One day my friend named Fitria Ulfah a.k.a Paul asked me to add her as a friend on CouchSurfing. I responded her directly ‘Couch what?, what is it?' She explained me about it then..
CouchSurfing is a website which allows us to be hospitalized in other houses or to host people in our place with main purpose for knowing places and their cultures from local people’s point of view. We can exchange ideas on different issues thus we can learn lots of things on different subjects.
In the beginning it sounded so awkward and moreover dangerous for me. Never crossed in my mind to stay in a stranger’s places. I've stayed sometimes in somebody’s place who I don’t know well but we have at least a friend in common.
My friend said to me that I have a good reason but she asked me also if I had ever been sure about anything completely in life. Yeah, she had a point I've never been so sure about anything within 23 years of my life. In this website of course we can meet any kind of person but we can assure ourselves by reading people’s profile meticulously and the most important thing is their references. If they have much positive references means the surfers (a surfer is a person who’s hospitalized) who have stayed in their places didn’t have any trouble while they were hosted. Even though we are never 100% certain about anything.
At the end of our conversation I decided to make my account on CouchSurfing. I never used it for one year more or less until when I was in Italy. I’d like to visit Pisa but I didn’t speak Italian much at that time so I reopened my account and started to ask couch in Pisa. Yep It was my first experience in this hosting-surfing thingy and I didn’t get any problem. Since that day when I do my trip alone I usually use CouchSurfing. I don’t want to be a hypocrite by saying ‘no, I don’t stay at somebody’s place because I want to economize my trip’ . I think it’s normal if we think that we can save some money for accommodation BUT I tell you it’s NOT the MAIN IDEA of CouchSurfing. I have stayed at 4 persons until now some of them were nicely asked me for breakfast/lunch/dinner together or even bought me drinks. But I never say that's a must for my hosts to treat me like an old friend. As a surfer we have to be independent.
When I was in Naples my host was a student and he couldn’t walk me around every day. With zero capability of reading map I could still move around in the city. I asked people how to get the spots that I wanted to go. Trust me it’ll be a pleasure if you can ‘survive’ by your own self in a place that totally new for you. I cannot even remember the gestures I’ve made to explain others about things (I think they were almost different for one person to another one ^^).
When I was in Naples my host was a student and he couldn’t walk me around every day. With zero capability of reading map I could still move around in the city. I asked people how to get the spots that I wanted to go. Trust me it’ll be a pleasure if you can ‘survive’ by your own self in a place that totally new for you. I cannot even remember the gestures I’ve made to explain others about things (I think they were almost different for one person to another one ^^).
If I want to surf with people, is it a must to host people first? Nope ! Until now I’m still living with my parents and I can’t host people. So I just do ‘coffee and drink’. It means If there’s somebody who has already a couch but wants to chitchat with other surfers in town she/he can contact surfers with ‘coffee and drink’ category.
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