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"Couchsurfing" Travel Takes Off On the Web
mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press writes about a growing network of people online who've gone a step beyond hotels, hostels and even apartment swapping in their travel planning: They sleep on each others' couches. A number of Web sites have sprung up to help pair travelers searching for a place to crash and hosts with a spare couch. Sites like hospitalityclub.org, couchsurfing.com, globalfreeloaders.com and place2stay.net are often free, serving only as middlemen and offering tips on how to find successful matches.
The sites are largely the creations of 20-somethings bitten with wanderlust and the hope of helping to bring together people from different cultures. They often depend on volunteer administrators to help manage the Web operations."
...and leave an itinerary with someone at home, including names and addresses.
None of these sites, TTBOMK, asks for or checks references. And the liability assumed thereunder would be huge if they did, so they probably never will.
99+% of the people in this world are decent folk, but some nutcase is going to take advantage of the situation. Young, often naive travellers who nobody will miss for weeks... Slurp! Yum!
Less horrifying but more likely is the following scenario: you are low on cash, you only speak 10 words of the local language, it is late in the evening, and the weather is turning bad. The couch owner says put out or get out.
Please pardon me for being cynical. I hope these optimists can turn the world into a place of love, brotherhood, and cheap lodging. We tried in the 60s with mixed results.
This is such a great idea, particularly for male college students. I wish something like this existed 10 years ago when my friends and I traveled through Europe. To maximize the length of our stay, we slept in $10 grimy hostels and ate basically nothing (or other people's leftovers). Given that some of these services boast well over 100,000 members, I wonder at what point they start impacting the Hostel industry?
While this is likely a great resource for men, I couldn't imagine using one if I were a woman traveling in Europe. Even the hostels were pretty sketchy, and the women we ran into often traveled in groups (or with a bunch of guys) to make it safer. While they offer feedback systems like eBay, it would be pretty easy for sexual predators to fake the feedback to lure young foreign women.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
My only experience with Couchsurfing has been excellent.
I'm a Texan who recently went to the Ohio LinuxFest 2006 with three others. We've found a great male couple on Couchsurfing, exchanged some emails, and they seemed normal. We visited them, and they took us into their home for two nights as if we were their long-lost relatives. They were incredibly hospitable, made us a temporary code in their electronic entry lock, and were in general fantastic. And, they did not expect a dime from us.
After we returned to Texas, we bought them Woot Wine as a surprise thank-you gift, and they sent a grateful email after receiving it.
This kind of behavior from your fellow human beings really lifts the spirit and encourages similar kindness from oneself. Although I am certain there are some nuts on sites like this, it always is and always will be "caveat emptor". But if you find a good host, you will forever remember the experience.
Don't forget about head lice, either.
The Ski Freak Radical was doing this for ski bums well over a decade ago. I'm sure there have been all sorts of similar niche and less-niche sites serving a similar function. (Admittedly not Web 2.0, though...)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
We used to call these "hobos".
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Back in my twenties and thirties, I did the couch circuit, both pro and amateur.
I was a rock musician from 1978 to 1998 in unsigned bands, and there was an informal couch circuit among bands. An out-of-town band would play a club and make friends with the openers or headlining acts. Phone numbers would be exchanged, and when we hit their town we'd have couch space, maybe an extra bedroom or foam pad if we were lucky. Bands I was in would do three to six week tours and there wasn't room in the budget for a motel room every night. Given that all of us were riding in a van with all of our gear, sleeping in the van wasn't an option. Best case scenario was a couch five nights and a motel room or two for the rest of the week.
This sort of network could be a boon to unsigned bands, sort of an unofficial hostel system.
Then there's the amateur side: getting kicked out of apartments in Boston in the '80s because the landlord wanted to convert to condos, and not having the cash for first and last months rent plus security. The couch circuit was a way of making enough money to get that apartment. The alternatives were camping out in your band's rehearsal space (hey, cockroaches make wonderful pets!) or persuading your girlfriend to let you move in with her (hey, no farting in bed!).
Damn, I wish I had an internets back in 1982.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Quick Geocouching.com isn't taken yet!
Have you read my journal today?
I'm relatively new to couchsurfing but all my experiences to date (various parties, activities and actual couchsurfing) has been better than positive--the folks are open, fun and intelligent.
As a guy, my risk of encountering predators may be reduced... but really, I think it's articles like the above that will attract the crackpots instead of relying on word of mouth to get the message to interesting folks.
In Soviet Russia.
If you're a serial killer, your victims come to YOU.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You are correct, but it is only the perception of risk which has increased, not the actual risks. There are now 6 billion of us on this rock, and we hear about every bus accident and anal rape and then we fantasize about many more in our fiction on TV and in film.
In real life, the number of "horrible-things-that-happen per person per day" has decreased dramatically... our fertility hasn't changed much (we didn't all of a sudden start having triplets) except to decrease in some places, so how is it we are attaining such high population densities? (yes, I understand exponential growth... But this doesn't happen to all life (else we'd be drowning in bacteria), something normally limits populations. Could it be that, on average, we are safer than before (from all risks, famine & disease to murder at the hands of highway robbers)?
People who've never even spoken to someone on one of these sites are all obsessing about how many bad people there are in the world... We keep focusing on serial killers and terrorists--sheesh, enough! Time to get our risk evaluations straight, and maybe live a little on the side. Time to read "If only gay sex caused global warming" again...
I spent the past summer doing the typical cross country road trip thing. I met nothing but nice people all along the way and only ever stayed in a hotel a few times (vegas and reno). With people worrying about safety it is just like any other online venture, if you don't trust someone, don't invite them over, simple as that. I stayed with people in st.louis, albequerque, santa cruz, san diego, L.A., all over. Everyone I met was super nice and just awesome people in general, I recommend couchsurfing highly. I chronicled all of my adventures at http://boxmansion.com/roadtrip in case anyone cares to read
In my (limited) experience I've found it's oldies who are loving this kind of site - my dad and his girlfriend have had people from England, France, Ireland come and stay with them and on a recent family trip to France we crashed for two nights at 'friends' of theirs who I later found out they had never met before, but had found on couchsurfing.com!
It makes sense for older couples (50s/60s) whose children have left, who have big houses but time to travel and hang out and just socialise instead of work! Also, there is a more implicit sense of 'safety' when it's an older couple, and when it becomes networked - so-and-so stayed with them so they must be good etc...
After about 8 years of hosting an annual group of 12 - 16 randomly collected folks, I have to say that I haven't met a real asshole in the bunch. A bore or drone here and there, to be sure, but no real assholes to speak of. (Just noticing that Firefox 2.0 apparently has "asshole" in its spellchecker dictionary right out of the box... good deal.)
I think the mitigating factor here is that, although these are people from the internets, they're not from a general "find a place to stay" sort of site. These are folks who are willing to spend 24 hours straight watching B-movies (http://www.b-fest.com/), and who have interacted with other groupies long enough to achieve at least a virtual sense of familiarity. So, couch surfers? Sure. But strangers? Only in the physical sense.
Besides... IMO, if someone is willing to watch 24 hours of fare like Tiny Town, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Let my Puppets Come, Kingdom of the Spiders, Robot Monster and Orgy of the Dead just to rape and murder me afterwards, well dammit, they deserve it, and God bless `em. The moral of the story is that I can't vouch for people who're only known by their desire to couch surf at your house. I also can't vouch for people who share whatever quirky interests you happen to be into. But I can vouch for B-Movie fanatics... they tend to bring unexpected housewarming gifts & to leave your place cleaner than they found it. In crowds, they also tend to round up dramatically when a collective restaurant tab goes `round the table. They got my vote.
Pi Ran Out
Where is the "itsatrap" tag when you need it?
Philosophy.
I'm a member of Couchsurfing.com, Hospitalityclub.org and Globalfreeloaders.com, but I only actively participate in CS as they have a fairly thorough precautionary system. They offer a rating system where hosts or travelers base their experiences with you to warn or encourage other members. They verify a mailing address for members. The address remains secret from users but if you do not complete the process, all users are made aware. You can choose to only travel with people with high levels of verification and high scores from other users. It's a very cool system that favors people who have been members for a long time and who travel frequently.
The disappointing part is with more and more press, people simply looking to save money will undoubtedly flood the site. Nothing wrong with that, but hopefully they don't miss the point entirely. Cultural exchange.