CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding."
There we were, three Canadian girls, trudging up six flights of stairs to a Paris apartment belonging to someone we had never met. We were about to spend five days as guests of Sebastien Bernier, a complete stranger.
What were we thinking?
We were doing what thousands of people around the world have started to do: we were going couch-surfing.
Essentially, we were bunking in Paris for free thanks to blind trust and a website called CouchSurfing.com.
The website is an online forum where people offer their couch, spare bedroom, floor-space or tent-ready backyard to other people wandering through their part of the world. Or, if they have no room to spare, they can offer to meet you for a coffee or drink and show you around their town.
Like many social networking websites, couch-surfing is free and anyone can join.
Put up a profile, wax poetic about your favourite hair metal band or upload bug-eyed pictures of yourself and you're good to go.
But CouchSurfing.com differs from sites like MySpace in one key way: it fosters real-life interaction, says Alex Goldman, a PhD student at the University of Florida and an administrator of the site.
"It's based in the real world; the main purpose of couch-surfing is leaving the online world," he said.
The website was created more than 21/2 years ago and now has more than 100,000 members spread across every continent in more than 200 countries. It touches many languages, cultures and religions. North America and Europe have the most couch-surfers, but even less-Internet-savvy places such as Kiribati and Djibouti have members willing to host a fellow surfer.
The average age of couch-surfers is 27, but the website draws a few octogenarians and a very active community of 50-somethings.
And Montreal is its mecca, with 2,100 members - more than any other city in the world. It is also the first city and only city with a couch-surfing office.
Montreal surfer Mathieu Groulx, who has more than 12 surfs under his belt, says his first surfing experience was the best because he dove head-first into the unexpected.
Initially, he had reservations about an offer to stay in the New York City home of a 56-year-old gay man with no picture uploaded to his online profile. But when Groulx and his companion arrived to a home-cooked meal and warm reception, his reservations disappeared.
Groulx had visited the Big Apple before, but surfing "felt like I was arriving at an old friend's," he said.
"Going as a couch-surfer was a very different experience than in past trips. You get to see places you might never know about if you stayed in a hotel or hostel," he added.
Couch-surfing lets you take the road less travelled and discover local gems in a less commercial manner, says Paula Bialski, a master's student from northern Ontario who is completing her studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland.
Both she and Goldman are sociology scholars and CouchSurfing members. They are so intrigued by the social experiment, they are writing their respective theses on the hows, whos and whys of couch-surfing.
After all, it's not everyday a person opens their door to someone they've never actually met.
Casey Fenton, a self-described nomad from Maine, founded CouchSurfing.com as a simple accommodation exchange.
But as its popularity grew, so did its features: online chat, bulletin boards, interest groups, city meet-ups, verifications and newsletters. Other projects are on the way, and Fenton commits roughly 100 hours a week to the website.
The idea behind couch-surfing, Fenton says, is to help people "create adventures they will remember while sitting on their porch in their rocking chairs."
The original couch-surfer, Fenton owes the idea to a whim. He scored some cheap tickets to Iceland but deplored the idea of bunking down in a hostel.
He wanted the real taste of Reykjavik; the one only locals truly experience.
In a gutsy move, Fenton emailed 1,500 students at the University of Reykjavik, asking if anyone would be willing to host him in their city.
It worked: between 50 and 100 replied, "yeah, come surf my couch," wrote Fenton in an e-mail. From then on, Fenton vowed never to live the tourist life again and instead started the CouchSurfing website.
Even his dad is a convert. "It's like immediately becoming a citizen of a place," Mark Fenton says.
Giancarlo Russo, an Italian native living in Wales, has surfed more than 20 couches in the past year.
"Couch-surfing is a lovely thing," said Russo. "When you surf with someone, you share a bit of your life; you move a step farther than sharing a house."
"It's a good chance to explore, to meet other people who really like to travel and to meet people around the world," he added.
On the grand scale of life, couch-surfing is about creating a world without discrimination, Groulx said.
For many couch-surfers, it's the late-night conversations with a stranger, the all-night partying with a new friend or the discovery that they're the only tourist at a neighbourhood hangout that creates long-lasting memories.
With couch-surfing, however, you take what you get - there's no complaining to the concierge.
At the apartment in Paris where my friends and I spent five nights, we had free wireless Internet, an offer to do our laundry, a beautiful view and a central location.
At our next surf in Rome, we spent three days in extremely close quarters sharing our host's tiny living room with a bevy of musical instruments and bookshelves.
In Florence, I had my own bed - and bed bugs - and in Pistoia, my host welcomed me into his home on a day's notice with a pasta dinner and homemade vino.
jlegatos@ thegazette.canwest.com
TO SURF, YOU HAVE TO TRUST - AND READ THE REVIEWS
So how safe is it to crash at the home of a complete stranger?
CouchSurfing.com tries to lessen the risk of bad experiences with safety measures like peer-vouching and a voluntary identity verification process via credit card.
"It's in your best interest to be a good host or surfer because otherwise people will give you a bad review," said member Paula Bialski.
The concept works on trust and social capital, she added.
As a site ambassador, Montreal surfer Mathieu Groulx fields emails from members around the world and has never heard of a surf where members' safety was compromised.
"You can tell so much about people from their profile and how they act on the site itself," says Alex Goldman, a site administrator.
Couch-surfing isn't for everyone, Bialski admitted, and said street smarts are key to safe surfing.
"If you don't have common sense and run into a shady character, it can blow up in your face," she said.
Heather O'Brien, a site administrator, says she has never had a bad experience - just "experiences."
The performance artist living in San Francisco had an email conversation with a Brazilian man who didn't impress her with generous use of words such as "baby."
But instead of cutting off contact with the man, she decided to learn about his machismo culture and teach him about hers.
The man wrote O'Brien saying he had never meant to offend and now she looks forward to one day hosting him in her home.
http://www.canada.com/topics/travel/story.html?id=99e28c3f-9d99-44e6-bc34-9a0ab913f712
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