en/Hitchwiki:While_offline Hitchwiki maps and spots offline].