About month ago, I got an email from three 19-year-old Brazilian girls I’d never met. They wanted to crash in my guest room for three days. They didn’t mind if they had to sleep on the floor and they didn’t mind if I was out of town.
I politely declined because I hadn’t quite gotten up enough nerve to tell my husband I’d offered our guest room to more than 700,000 people from more than 230 countries.
I’ve since been told that introducing him to couchsurfing via three, 19-year-old Brazilian girls would have been a brilliant way to break him in.
Finding a Couch
Couchsurfing is a way of life for some people. Former East Lansing Mayor Sam Singh has been using couchsurfing on his year-long world tour, and documenting it in a great blog.
My brother is using it to make his January snowboarding trip to Switzerland more economical. Afghanis use it. Germans use it. Even Alabama-based forensic scientists do it.
Couchsurfing is an online community of people who love to travel. It’s not exactly new; I heard about couchsurfing about three years after the rest of the world was already bumming couches in Turkey, Australia and Italy.
Like Facebook, couchsurfers create an online profile describing themselves, where they want to travel, where they’ve traveled, what kind of sleeping arrangements they’re looking for and what kind of sleeping arrangements they can offer. Whenever a surfer wants to travel, they email people in that particular city and ask if they can sleep on the couch/bed/floor on a certain date.
As a birthday surprise, I bought my husband tickets to a
Blue Jays game in Toronto. I decided to turn it into a couchsurfing venture because: 1) the concept was intriguing; and 2) as a small business owner, I needed an excuse to write off a three-day weekend to Toronto.
Happy Birthday
Even for a relative newbie of the Facebook and Myspace world, creating a Web page on couchsurfing.com was extremely easy. Once it was up, I started looking for a place to stay.
I expected the site to be flush with hippies and child molesters, but instead I found tech professionals, teachers, doctors, graduate students and photographers mixed among self-proclaimed nomads and starving artists.
Couchsurfers appear to be very honest. If they don’t like late night partiers, they say so. If stinky guests are not welcome, they say, “Please don’t stay here if you don’t shower.”
After skimming many Toronto profiles, I picked my three favorites and contacted them about availability on my target August weekend. A Barack Obama volunteer said she’d be tied up in the campaign that weekend. One couple offered up their place, but we’d already gotten the green light from someone else.
So our Toronto home-away-from-home turned out to be owned by a single PhD student who lives near Toronto’s Greektown.
I liked his profile. He was educated, well-traveled and had two kids, indicating that someone had enough faith in his character to make him half of a parental unit. We agreed on the weekend and an estimated time of arrival.
Two weeks later, we showed up at his door.
Ted Bundy Need Not Apply
When I told my mom about couchsurfing, she immediately pictured Ted Bundy and asked if it wouldn’t be better to just get a hotel.
Couchsurfing has some basic securities in place, but it is a risk. Members are ranked on a security level of one to three. A person only achieves a level three if they “donate” $25 to the couchsurfing team, who then verifies their address.
Couchsurfing members can also vouch for each other, meaning they publicly express “No, this person is not a psycho” after they’ve either been a host or a guest. These reviews are the most reliable and the most entertaining to read. One couchsurfer noted that one of his hosts reprimanded him for not making his bed.
I didn’t know what we’d get. I was hoping for clean, nice and quiet. My husband had a zillion questions; chief among them, “Who is this person?”
“Is this some sort of weird swingers thing?” he asked. I said no, but I can’t say I didn’t wonder that myself. “We can always stay in a hotel.” I offered.
What we got was better than a hotel. It was a very tidy bohemian townhouse in a Canadian co-op, with a host who was extremely accommodating and clean. He was also gracious, offering to sleep on the couch so we could have his king-sized bed and bathroom.
“Baby, this is so @#&%ing awesome!” And in that moment, my husband went from swinging to exclaiming.
The Host
Our host was a three-year couchingsurfing veteran who used it as a cheap alternative to expensive Boston hotels. The woman who hosted him and his partner in Boston offered them her Cape Cod vacation home, where they stayed for several days after visiting Boston.
He’s now hosted three couples in his Toronto flat: My husband and I, two German au pairs and two Swedish med students who were on a month-long tour of Canada.
He was a phenomenal tour guide. We felt really comfortable with him, and he certainly didn’t pressure us to hang out. We went to dinner with him, and he took us to a contemporary backyard restaurant that we never would have noticed without him. The restaurant, Allen’s, offered a wide variety of Canadian brewed beers on tap, which was a real treat. We talked about beer, politics, sex therapy, baseball and couchsurfing.
He rearranged our “must see list” and told us how to best use Toronto’s amazing public transportation system. He also gave us a map, a key and a directive to call him with any questions, at any time. This included while he was in Quebec, the province for which he departed the next morning, leaving us in charge of his flat.
Passing the Pillow
I will most certainly couchsurf again. According to the couchsurfing site, “couchsurfing is not about the furniture, not just about finding free accommodations around the world; it's about making connections worldwide.” As cliché as that sounds, it’s true and to my knowledge, it works.
I’m not sure I’ll ever completely shake my Machiavellian view of the world, but this experience may just be enough for me to trust a trio of strangers in my house. For a weekend. While I’m away. Alone.
My husband agrees, but gives preference to Brazilians.
You can hear more about how Toronto's transit system stacks up to Michigan's at Michigan Now.
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Ivy Hughes is the managing editor of Capital Gains and would like to find a couch in the Florida Keys for about a week in February 2009.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos: Ivy's husband, Peter, standing at the entrance to our host's Toronto flat
Ivy and Peter at the Blue Jay's game
Flag at Canadian border crossing
Canadian money and beer at the Fox and the Fiddle in Greektown
Exile, one of many vintage clothing shops in Kensington Market
All Photographs © Hughes