Saturday 3 May 2014

The world of Couchsurfing


Once upon a time the idea of letting a complete stranger into your home was uncanny. Let alone letting a complete stranger into your home, sleep on your couch, have a beer with you and sit down at the dinner table with you exchanging stories of foreign places and teaching each other different languages.

Couchsurfing began in 1999 when a traveler named Casey Fenton was traveling to Iceland and needed a place to stay. He emailed 1,500 students in Reykjavik asking for a place to crash--even on someone's couch. The result of this was a network of friends who offered to show Casey what it was like to ‘live like the locals’ and immerse him in the Reykjavik culture. Couchsurfing has now grown into a worldwide network of over five million like-minded adventurous travelers and continues to grow.

The Couchsurfing website, as with any other social networks, allows members to create events and meet-ups and connect with people from around the world. It allows surfers and hosts to create profiles, friend others, join groups and list references in order to leave an online trail of integrity. Every month the hosts and surfers create a local social event to meet and greet the people that could potentially be hosting their homes to these adventurous, worldly strangers. I was lucky enough to recently attend one of these events in my hometown of Sydney.  

I walked up the stairs of one of Sydney’s famous local pubs and headed to the rooftop terrace. I bypassed a sign ‘Reserved for Couch Surfers’ thinking “Now there’s something you don’t see every day”. As I got closer to the roof I could hear the profusion of voices and the affluence of different accents from all over the world. In my first 5 minutes I meet a Graphic Designer from California, a builder from Edinburgh and an Accountant from Columbia.

We share tales of life abroad, strange and exotic destinations, dreams and aspirations and the challenges and perks of becoming an expat. In one night my imagination is captivated by wanderlust, my network of friends expands from national to international and we are already busy planning the next gathering which entails visiting parts of my own city that I cease to acknowledge due to the fact they have become too familiar to me.

The idea of Couchsurfing is not only to help people find a place to stay but rather to create a community of friends and networks which can come in handy for when you are visiting a foreign country. Those who have traveled know the uncertainty of visiting a new and foreign place, especially when you’re going alone. It certainly has its challenges and it is communities like these that allow us to use the resources available to us to connect with one another.  The Internet is a tool for social change and connection and I think that the Couchsurfing community is a prime example of this.

Whether you are looking to get outside the walls of commonality and travel abroad, learn another language, immerse yourself in new culture or just looking to expend your network of friends then take advantage of some of the many tools available in order to do so.




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