It’s cool to sleep on a stranger’s couch

(7 myths about Couchsurfing and other hospitality social networks).

“Never talk to strangers,” my mom used to tell me back in the 80s, not knowing that one day, 25 years later, her daughter would find cool to sleep on a stranger’s couch in a foreign country.

Formerly, such an audacious idea (if not stupid) could be considered only as a result of a night in which everything that could go wrong, actually, went wrong. What the fuck would I have in my mind to do something like that, a quarter of a century later? One word: Couchsurfing.

I understand, no couchsurfers neophytes creatures: it sounds as if, instead of writing On the rocking horse, I would be eager to be a detective novel’s character, willingly to play the victim’s role, happy to write the book’s chapters with my own blood.

The truth about CS

In fact, the first time I heard about Couchsurfing, back in 2009, I found wonderful (but absurd) the fact that a couple of Detroit, Michigan, USA, accepted to receive 14 strangers for free in a one bedroom apartment (yes, right, you read this correctly) and that, on top of it, they threw a party with all their friends to celebrate our arrival. But in the world of hospitality social networks that (and much more) is possible, as it would be in an ideal world where Cain never had killed Abel and we all wouldn’t tried to play Monopoly at all times.

After my first Couchsurfing experience, I forecast, wrongly, that all the hostels would go bankrupt. Hospitality networks, for me, represent more than a couple of square meters to sleep: they mean a road crossing where I can find friends who I did not know in countries of which I knew nothing about. Beyond saving money (which does matter), hospitality networks are a way to get out of the traditional book like Lonely Planet (where there are not even characters) to get into the novels of real people, with all their cultures, and write so much interesting chapters than the ones you could scribble from the heights of a tourist Hop-on, Hop –off bus. Thanks to hospitality networks, I ended up making such random things as going to an underground Latin bar in the middle of Belgrade, enter the Hunderwasserhaus at night (an apartment building in Vienna, which is one of the city’s attractions, although its interior is closed to the public), or spend three weeks in an idyllic vineyard in California, toasting with exquisite wine every night.

Hospitality networks are websites that work as some kind of Facebook, where you upload your photos, basic information (age, profession, city) and likes, among other vital information, such as having seen someone flick a cigarette onto the floor and having seen it landed standing up as if someone had placed it there very carefully after it bounced. The idea is as simple as usually bright ideas are: in order to promote cultural exchange, the couchsurfers can stay at other member’s homes, go visit the city with one of them, or attend any of the parties or meetings in the area WITH NO MONEY INVOLVED. Like ancient Greece’s style, when the gods used to choose their favorites ones and hospitality used to be a virtue.

So, when you go to a city, you can simply write your destination in the website’s search engine and then start sending requests (what I call “do my homework”), using available filters like age, sex and number of nights, among others. Personally, I usually send five requests to have several backups and to not burden my host with my presence (in Spanish we say something like “the dead and the unwanted guest stink after the third day”... but well, there have been cases when if I've got along with the host, I have stayed up to 3 weeks and without stink).

Couchsurfing is the most famous of all the sites, with an online community of more than six million users and present in virtually every country in the world. However, recent controversy (about the site’s purchase by a company) has upset many members and ever since, BeWelcome has doubled its users, who call themselves Couchsurfing’s “refugees”.

Controversial or not, the point is that I'm still using mostly Couchsurfing and, given that I'm revealing all my secrets of how to travel on a budget, in order to motivate many people to do it too (as we see, in this case, this is a secret shared by more than six million people), I decided to give a small lecture on demystifying this website and hospitality networks in general. Anyway, the point is that hospitality networks are one of the most brilliant backpacker’s ideas in history (it should win the Nobel Peace Prize) and it is worth to be spread in a world where people believe that only with the money it’s possible to move forward, when it also could be done with a little bit of good karma.

So, without further preface, let's demystify some stuff, so you can see how cool it is to sleep on a stranger’s couch, regardless of what our mothers used to tell us.

1.It’s free accommodation.

Noooooooo! It’s not! And I put it as the first myth in honor of us, thousands of hosts, who have received a copy-paste request by people who are not even capable of check that we are not in our country, even though it’s clear in our profiles.

Yes, hospitality networks don’t involve money, but they are not websites to take advantage of people as if they were a free hotel. The idea is to have a friend wherever you go. One of the secrets why I almost always find couch is because I take my time to read the whole profiles of people who I would like to be hosted by, because I understand that I will make a friend, not that I will stay at one place for free. Besides, who would like to stay with a person with whom you don’t have anything to talk about? (if you have no experience in the field, I recommend watching the episode of Friends when Ross and Mike decide to have a few beers together). So I send super custom applications as a minimum of respect for a person who will open the doors of his/her home without even knowing me. At least! And If I'm not in a social mood, or I really can’t find someone with whom I feel I could get along with, then I pay a hostel and that’s it, even if it’s not as Dadaist as sleeping on a mattress in an abandoned school, or going to a rave party under a Danube’s bridge.

An abandoned school. The stragest place to couchsurf ever. London.

2.It’s unsafe.

Noooooooo! It is not! Probably only a very low percentage of couchsurfers have, among their background, the habit of going to an isolated place, with a bag, to steal backpackers and devour them as their main dish of the day, seasoned with masala, soy sauce or Lizano sauce, depending on the country where they are located.

Although I have to admit that my first Couchsurfing’s experiences were with a group of people or in the company of my ex-boyfriend, if you know how to pick your guests or your host, the chances of people finding your picture on milk boxes or on photocopies attached to light poles as a missing person are very, very remote.

Couchsurfing has a reference system. On your profile’s wall, people in the community can discuss their experiences with you and classify them as positive, neutral or negative and they CAN NOT BE DELETED until the last judgment, when God shall point his finger down from heaven and delete them himself. So, for example, if you hosted me and I stole your iPod, you can tell everybody about it on my profile wall and screw me, because a bad reference (especially in cases of theft or sexual abuse) practically exiles you from the community. Having only positive references is essential for any couchsurfer who claims to be one: your profile is like having your conscience exposed online. In addition, there is a vouching system. When the Counchsurfing’s founders started the site, they gave among themselves the power of vouching (it seems that they loved each other very much). Eventually, they vouched for other people, and these people vouched for other people and so on. For example, if I trust you with my life, I can vouch you, but you can’t vouch someone else until you have at least three vouches on your profile. Whoever who has many positive references and many vouches, has as well more chances to be a good host or couchsurfer.

At this point, I've lost count of all the places I've done Couchsurfing (given that it is almost always my first choice when I travel) and all the people by whom I have been hosted, but I can assure you that, with the references system’s help, I have NEVER had a negative experience, even when it may sound pretty risky to sleep at a stranger’s place based on what other people may say about him on the internet.

But anyways, as one of my backpacker’s mantras says: “I've always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

The best room in Zurich. Couchsurfing in Switzerland.

3. Don’t be such a liar! Of course there must be bad experiences

Noooooooo! There are none! O well ...Yeeeeeeeeeeees! Yes, there are! Obviously, there have been bad experiences in the Couchsurfing’s world, among six million people there must be some villains (as they are in all stories). But, as I say, thanks to the references, you can avoid them.

I, for example, received a couch request from a guy, but there were two people who wrote he was a scammer and that, besides, he used to steal the sheets. I do not understand why someone would do that, but even though I'm not a very-attached-to-her-sheets kind of person (unless it is five minutes before I have to get up), I would not want someone under my roof with such an eagerness for collecting sheets. Also, once I received an invitation from a guy who had 170 positive references, but four negative from women he had tried to molest. So, no way. In the end, by reference shall know them.

In my case, my only negative experience was with a guy who had written in his profile that he had two daughters and, since he could not afford to travel with them, he liked to receive couchsurfers so his girls could be able to get to know other cultures. I loved the idea, but when I arrived to his place, it turned out that the girls were spending the weekend with their mother and the truth is that, although the guy was very kind to me, we had absolutely NOTHING to talk about (at least Ross and Mike had their dialogues written in the script). But well, two days of exchanging nervous and mandatory smiles with a random Hungarian are nothing compared to all the cool people I've met directly or indirectly by Couchsurfing (and who have become even my best friends) and who have offered me the best experiences in my travels, to the extent that many of the On the wooden rocking horse’s chapters include couchsurfers.

With Manuel. He was my host in Austria and then, by chance, we met again in Delhi, when I was sick and alone in the hotel.

4. If I have no references, no one will accept me

Noooooooooooo! It’s not like that! We all started somehow on Couchsurfing and our references were not written by our moms, by our school teachers (fortunately!), or by someone kidnapped in a basement with a gun pointed his head.

If you just have opened you account, ask people who already have an account and who know you from other travels, from work, from college or from some other place, to write your first references. And make your profile as complete as possible, with photos and all the possible information, so people can know you. In the end, hospitality networks, after all, are not necessarily about opening the door to a stranger: people need to know who you are.

5. But if I open an account , I have to host someone if I stayed at that person’s place,  and I do not have room, or now I'm busy, or to be honest there are days when I do not want to have people around, or ... (fill in this space with your favorite excuse).

Nooooooooooo! It’s not like that! Couchsurfing is a “pay it forward” karmic exchange. If I give you accommodation, eventually someone will give it to me. It is not mandatory to be mutual, this is not a house exchange or anything like that. In Spanish, we say something like “If I give you something, and you give me something, then the bird can fly”. Well, even in Spanish, Couchsurfing does not involve any kind of bird, nor in English.

In fact, you rarely have the opportunity to return the hospitality to someone who offered it to you, the planets have to be aligned in such a way that gravity attracts to your homeland a person who is several parallels and meridians away. In my experience, the only time I experienced the phenomenon was with my friend Tomas: I offered him couch when he came to Costa Rica and then he hosted me at his home in Slovakia, where in a Dadaist way I ended up in the Hockey world championship.

Tomas and me in the Hockey World Championship. 

Kosice. Slovakia.

If you can’t host, nothing happens: you can put your couch momentarily unavailable, or stay in the mode in which I am now (available only to go for a coffee or a city tour). As I mentioned above, hospitality networks are not just about a private room with a bathroom, a sofa-bed, a mattress, a hammock or a square meter where you can do three laps and lie down: it is about meeting people who have always been your friends but you just don’t know them.

6. If I let someone stay in my house, I have to give them the key

Noooooooooooo! It’s not like that! Your house is your house and you set your own rules; very cool idea and Imagine no possessions, but even John Lennon would have had his standards at home and if not, Yoko would have had a few. Each host sets his rules: number of nights, number of people who can stay, if he only accepts women or men, if he gives you the key or you can only be in the house while he's there, if he accepts you with pets, if you must bring your sheets (and not steal them, etc.).

In the end, the rules may be infinite according to people’s needs or whims (which in this case, are also valid). If you are a couchsurfer it’s your duty to respect them all, each and one of them, even more than the Ten Commandments, because you may forget to sanctify the holy days, but if you smoke in the living room without asking if you can do it or not, you deserve the eternal fires of hell where already, in itself, there is enough smoke and no one else should care about it.

Besides follow the rules, use a little common sense: if you're there, offer yourself to help with housework (I do not cook since I do not want to poison cool people, but I do the dishes), invite your host to dinner or buy him a simple gift. Most hosts do not ask for anything in return, and if they do, they ask for extremely symbolic and simple things in the vast majority of the cases. One of my hosts, for example, asked me to do a collage because he decorates his home with couchsurfers’ collages, another one said that some cereal would be welcome because he loves it and he place cereal boxes on the ceiling (everyone has his own Pinterest ideas), or they just may ask you to take a picture with them or leave your signature on a wall of their house.

My contrubution to the wall of fame in a student's house. 

Couchsurfing in Riga, Latvia.

7.Couchsurfing is to have sex

Nooooooo! It’s not like... Ahem, ahem... I'm not the best person to demystify this point because people actually do, and I must admit (especially since this post is being written during Easter and it could be a good opportunity to tie my sackcloth a little bit more), that actually yes, I have been involved with couchsurfers, although the website’s terms of use clearly stipulate that Couchsurfing is not a dating site or something like that (I always forget to read the fine print in the contracts).

But hey, it is a reality that the vast majority of couch requests I receive are from men and that the vast majority of requests I send are for men. I've talked about it with other couchsurfers, and it seems to be something normal (I am not sure why... humans! We're so weird!). Personally, I like to stay with two specific types of hosts: the ones who live in student houses (they are always full of people, there are other people to hang around with if by chance you can’t hang out with your host, and usually I sleep in the kitchen, the culinary and social center of the whole place), or with guys. I choose men because usually I get along better with guys than with women (sorry girls, nothing personal) and, always speaking in general terms, the truth is they do an extra effort to treat me as good as they can. They are more proactive, they run the extra mile as English speakers would say, even if that extra mile do not always lead to other contact sports.

My couch in a students house kitchen.

Salzburg, Austria.

Indeed, if you are in a foreign country, where everything is new and exciting, and you are with a guy with whom you have a lot in common, both of you drinking a glass of wine on the couch, it makes sense that the situation actually may go further on that couch, and the wine ends up being sprawled. I've met people who even got married because of Couchsurfing. This is the normal life’s evolution and, as adults, there is nothing to cross yourself about.

In any case, as it happens in real life, you always have the possibility of saying no and pack your things and leave the place if you don’t like something. Besides, it doesn’t happen aaaaaaaall the time and there is always the chance to stay with a person of a gender that doesn’t attract you, with a couple or a family. I've also had this kind of Couchsurfing experiences and they have been amazing. Even when it is true that I love guys, this novel is not The Single Men’s Island nor The Lord of the Flies kind of book to have a 100 % male cast.

Anyway, those are the myths about Couchsurfing applicable to other hospitality networks. If you have any questions, you can contact me, relax, the point is to encourage you to travel and open your couch profile. In the end, realize that karma also sleeps on a couch, that our mothers were not always right and that yeeeeeeeees! It’s cool to sleep on a stranger’s couch!