Couch Surfing
By TERRY WARD
I like to think that as I age, my travel tastes are becoming more refined.
When I recently turned 30, I decided to ditch my ‘sleep sheet’ and stop schlepping it at fleabag hostels (note: refined is a relative term when you’re a dedicated budget traveler).
So in late 2006, when I found myself in a Moroccan cyber cafe scouring a website called www.couchsurfing.com for the chance to stay for free on a random person’s pullout in Ireland, it felt like an evolutionary step backwards of sorts.
Still, I couldn’t resist.
More than half of the travelers I met in Morocco had couch surfing on the tips of their tongues.
The concept is this: you create a profile, pick your destination city, then search the couch surfing website for fellow travelers offering free accommodation in their homes.
Next, you contact a host and hope that you’ll be welcomed in for a night or more.
In Chefchaouen, a Sicilian named Salvador, 24, told me how he had hosted the entire Quebecois Ultimate Frisbee team in his tiny Catania apartment.
And in Fes, I met Chris Vourlias, 28, a freelance writer from Brooklyn, who was couch surfing with a Fulbright scholar in her cushy apartment in the Ville Nouvelle.
While I was shelling out $60 for a soulless hotel room and a lonely continental breakfast, Vourlias was mingling with Western transplants and their Moroccan boyfriends during nightly hubbly bubbly sessions with his hostess.
The more I heard about couch surfing, the more I felt like I was missing out. So I surfed the website for a crash course in the concept.
“Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time,” urges the homepage mantra.
Skeptic that I am, I found myself wondering how too-short sofas and petrified Cheetos lost in the Lazy Boy folds were doing their part to change the world.
But 154,818 worldwide Couch Surfers (and growing – more than 400 surfers sign up each day, according to the site) must be on to something, so I surfed on.
When I recently turned 30, I decided to ditch my ‘sleep sheet’ and stop schlepping it at fleabag hostels (note: refined is a relative term when you’re a dedicated budget traveler).
So in late 2006, when I found myself in a Moroccan cyber cafe scouring a website called www.couchsurfing.com for the chance to stay for free on a random person’s pullout in Ireland, it felt like an evolutionary step backwards of sorts.
Still, I couldn’t resist.
More than half of the travelers I met in Morocco had couch surfing on the tips of their tongues.
The concept is this: you create a profile, pick your destination city, then search the couch surfing website for fellow travelers offering free accommodation in their homes.
Next, you contact a host and hope that you’ll be welcomed in for a night or more.
In Chefchaouen, a Sicilian named Salvador, 24, told me how he had hosted the entire Quebecois Ultimate Frisbee team in his tiny Catania apartment.
And in Fes, I met Chris Vourlias, 28, a freelance writer from Brooklyn, who was couch surfing with a Fulbright scholar in her cushy apartment in the Ville Nouvelle.
While I was shelling out $60 for a soulless hotel room and a lonely continental breakfast, Vourlias was mingling with Western transplants and their Moroccan boyfriends during nightly hubbly bubbly sessions with his hostess.
The more I heard about couch surfing, the more I felt like I was missing out. So I surfed the website for a crash course in the concept.
“Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time,” urges the homepage mantra.
Skeptic that I am, I found myself wondering how too-short sofas and petrified Cheetos lost in the Lazy Boy folds were doing their part to change the world.
But 154,818 worldwide Couch Surfers (and growing – more than 400 surfers sign up each day, according to the site) must be on to something, so I surfed on.
Europe boasts the most Couch Surfing members, with North America a close second, but divans are on offer in countries as diverse as Jamaica, Singapore and Ghana. One Florida member, ‘Captn Bob,’ even offers travelers a private aft cabin on his sailboat for the night.
For many of the travelers involved with the site, Couch Surfing is about more than the opportunity to snag a free crash pad.
Gabriela Lecour, 33, of Porto, Portugal, signed up in January 2006.
“I think I was kind of missing having contact with foreigners after living in New Zealand for a year and coming back to Porto,” she said during a phone interview.
Lecour admitted that, in the beginning, she was not without her doubts.
“I probably had the same fears that everyone has,” she said, “Which is I live by myself and I never did anything like this before, and you just never know who’s going to come through your door.”
Over the course of 2006, however, who ended up coming through Lecour’s door were more than 30 backpackers from Brazil, Taiwan, Italy and beyond – all positive hosting experiences – and one new best friend that she said she likely would never have met without couch surfing.
Canadian traveler Raegan Boler, 31, found Lecour on couch surfing.com and e-mailed her to request a stay.
The two became fast friends, and what both women had planned on being a short stay stretched into several weeks and a lasting friendship.
Boler, too, said she was initially dubious about couch surfing.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m not staying in a stranger’s house. That’s ridiculous!’” she said.
But after several months traveling in Europe, Boler said, loneliness had set in.
“I was so tired of hostel life,” she said, “I was constantly on my own, that’s the thing I remember most.”
“Obviously the things I was seeing were beautiful,” she said “but it just got pretty lonely.”
So Boler took a friend’s advice and checked out couch surfing.
When looking for hosts, she said, she follows a few general rules.
“Because I am a single, female traveler, I look for people who have experience surfing, people who have a lot of references,” she said (members’ profiles include references both from people they’ve hosted and stayed with).
For her first experience surfing, Boler contacted Benoit, a French-Canadian living in Scotland.
“I’m like, ‘He’s Canadian, we have that in common,’” she said, “He speaks French, so I can practice my languages.”
But as Boler was walking through the streets of Edinburgh with her backpack, looking for Benoit’s friend’s apartment, where they had agreed to meet, the doubts crept in.
“But when I opened the door it ended up being this big dinner party he was having with his friends,” she said, “There were French Canadians, Brazilians, three Colombians …”
“All of a sudden, in a city where I knew no one, I knew 15 people,” she said, “And from that moment on I have couch surfed whenever possible.
A few weeks ago, Boler and Lecour met up in Barcelona to ring in the New Year.
As for the writer of this blog’s first – and only – couch surfing experience, in Ireland, I relied on both references and a gut instinct when choosing my hosts during my December 2006 stay.
At the top of the list when I searched under the city of Limerick was a member with the user name ‘Limerick Male Couple.’
I learned that Mike and Carlo were an American/Italian couple who had been together for six years and were living in the city center. They were offering not a couch, but an entire spare bedroom.
Mike’s personal description read, “I like to experience new people, cities, cultures. Pacifist and tolerant, accepting and hospitable.”
Check, I thought.
And their references checked out, too.
A Malaysian man who had couch surfed with Mike and Carlo in Sept. 2006 had written that their place was like a bed and breakfast.
When I arrived at their door on a drizzly Limerick afternoon, a load of Moroccan spices perfuming the air around my backpack, Mike welcomed me in, ushered me to my cozy room, and brewed up a cup of orange pekoe tea.
He explained that, for him, the idea of couch surfing was something karmic.
“When you’re traveling, you want a place to feel safe and comfortable and to get clean,” he said, “That’s what we offer.”
Mike said he genuinely enjoyed hosting foreigners, and hoped to reap similar hospitality in the future when he and Carlo went traveling.
I told him I planned to pay it forward one day, too.
After all, if that’s how the couch surfing cycle goes, a traveler has everything to going with the flow.
For many of the travelers involved with the site, Couch Surfing is about more than the opportunity to snag a free crash pad.
Gabriela Lecour, 33, of Porto, Portugal, signed up in January 2006.
“I think I was kind of missing having contact with foreigners after living in New Zealand for a year and coming back to Porto,” she said during a phone interview.
Lecour admitted that, in the beginning, she was not without her doubts.
“I probably had the same fears that everyone has,” she said, “Which is I live by myself and I never did anything like this before, and you just never know who’s going to come through your door.”
Over the course of 2006, however, who ended up coming through Lecour’s door were more than 30 backpackers from Brazil, Taiwan, Italy and beyond – all positive hosting experiences – and one new best friend that she said she likely would never have met without couch surfing.
Canadian traveler Raegan Boler, 31, found Lecour on couch surfing.com and e-mailed her to request a stay.
The two became fast friends, and what both women had planned on being a short stay stretched into several weeks and a lasting friendship.
Boler, too, said she was initially dubious about couch surfing.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m not staying in a stranger’s house. That’s ridiculous!’” she said.
But after several months traveling in Europe, Boler said, loneliness had set in.
“I was so tired of hostel life,” she said, “I was constantly on my own, that’s the thing I remember most.”
“Obviously the things I was seeing were beautiful,” she said “but it just got pretty lonely.”
So Boler took a friend’s advice and checked out couch surfing.
When looking for hosts, she said, she follows a few general rules.
“Because I am a single, female traveler, I look for people who have experience surfing, people who have a lot of references,” she said (members’ profiles include references both from people they’ve hosted and stayed with).
For her first experience surfing, Boler contacted Benoit, a French-Canadian living in Scotland.
“I’m like, ‘He’s Canadian, we have that in common,’” she said, “He speaks French, so I can practice my languages.”
But as Boler was walking through the streets of Edinburgh with her backpack, looking for Benoit’s friend’s apartment, where they had agreed to meet, the doubts crept in.
“But when I opened the door it ended up being this big dinner party he was having with his friends,” she said, “There were French Canadians, Brazilians, three Colombians …”
“All of a sudden, in a city where I knew no one, I knew 15 people,” she said, “And from that moment on I have couch surfed whenever possible.
A few weeks ago, Boler and Lecour met up in Barcelona to ring in the New Year.
As for the writer of this blog’s first – and only – couch surfing experience, in Ireland, I relied on both references and a gut instinct when choosing my hosts during my December 2006 stay.
At the top of the list when I searched under the city of Limerick was a member with the user name ‘Limerick Male Couple.’
I learned that Mike and Carlo were an American/Italian couple who had been together for six years and were living in the city center. They were offering not a couch, but an entire spare bedroom.
Mike’s personal description read, “I like to experience new people, cities, cultures. Pacifist and tolerant, accepting and hospitable.”
Check, I thought.
And their references checked out, too.
A Malaysian man who had couch surfed with Mike and Carlo in Sept. 2006 had written that their place was like a bed and breakfast.
When I arrived at their door on a drizzly Limerick afternoon, a load of Moroccan spices perfuming the air around my backpack, Mike welcomed me in, ushered me to my cozy room, and brewed up a cup of orange pekoe tea.
He explained that, for him, the idea of couch surfing was something karmic.
“When you’re traveling, you want a place to feel safe and comfortable and to get clean,” he said, “That’s what we offer.”
Mike said he genuinely enjoyed hosting foreigners, and hoped to reap similar hospitality in the future when he and Carlo went traveling.
I told him I planned to pay it forward one day, too.
After all, if that’s how the couch surfing cycle goes, a traveler has everything to going with the flow.
