Traveling From Your Living Room

Posted on March 22, 2012 by lisafindley

Time for another story gushing about the wonders of Couch Surfing! This past weekend I hosted two women who were on break from their master’s programs in St. Louis. Ainur, from Kazakhstan, is studying American law, and Shushanik, from Armenia, is studying education. They’re in their 30s, they have jobs and personal lives to return to in their home countries, but they took the plunge on expanding their horizons thousands of miles from home, which I greatly admire. They were in Chicago to sightsee, but we found time to hang out and chat, and had some cultural exchange over omelets and ice creams.

Ainur, me, Shushanik

We talked about American politics a little; they had both come to the States with the impression that we were “the most atheistic” country in the world, so they were shocked to see how much religion dictates government decisions here. Then I talked about classroom overcrowding, and not paying teachers enough, and how testing is strangling education, and Shushanik said her main research interest lies in determining which standards and methods of testing are actually useful and which are part of the problems I bemoaned.

Both Ainur and Shushanik were born under the rule of the Soviet Union, and they remember the bad old days with little fondness. For example, Ainur speaks better Russian than Kazakh because she was only allowed to speak Russian at school. They both spoke with envy of the infrastructure we have here, and the reliability of the legal system (even taking into account my rants on the prison-industrial complex).

A gorgeous March day

But they’re both very proud and fond of their homelands, as most people are, of course. Neither has any plans to settle out of her country, and they enjoy travel for the same reason most of us do: to meet new people and see new things, but not to relocate. And some things about the US upset them. Somehow, sex ed came up, and I said that kids today are only taught abstinence, and abortion is practically legal in name only. They hardly believed me; the idea that a woman’s health is her concern and hers only is so basic to them, that the thought of putting it up for public debate and legislative oversight is repugnant to them.

All this is to say that I only spent a short time with these women, but our shared love of travel and meeting new people opened us up to wonderful conversations and a free exchange of ideas and information. I know couchsurfing isn’t for everyone, but it’s been a great way for me to travel without leaving my living room, just by hosting people visiting from all over the world. I highly recommend it if you’re considering hosting or surfing. You can also go to group outings in your hometown if you want to meet likeminded folk but can’t open up your home.

ice cream break

Finally, it’s fun! I think I made it sound a bit like a UN summit, but we had brunch, wandered around Millennium Park, picked out shiny souvenirs, and had ice cream in the shade while people watching. In other words, I had a relaxing weekend with friends. They just happened to be new friends from far-flung lands.

Images 1 and 3 courtesy of Shushanik. Image 2 is mine.

Top 5 Ways to Be a Great CouchSurfing Host

Posted on August 3, 2010 by lisafindley

So you’ve read on this blog or heard from friends about the marvels of couch surfing, and you’ve gone to www.couchsurfing.org and made yourself a profile. It’s a few months yet til you have the vacation time to travel anywhere yourself, so in the meantime you’re going to take the big step of opening up your home to others as a host. Congrats! Now maybe you’re a little anxious, wondering how you’re going to fit hosting into your schedule, or what you’re going to do with your surfers once they arrive. Never fear, dearest fellow travelers, for I have assembled here a list of unbeatable tips in being a great host.

Top 5 Ways to Be a Great CouchSurfing Host

This guy knows what he's talking about

1) Start out with a cheerful attitude and keep it up for their whole stay. I hosted on a Monday night recently, and as my work day was drawing to a close, I berated myself for agreeing to invite two strangers into my home on a weeknight, and the first night of a long week, at that. But there’s nothing more unwelcoming than talking about how tired you are, or how much work you have to do, so I found some energy and greeted my surfers with a big smile. They matched me smile for smile, and we were off to a good start, already feeling friendly toward one another. (Of course, if you know that a particular day might not work for you, don’t agree to host on that day, and confine yourself to hosting on weekends only.)

No need to make a sign, but point the bathroom out right away

2) Take care of their needs right away. It’s easy to forget that your surfers have just traveled, often quite far, to get to your home, and they’re totally disoriented. To you, this is home, and everything is self-evident, but to them, everything is foreign. As soon as you’ve greeted your surfers with a smile, show them the couch and invite them to put down their (heavy!) bags. Then give them a tour of your place so they know the general set-up, including where the bathroom is, where towels are, whether they need to make their own bed or if it’s already made up, etc. Offer them a glass of water and ask if they have any particular requests that you should know about right away.

Setting boundaries doesn't have to be quite this frightening

3) Set all boundaries up front and center. This flows from the previous point; it’s important to have all parties aware of all boundaries right away, so there’s no room for misunderstanding. Sure, you might misinterpret their French and think they requested strawberries when they really wanted raspberries, but that’s no big deal; it is a big deal if they think 2 am is a good bedtime but you hoped to hit the sack by 10. Maybe you have no boundaries and anything goes, but usually that’s not the case. Don’t feel shy about bringing them up; just think if it were you on the other end, and how you’d rather know what was unacceptable behavior before, rather than after, you did it. Everyone is more comfortable knowing what’s what, so while you’re having that glass of water or first beer of the night, lay it all out — how long you can spend with them or if you have other obligations, when you have to go to bed and when the house as a whole hits quiet time, which rooms are off-limits (like your roommate’s), whether the cat is an indoor or outdoor one, if you have a spare house key for them to use or if they need to wait til you’re home to get in, if food is for the taking or if they need to ask first, if the house is smoking or not, etc. Some of this you will have covered in your CouchSurfing profile or in your email exchanges with the surfers, but it never hurts to go over it all again.

Enjoying French cuisine in a Chicago restaurant with Brazilian couchsurfers

4) Start with a meal. Nothing brings people together like a shared meal, so no matter what time of day your surfers arrive, suggest some type of food. I often meet my surfers after work, so we have dinner and get to know each other over that. Be sure to present several options, but only a few or they’ll be overwhelmed; always have a vegetarian-friendly place on hand in case they’re non-carnivorous; and keep in mind where they’re from so you can introduce them to a type of food that might be unfamiliar to them (eg, I always suggest Mexican food for European surfers). If you’ve just had a payday or the meal was cheap enough, consider buying their meal and watch yourself rocket to the top of their list of favorite hosts. If I have surfers for a few nights in a row, I usually suggest we cook something at home on the second night, when we might have more time to pick out ingredients and put something together, but of course you can do that your first night if it works for you.

This is from the UK's NHS site, encouraging people to talk about sex. I recommend waiting til you know them a bit better before bringing this up with your surfers.

5) Keep the conversation going. Ideally, you’ve had a few message exchanges with your surfers so you know a little bit about one another, and you can use that as a springboard into more conversation. You always have your mutual love of travel to fall back on, and of course, since they’re currently traveling, you can ask them for stories about their adventures. But don’t forget to be just as willing to talk about yourself and your city; you don’t want your surfers to feel like they’re getting quizzed by you. When you do ask questions, mix up the “cultural exchange” questions with the types of questions you’d ask anyone you met at a party, such as the latest movie they saw or your new favorite book. CouchSurfing is a wonderful opportunity to exchange ideas and observations about different parts of the world, but you’re doing that by interacting with people, so don’t forget that part of the equation or you’ll run the risk of using your surfers as your own personal information booth instead of people with their own interests, idiosyncrasies, and opinions.

And that’s it! Of course, if they’re staying for more than one night, and if you don’t have to work for one of the days, your opportunities for getting to know them and showing them your favorite parts of your town are wide open. In the past, I’ve taken my couch surfers to a concert at Schubas, the Didier Farms pumpkin patch, and the Chicago Latin Music Festival in Grant Park, to name a few. I’m still in touch with several of my surfers, and I have plans to stay with them on my trip in a couple of years. So if you have the time, definitely spend more time with your surfers.

But even if you’re on a tight schedule, follow the five steps above and I guarantee you’ll get a glowing review on the CouchSurfing site and a warm, fuzzy feeling in the general area of your heart when you wave your surfers goodbye.

Top 5 Ways to Be a Great Couchsurfing Host

The Good in People

Posted on April 27, 2010 by lisafindley

Just a short post today. I’ve had a rotten time lately with a roommate not paying his rent, a super busy schedule at work, and some painful physical therapy to heal my sprained ankle. It was a rainy weekend and I spent it cleaning. Suffice it to say it’s not been the best of weeks.

But then. But then, dearest fellow travelers! I hosted some couch surfers tonight, and they are lovely. I’d said I could host them about a month ago, but once today actually arrived, I felt exhausted at the thought of being a sociable tour guide. Most Mondays, I write a blog post and watch a lot of TV online. I couldn’t fathom doing anything more tonight. But they got here, and we got to talking, and I made some dinner while we chatted, and we made plans to do the same tomorrow. We looked at the funny-shaped map on my wall and pointed out where we each want to travel next. We talked about our shared interest in publishing, and they told me how in France, you can major in publishing at university, like any other profession. (Neato.)

They spent all day traveling and wanted to call it an early night, so I didn’t even have to put on my party shoes and show them the town. I was able to have the relaxing evening I’d hoped for and still have good conversation and new experiences. They can’t pay the rent my ex-roommate owes or take back the insults I received from clients last week, but I immediately felt at ease with them and happier about the world in general after our dinner. There are too many good people out there to stay stuck on the bad ones, and travel is the perfect way to be reminded of this, as you’ll undoubtedly encounter many more good than bad. In fact, travel is mostly about people, and a good thing too, because all in all, people make the whole endeavor worthwhile.

Surf’s Up

Posted on December 8, 2009 by lisafindley

Everybody knows the basic advice: Don’t go out in the cold without a hat and mittens. Don’t swim right after eating. And don’t sleep with strangers. Generally that’s all pretty sound, but I suggest we reconsider the last one. Now before you think this blog is about to turn into something it’s not, dearest fellow travelers, let me reassure you I’m talking about sharing someone’s home while on the road — couch surfing.

the map on my wall showing where all my couch surfers are from

The idea behind surfing is that you get to know a place much better from seeing it through the eyes of locals than you do from staying in hotels and sticking to your guidebooks, and that everyone benefits from cultural exchange and sharing a meal. It’s free to sign up for and use CouchSurfing.org, but I must emphasize that this is not a site to visit if you are just looking for a free place to stay. Obviously, we all prefer cheap options, but you are inviting yourself into someone’s home, not crashing on your friend’s friend’s dorm room floor.

And now, for the Safety Talk. Most everyone I talk to about couch surfing says, “But how do you know it’s safe?!” Well, you can’t know for sure, any more than you can know most things for sure. However, the organizers of the site put in several safeguards — there’s a vouching system, in which only people who have met surfers in person can vouch for them, and on your profile page, other surfers can leave recommendations or bad reviews for all other surfers to see. You can verify that you are who you say you are by using the verification process; you fill out your address on the site, they send you a postcard to that address, and you mail it back to them, confirming that you live where you say you live. Finally, you use your own good judgment. You’re not signing a contract when you agree to host or request to surf, and your safety is paramount, so if you arrive at your host’s house and get a bad vibe, or your surfer shows up three sheets to the wind, by all means arrange alternate plans.

I’ve hosted about a dozen times, and almost all of those times were really great. I’ve met people from Albuquerque, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Minneapolis, England, and Germany, and we’ve spent long nights over bottles of wine and bowls of pasta, chatting about our lives and our homes. I like being able to properly host my surfers. I like to show them some favorite restaurants and music venues, and one day I even did totally touristy stuff like pose by Buckingham Fountain, go to a festival in Grant Park, and stand in line for the Sears Tower.

Couch surfers, as you can imagine, tend to be open-minded folks, laid back, and pretty young. Sometimes I feel very old as I watch people barely out of their teens showing worldly bravura, when really, they’ve still seen and experienced so little. But we all have to start somewhere, don’t we?

I’ve surfed just once so far, with my sister E, in Munich. Our host was fantastic; she made us dinner one night and took us out to a beer hall another night, and she took us to many major tourist sites and negotiated all the German for us. She’s a really interesting person, a surgeon who uses all her time off to do extreme adventuring like dogsledding in the Yukon or horseback riding across the Rockies. We spent hours talking about balancing work and play, living on your own, and American/German differences. Before we surfed with N, I was signed up on CouchSurfing but unsure if I would feel comfortable hosting, but after staying with N, I knew for certain that I wanted to be someone providing this kind of experience — this kind of friendliness and curiosity — to people from all over the world.

In short, if you couch surf, you may end up like this:

E dressed in N's traditional Munich leder hosen, on our very first CouchSurfing adventure

UPDATE: There is video. Oh yes, there is video. For some reason, it’s on its side, but here it is. Please note that we were playing Tom Jones’s “Sex Bomb” in the background for this fashion show. Cultural exchange, what!