On couchsurfing

I've had a question or two about my main mode of accommodation during this trip, which is brought to me via the inspirational website couchsurfing.com. As this is quite an interesting phenomenon in itself, a few words here might be appropriate.

Couchsurfing was invented in 2003 by a chap called Casey Fenton, who, like every traveller, dreamed of the basic simplicity of free accommodation. According to him, he was going to Iceland, of all places, and decided to spam email the 1500 students of of the University of Iceland, eventually receiving over 50 offers of sofas to sleep on. The alternative theory is that he just copied and improved the already existing hospitalityclub.com.

The premise is that the internet can be used to harness the inherent hospitable instincts of the majority of people world wide. Travellers create an account, are encouraged to list as much information as possible (including whether they are able to host people or not), and are supposed to "verify" themselves by paying a small sum of money and entering the password that is sent to them on the post card mailed to the credit card's address.

Members have total control who they ask to stay with and who they allow to stay with them. Security is ensured through references and the "vouching" system, which basically means that people who have already been vouched for three times can then vouch for others to show how much they trust them. References are left by people once they have surfed with/hosted each other, as a brief description of their experience for other travellers to read.

The site now claims over 1 million members. My experience of couchsurfing started in March when I got my first taste of free shelter with hosts in Berlin and Copenhagen. These two, combined with the two I stayed with in Seattle, have convinced me that the arrangement is fantastic.

Hosts are by nature friendly and welcoming (if they weren't they wouldn't put themselves down for hosting), and generally interesting to talk to, with lots of fun traveling experiences of themselves. If they have time then they can show you round the city and take you to awesome places that only the locals know about and don't get mentioned in the guide books. Goodness knows how much I saved on hostel expenses in super-expensive Copenhagen!

Surfers may fall prey to any number of inconveniences: couches can be small and uncomfortable, hosts may have irritating pets, the living room in which one sleeps may not be a paragon of privacy, or the house might be miles away on the outskirts of the city. But it's not as if the alternative options at hostels are free of such problems, and it makes the traveling experience more authentic. Folks who use couchsurfing do so in order to have such experiences and share them with new and interesting people from the local culture.

Couchsurfers also organise local meet-ups, especially in large cities, where lone travellers can go have a fun night with interesting people if they are otherwise unengaged. In Berlin I went to a language sharing session and had the slightly surreal experience of speaking Spanish all night with a big group of people in the middle of Germany.

Participants in couchsurfing are generally attracted by the idealistic nature of the social experiment - that people are generally nice enough to share what they have with each other through the common bond of humanity. And the nice thing is, it seems to be working.