Thanks Couch Surfing

A late winter night I was walking from work to the train station, it was one of those nights that you wear everything you can to keep you warm. From the distance I saw my train passing by, I thought about running, but I was too far so there was no point walking faster.

I sat by myself in train station freezing bench for 30 minutes waiting for the next train. Across the street there was this block of flats, and I kept trying to look through the windows like there I was some weird voyeur. Some had the TV on, a dim reading light, pink curtains closed, blue drapes open, and I wished I could walk in every apartment, met their owners, learn about them, about their lifes, and then my train arrived and days passed by.

During that cold winter, Ryanair had a super sale: £0.01 flights everything included!!! That was so exciting, so hard to decide where to go! Ireland was one of favourite options, I loved going there the first time to that land of gold pots and leprechauns and Alice had never been there, so it was perfect. We bought a flight to go and two to come back… just in case… well it was an accident… but it was such a cheap accident that we bought flights to Stockholm too!

Alice had heard about CouchSurfing, but we were both somewhat apprehensive about it. The conversation that followed was sort of: “Do you mean… really?”, “You just walk into someone’s home and you spend the night there?”, “What if?”, “That sounds crazy, makes no sense.”, followed by a “Let’s do it”.

We made a joint profile sent out requests to several places in IE, targeting more some specific areas and we decided “wherever we get a place to stay is where we are going”. So we did, the day before we took off we got a confirmation we were staying in quirky Cork. We took a small backpack each, hopped on train, the plane, and took off to IE.

The landing and the bus trip from Shannon, were followed by Irish magic and by this increasing nervousness about CSing for the first time. But…it was all so natural, we made sure we arrived on time by following a neighbour into the block of flats, without knowing what was going to happen from that moment onwards, we just gave ourselves to the CSing spirit.

From the moment we walked into Fabien’s apartment we belonged in that world. A world where you open your doors to strangers, invite your friends over to meet them, cook French crepes until they fall asleep in the deep blue sheets that belong to your at-the-moment-out-of-town rommie. Give them expert tips to enjoy the city you live in, and you let those strangers stay another night.

It made our time in the biggest city southern city of Ireland very exciting, we got gifts for our host and during the second night, in the midst of crazy interesting conversation, my cooking and unexpected snow, the future was unveiled, CS showed us the way: Wexford.

We woke up in those deep blue sheets looking at the world outside, it was still snowing, everything was covered in white. We got off of bed all excited without knowing that thanks to CS, that day we would fall asleep across that beautiful country after going to the woods with an Irish primary teacher, (the only Irish person we spent time in Ireland), our amazing Romanian host, and their Egyptian friend. Why in the woods? Well of course Eve being a Teacher needed some bugs to present in class the next morning.

That day I feel in love with CS, I feel in love with the way that there was absolutely no money that would pay for that experience, for the smiles, the kindness, that natural way that you, a stranger, turned into a friend. That day I belonged to the world a bit more.

From that day onwards, I have meet hundreds of CS’s, convos, meetings, parties, surfing, on the street.

I even got rescued once when US Airways let me check in for the first leg of my flight in Miami, without letting me know that my flight to UK was cancelled and that they lost my bag, (I would find that bag again two weeks later in West Sussex). I only had time to ring Andrew, a good friend who I had met through CS, and let him know I was going to be homeless in Charlotte in one of the coldest times USA had seen for a while. It was January 2010, Miami was paralysed by the 0 degree wave that hit it that night, and I was heading North. Thanks to CS, when the flight touched ground there was someone waiting for me in this “Don’t worry, I will help” way that CSrs all over the world have.

A year after I had wished I could walk in random homes just for the sake of curiosity, I had been rescued by the concretisation of that wish: CS.

Thank you Casey.

P.S: You will be happy to know I am still part of the community, have my own profile now, and I currently making friends in Cancun.