Traveling itself is a nice and educating hobby to pursue, but tends to be a pricey one, especially when it comes to accommodation.
Furthermore, one often ends up in a city that is still unfamiliar, despite every attempt to read The Lonely Planet or any other guide before leaving.
As an avid traveler myself, I love meeting new people and don’t mind sleeping on couches.
While talking to an American friend with the same passion, he once recommended couchsurfing.com, a hospitality community spread all over the world.
Founded in 2004, the community has gained momentum and grown to over 1.3 million members in 231 countries.
I myself had already met people from the community and spent the day with them, but never had the time to travel and stay with another couch surfer.
Throughout the last winter break, I decided to go to Paris over New Years Eve and found two kind hosts.
I spent the first night at Jose’s place, originally from Mexico, but now fulfilling his dream of living in Paris.
He not only provided me with a comfortable mattress and a sleeping bag, but decided to have a Crêpes party the exact same night. After preparing the dough and some fruit punch, people from all over Paris showed up. The evening turned out to be a meeting of people from all over the world.
I had the pleasure of talking with people from Lithuania, Tunisia, Pakistan, Poland, Venezuela, as well as voyagers from the United States.
It turned out to be an interesting evening, and I was delighted to hear that there is a vibrant community of people living in Paris who also gather through couchsurfing.com to meet up for events like parties or to set up a language night, where one has the opportunity to learn and practice their linguistic skills.
Having already met quite a few people, I decided to attend another couch surfing meeting the following night.
While figuring out the way on the map, a guy next to me laughed at me and asked me how I have been.
After turning my head, I recognized the person as the Venezuelan that I talked with for two hours the night before. We decided to join each other in seeking out the venue.
Ken, my second host was another interesting encounter.
He was an experienced and well traveled person himself and had already written a book about how he traveled throughout the world by couch surfing. Since he had published it in Chinese, I did not pick up much of the content, but the pictures he used looked good.
I still miss his calming Japanese tea, as well as our conversations about different cultures.
I will certainly not miss standing in line for the Louvre and waiting half a day to get in, while “enjoying” European winter.
The community itself is a wonderful opportunity to get in touch and network with people from all over the world, yet it should be seen as a hospitality community, not a free ride through the world.
While it is always nice to bring a little gift for the host, one should not expect to have a 24/7 on-site assistant, since the hosts often have to work or run errands while their guests are on vacation.
Having met people from multiple backgrounds, I did not regret a single acquaintance.
After all, it taught me an important lesson about human beings: essentialy, we are all the same.
