Is anything more disturbing than arriving in a new place, full of strangers speaking an unfathomable language, laden with baggage, alone and friendless?
Is anything better than meeting a friend you've never seen before who rescues you and takes you home?
This is the world of Couchsurfing, an international online hospitality club members of the Athens Time Exchange told me about.
Couchsurfing has made it possible to visit countries too expensive (Scandinavia) and too foreign (Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia) for the solo tourist.
And this is not my last trip. I've just gotten started!
If I had the funds to stay in hotels for the nine months of my travels, I think I would be very lonely and depressed.
Instead, I move into the home of a new friend I found by searching the Couchsurfing website by location, and often filtering for gender, language, age, and whether the person has been vouched, verified, referenced by past visitors. Their profile contains photographs, philosophy, mission, countries travelled, grown up in, desired to visit, and a description of their 'couch' (often you have a guest room and sometimes the host gives up their own bed). I usually stay for three days ("fish and guests" stink any longer), assist them by correcting their English (they appreciate it!), learn an insider's view of their country, receive maps and tips and transport information, enjoy drinks and meals together.
Sometimes others have seen my request and offered their homes. Serendipity led me to a Croatian filmmaker and a Russian hookah party. Staying in a household of twenty-somethings or with a mother-in-law with no English whatsoever or families with children is fun as well.
Relaxing under the stars in southern France or gazing at snowy, silent Sarajevo, a living Christmas card, I bless the adventurers who formalized the idea of people to people friendship.
I know some hosts get addicted to the international traffic enlivening their routines.
People precede and follow me in their homes, but the friendships are often deep and intense. Would an American hand you their keys?
In Spain and Russia, France and Ukraine, Copenhagen and Bucharest, Budapest and Bialystock, I have learned the transportation system and supermarkets. I have negotiated the terrifyingly long and deep escalators of the Metros in Moscow and St. Petersburg and Kiev and photographed the heroic tableaux deep underground.
I have lost my Visa card, left or lost my camera (found in Bucharest!), been arrested for overstaying my visa in Russia (I was on the overnight train to Estonia), been proposed to and fallen in love (our secret!).
I expected extreme poverty and hosts depending on me to feed them. I found successful people with large luxurious homes and cars. Everywhere I found traffic and air pollution and plastic bags and bottles.
I fear for the future, yet the present is fantastic.
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