After I leave Time Out Farms (in less than two weeks time now), I plan on going to Vancouver for a couple of days, before heading to Vancouver Island with Frida. And, you know, this trips seems to be all about sharing and international cooperation anyway, what with all the wwoofing, so I thought I should try out Couchsurfing. I have a feeling that Vancouver is a great city to loose your Couchsurfing virginity in.
For you who might not know what Couchsurfing is, it’s this worldwide internet community where people offer out their couches for travelers to sleep on. But the idea is not to get people free places to crash, but to facilitate for people from different parts of the world to meet and interact. The idea is that you shouldn’t only get to know a country while traveling, but also some of it’s people.
I’ve never couchsurfed before, but I have plenty of friends who have and they all say it’s been great. And, you know, with all the Germans and Spanish people here and all the French and Korean and Swedish people that I met in Edmonton, I feel like I need to meet some real Canadians approximately my own age before I leave. So, I joined Couchsurfing and started to look for potential hosts.
It’s a jungle. There are a couple of hundred members who offer their couches for travelers to crash on in Vancouver, but they all probably get far too many surfing requests, seeing as Vancouver is such a popular travel destination, so you have to make the request personal, so that you stick out from the croud. That also requires that you find a host that you actually really want to meet.
I spent many nights searching, reading profiles and writing requests. I got a few refusals due to absense on my particular dates and the host already being booked, and some people didn’t even answer. Eventually I got so stressed, my Vancouver days were fast approaching and I still hadn’t found anywhere to stay, so I had a night of panic request sending. All the while feeling that I probably wouldn’t be able to go to Vancouver at all.
Well, the next morning when I opened my inbox, I had gotten replies from all the hosts that I had sent requests to during the last week. Some said no, but others said that they would gladly host me and somehow, the ones that said yes were the ones I wanted to meet the most.
So now I have three hosts in Vancouver, three (probably) amazing couches to sleep on and I don’t know what to choose. One host is a girl who has traveled a lot in Latin America, the second is a Ph.D student of geography (!) and the third is a really adventurous guy who, among other things, works as a photographer. I want to meet them all. I’m leaning towards dividing my nights in Vancouver onto three different couches.
Katja Malmborg 