In the wonderful collective Trafikken in Copenhagen.
One of the best websites on the internet is in my opinion CouchSurfing.org
That is partially because I’m pretty poor, but it’s just such a good idea to let people share room in their apartments to other travellers for free; It is the cheapest, friendliest and just nicest way to travel or to get to know fun people from all over the world. So simple; you just sign up with what your couch is like and how many people you can host, if they can smoke, if you have pets etc and then if someone needs your couch they will ask you and you can answer yes or no.
I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone who isn’t a total loner or control freak or a murderer or something. Since you always give out little recommendations about the people you’ve had staying with you or that you have been staying with, travellers can check in to see what have beeen said about the people before and make up their minds about if they want to contact the hosts or not. And the other way around of course. We’ve had a bunch of people staying here at our collective now and it’s been pretty wonderful. I got to know a great french guy called Elie a few months ago, we hung out and drank a lot of beer for a few days and I showed him the wonders of Andra Långgatan.
Frej and I also got floor space in the collective Trafikken when we were in Copenhagen, met lots and lots of other super interesting and fun travellers, like Ted from USA who introduced me to the insane dog book I was reading in the picture, or Stina who apparantly knew my friend Annali because everything is connected.. there were environmental scientists and high school students and researchers and everything great!
I really do think that people should at least give it a chance or three to see if it’s their thing! But I don’t get why it wouldn’t be because meeting locals is the best way to travel ever & hosting people is a lot of fun and you get to feel nice!
If you don’t have any friends on there to recommend you and get you started you can also get your identification verified. That also gives you some other advantages that I don’t know that much about since I haven’t done it myself.
GO JOIN!
And if you’re already on there, please share your stories!
We’ve never had couchsurfing people staying over, but friends of mine have and I’ve met a few really great people that way :) There are even CS parties in my city every now and then :)
I’ve just been introduced to couchsurfing by some of my roommates in my collective! We have a policy that we can have up to 3 couchsurfers at a time and the people we’ve had to stay are all so varied and interesting! I watched one girl as she played accordian last week, and I’ve learned yoga and cooking skills from other surfers. It’s so neat!
Heh… I’m in CouchSurfing! I’ve been active for a while there now, almost two years… even to the point of becoming City Ambassador for Helsinki. We’ve managed to get a pretty strong community here, we have weekly meetings (yeah, in our tiny little city of less than a million people), we have tons of other meetings, our travellers always find couches and we’ve only had great feedback. And when I’m back in Marseille I also try to organise things, it’s always so much fun. I’ve never actually had to search for couch because for most of my travels the hotel is already paid but I’ve hosted quite a few people, I love showing people where to go off the beaten path, it’s pretty cool.
(I actually wrote a whole post once about my experiences in CS and my conclusion was “It’s an amazing thing as long as you don’t start looking into the higher spheres”, that’s the only bad thing I can say about CS.)
hi Karin,
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, since you posted something in a livejournal community I like to read (blackcigarette) although I never comment (sorry!) I love reading about your life and looking at your beautiful pictures/outfits. You’re very inspiring and make me want to live more ‘thoughtful’ (like think about what I consume/eat) and creatively.
I live in a tiny studio with my boyfriend & we have no extra room for people to sleep… But i’d love to try couch surfing! I’m just not sure it’s allowed if you don’t offer up a place yourself…? I’d love to come over to sweden with my boyfriend and stay with your collective for a few days, if you would like that and if there’s room for two people of course :) We are from Holland (Utrecht), 23 and 26, I study art history an my boyfriend Abel studies interactive design. We both love movies, I read all the time, and Abel plays computer games a lot.
I’m going to look into the couchsurfing website tonight but I have to go now because I have a lecture in 20 minutes!
Liefs (with love in Dutch)
Carmen
Hi Carmen, thank you for your nice compliments! I’m gonna have to turn you down on the suggestion though, since I only want to host people I’ve talked with through CouchSurfing; know are reliable and so forth. I’m not saying I think you’re not reliable or anything, but since we live four people here I can’t just invite people who has read my blog into our shared home without any further knowledge of who they are… if I knew who you were it’d be a different thing but now I have no idea so it would be strange explaining it to the people I live with. Hope you understand! /Karin