Anyway, I've been promising myself for a while that I would write a post on couchsurfing, since it was such an integral part of my time in Europe and the US last year. I just wanted to double-check with a couple of people to make sure they didn't mind me posting about them. I've now done that, so welcome to the concept of
couchsurfing: v. to stay with random strangers whose details you find on a website. To find a huge amount of random kindness in the world. To see the "local" side of a city. Note: nowhere near as dodgy as it might seem at first glance, and probably safer than staying in hostels.
A little bit more detail: each member of couchsurfing has a profile (and you can choose to restrict viewing of your profile to other couchsurfing members only, if you choose). People often put quite a bit of detail into these profiles, including photos. As you come into contact with other couchsurfers, you can also write references for them, and they will write references for you. These do not have to be positive (although if you want to write a negative reference only because of personality clashes with someone, you are encouraged to either talk to them about it first, or just to write no reference at all). You get a sense of whether a person is telling the truth about themselves from these references. I only had one anywhere-near-negative experience with someone, and this was simply someone that I didn't click with. Everyone else I stayed with was fantastic.
Anyway, it's completely free, although you are encouraged to put back in what you can - whether it's giving something back directly to the person you're staying with (such as cooking them a meal, doing some cleaning, or whatever) or more generally (hosting people yourself, helping out at the collectives, being a CS ambassador and so on). But there is no obligation to do anything like this. There is certainly no obligation to host others. Since I got back to Australia I haven't been in a position to host anyone, but I have met up with a couple of people here in Canberra.
Ok, some specific stories.
The last post was about Berlin, and I mentioned in passing that this was one city where I had interesting couchsurfing experiences. I stayed with a Mexican guy there, Ig., who was living near Schönhauser Allee. He shared a flat with a German guy, A., who didn't know anything about couchsurfing. Ig. had never asked if it was ok; A. had made it clear from the start that he didn't mind if friends stayed over but Ig. had got the impression that it had to be friends only. So rather than try to convince A. about couchsurfing, he decided to give all his CS guests backstories as if they were friends. It got rather elaborate.
For example, my backstory: I had spent a few months at the University of the Yucatan the year before. This is where I had met Ig. I'd been on an exchange program studying.... archaeology. Fortunately A. wasn't the sort of person to ask too many questions about what someone knows. It was quite easy to get him talking about his own field. Luckily. Since I have absolutely no knowledge of archaeology, Spanish, or the sort of local knowledge one picks up when one lives in a city.
As luck would have it, A. got home the first night I was there just as Ig. and I were talking about couchsurfing. To cover up the break in our conversation, Ig. suddenly started talking about a professor we both supposedly knew. "Professor such-and-such was asking about you the other day," said Ig. "Oh yeah?" I answered. "How is ... sss... he?"
We continued the conversation, me making things up for all I was worth, some of them even making sense. I'm somewhat surprised A. didn't notice. Perhaps he did, and he was too polite to say anything. All I know is, had I been in his position, I certainly would have thought that something was going on, even if I didn't know quite what.
The events of the next few days would have made me even more suspicious. A couple of girls from Mexico were due to arrive the day after I did. Their backstory was easy to work out. One of them was to be the daughter of a work colleague of Ig.'s father - from the other side of the country, but that was ok. Her friend was just that, her friend. Ig.'s father had asked Ig. to take care of them like they were his sisters. No problem.
More tricky was the random Russian girl, AN., we met in the Tiergarten. We started talking to her because she was carrying a guitar around, and Ig. had been thinking about learning the guitar. As we chatted, we discovered she had nowhere to stay, and Ig. invited her to come back to his place. So we needed to work out a backstory for AN. Ig. decided she had been at the Yucatan the same time as I had been; he hadn't known her at the time but she and I had been mates. She knew that I was travelling around Europe and had only worked out the day before that she was going to be in Berlin at the same time as I was. The only issue was what she had studied.
"It's got to be linguistics," said Ig. "That - and archaeology - is the specialty at the Yucatan. That's why people go there on exchange!"
"Yeah, but A. doesn't know that. Besides, I don't know anything about linguistics! I know, why don't I say that I went to study the development of Mexico's economy - that'd make sense for a Russian who has a degree in economics."
"But people don't go to the Yucatan for economics! It's got to be linguistics!"
An executive decision was made to only tell A. if he actually saw AN. By the time I left Berlin a few days later, A. still didn't know of AN.'s existence. Not sure if he ever found out.
Anyway, it might seem strange that we started talking to this random person on the street, but that's what Ig.'s like. He's living in Berlin to improve his German, and one of the ways he does this is to take random empty food containers on the S-bahn, sit down beside a nice-looking woman, and ask for her help in interpreting the words on it. He would read through it and check his pronunciation, and ask for an explanation of any words he wasn't sure of. When I was with him, he did this with an empty can of Schlagsahne - that is, whipped cream.
Now, just imagine the look on someone's face when two people sit down next to her or across from her, and one of them - the guy - pulls out a can of whipped cream.
Hey, but this is Berlin. Everyone I saw went along with it and helped him out, even if they did think it was rather odd.
And here is Ig. with his can of whipped cream and a random Berlinfrau. Sorry it's a bit dark, but you still get the idea!
Next post, I'll go back to Köln for some more couchsurfing stories with S.!
No comments:
Post a Comment