Couchsurfing: Surf’s up, Dude!

During my travels, as I’ve mentioned before, the best, most important part has been meeting new people—locals and other travelers and learning a lot about the world from others’ perspectives and this ‘community’ of nomads we are all a part of. I’ve recently discovered a great hospitality website called couchsurfing.com. Actually I probably read about it a year ago, but had been hesitant to really do it and now I wish I had sooner. It is basically a community of like-minded travelers and other folks interested in meeting and exchanging ideas with people from all over the world.

Basically you can sign up (for free) as a traveler like I did, or as a host–someone with a couch (or bed) that someone visiting your hometown can crash on. Each person has a profile and is reviewed by other users so you know you will be meeting someone you can trust and that has some things in common. Membership is free and is obtained simply by registering on the website. As a surfer (guest), you can search for and request accommodation at your destination. Accommodation is entirely consensual between the host and surfer, and the duration, nature, and terms of the surfer’s stay are generally worked out in advance to the convenience of both parties.

It is SO global–there are ‘surfers’ in nearly every country around the world—you can find a couch to stay on in places like Iran or Antarctica or Fiji or Pittsburgh. Every time I go on the website, I find myself getting sucked in to wanting to go to other places I haven’t been yet—and this makes it SO easy and SO affordable. And not only can you search for hosts in a certain city, you can also see other travelers near you and meet them if you want. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will start to hear a lot more about it now, I promise. There are already a few documentaries in the works on couch surfing and some are surfing around the world and writing about it. I had to include this link from a guy surfing the world who stopped in Chicago and loved it—of course he would! Too bad I didn’t think of that first. You can read the NY Times Article here.

Hospitality networks — communities set up to enable travelers to share the home of a foreign host — are nothing new. Launched in 1949, the United Nations-recognized Servas had the lofty aim of realizing Gandhi’s maxim: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” But Servas requires a lengthy registration process, membership fee and minimum four-week notice period of a home stay. I looked into it (after a big recommendation from my new Aussie Pals Mark and Jan), but this was something I was just not able to really do since I was already on the road.

Later, networks like the Hospitality Club, which now has 250,000 members in 207 countries, found a happy home on the web. This site and others were largely used by backpackers and gap-year travelers, who were attracted by the dual benefits of saving precious cash and “living like the locals”.

But it was in 2004, with the launch of The CouchSurfing Project, that a new verb was coined and a real mainstream travel trend born. Couchsurfing.com was the brainchild of Casey Fenton, an American web consultant who, after buying a bargain flight to Iceland, realized that he had no interest in spending his hard-earned greenbacks on “rotting in a hotel all weekend playing Mr. Tourist.” A child of the internet age, Fenton came up with the idea of using the random networking potential of the web to spam a couple of thousand Reykjavik students, asking whether they’d put him up on their sofas and show him around their home city. The same year, he launched the CouchSurfing Project. The website broadened its focus to online chat and a shared passion for travel, and with several thousand recruits joining the project’s 350,000 registered users each week, Couchsurfing.com is now an undisputed phenomenon.

Some more fun statistics right off their website (keep in mind this article was written in 2007 – these stats have increased enormously):

• CouchSurfers…..352,942
• Successful Surf or Host Experiences…..262,528
• Friendships Created…..317,932
• Positive Experiences…..474,689
• Countries Represented…..223
• Cities Represented…..32,972

I actually just started using it in Spain and it’s really quite amazing. In Valencia, I met Clara, originally from Argentina, for dinner. (You can also just meet someone local for a drink or dinner—it’s not always necessarily to stay at their house or apartment). Then when I got to Madrid, another couchsurfer, Alex, invited me to join him at a Spanish cooking class he organized for foreign students who are studying in Spain. The class was naturally in Spanish and we learned how to make tortilla Espanola (Spanish omelet), a type of paella, and some dessert.

After showing me around Madrid a bit—from the beautiful squares to the very green Retiro Park (where at least 3 dealers offered us marijuana as we strolled through the park), Alex took me on sort of a tapas crawl where we ate and drank at a bunch of his favorite bars around the city.

He even got me to try orejas (pig ears) which I have to say were crunchy, ‘bacon-y,’ and besides being super greasy, quite tasty. We ended up drinking free beers at nightclubs that were trying to lure people in to fill up their dance floor. It was so fun to be with a local who already felt like a friend. Alex is a sweet guy who has already hosted dozens of folks at his home. He even keeps a guest book to prove it! He runs quite the little hotel right in his own apartment.

I ended up crashing at Alex’s place a week later and it honestly felt like I was staying at a friend’s house… not a stranger. I had my own room—so technically I wasn’t even ‘couch’ surfing—I had my very own bed. It seems that if you are part of couch surfing—you are happy to host people and make them feel at home… and this is exactly what Alex did.

Next I met Nathalie, a cute French gal who’s been living in Madrid with her husband. She invited me to a ‘couch surfing’ picnic at Retiro Park where I met even more CSers. It’s a never ending chain of new friends (and on the site there is even a “six degrees” chain showing you how each person knows someone else you ‘surfed’ with) and something I can’t get enough of now that I’ve gotten into it.

I’ve also just met, Piotr, a Swede living on the Mediterranean in southern Spain. I hung out with him and his friends for three days in Nerja. He, like me, gave up everything and moved here to simply ‘hang out’ and enjoy life for awhile. Sweet.

On my whole trip—I’m constantly meeting new people and have mentioned before how I rarely feel alone, but of course there are places I’ve been to where I just didn’t really get to know anyone. Well, now, thanks to Couch Surfing… there is really no city I can go to and not have instant ‘friends.’ It’s really an amazing thing and for solo travelers like me… it really truly means that I will never have to be alone if I don’t want to be. It’s always the goal of a good traveler to meet the locals and really see what ‘real life’ is like for them. There is no better way to do this than by staying in their homes. And this is something that was sometimes hard to achieve—not anymore. Now, locals (from Namibia to Venezuela and the Ukraine to Uzbekistan) are just a click away—waiting to meet you. I think their motto says it all: “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time.”

Here are some great testimonials from the site:

“I have met and stayed with some incredible people through CouchSurfing.com These are warm, friendly local people who a regular tourist would never meet, and their travel experience would be far richer if they had. Besides the obvious benefit of not having to pay for accommodation, CouchSurfing allows travellers to experience a country and its culture from within, instead of just as an observer. Inevitably, a CouchSurfing host will introduce you to his or her friends, and take you to the places that they enjoy. Basically, you can become part of their life for the time you’re visiting. I promise your life will be richer through your membership to CouchSurfing.”

“CouchSurfing has changed my life even though I have only known it for 4 months! The connections I have made, with some of the greatest people I have ever been able to encounter, along with the sense of being connected to the entire world just excites me. I feel like I am making a difference in the world supporting this site/community and informing others like me about the greatness that is occurring! I cannot wait to meet more of you beautiful people. Cause we don’t know each other, but we love each other.”

“… when you sign up you make thousands of friends you never knew you had and all there is left to do is go meet them.”