What is Couchsurfing?
Travel
Couchsurfing is a very useful platform for travellers, which helps travellers to find a host and also to become a host for guests from other countries. I wanted to use it for a long time, and finally we opened the door of our house to Argentinean, very entertaining, friendly and very knowledgeable Nicolas 🙂 After my first experience with Couchsurfing, I decided that I can write a post about Couchsurfing for those, who don't know about.
First of all, it should be noted that the platform is completely free, you open your house for visitors or hosts open their home to you for free. What do we get by doing Couchsurfing? In fact, the basic goal is to find a place where people, who don't have enough money can stay for free. But Couchsurfing has developed so much that people who aren't in the financial need can use it for fun, learning, and innovation. And what is wrong with saving a little money? 🙂 So you find a place to stay for free wherever you are travelling, and spend quality time with people living there. Imagine a person who lives in another country, who has a different world view, a different lifestyle, a culture of which we don't know, works in different jobs can contribute us a lot of different things. It's a very nice platform. Who wouldn't want to learn so much from history, culture without reading intense tutorials? The most helpful thing is to choose people who speak the language you want to learn. And the most important and worthy thing of all is I would say to establish a relationship with people, you can build a good friendship with that person. Especially if we are able to associate with different people, who have different languages, religions and cultures. This experience is priceless. I think we are all can build a normal relationship with people, who are like us. And one of the best things is helping. What could be better than helping one another? How many birds did we hit with a stone? 🙂
So now, how does Couchsurfing work? How can we be a couchsurfer? First, go to Couchsurfing.com and create a profile for yourself. Share as much information as you can about yourself, it is very helpful for you to find people who have the same common interests as you and also people will easily know and trust you. Try to answer the questions you are facing, it will take a little time. In particular, where did you travel, which languages ​​you know, which languages ​​you want to learn, what is your next trip plan. If it is suitable for you to be host, do so, if you aren't sure, select "Maybe Yes" option. If you have a clear-cut travel plan, you will also find a section for it, and write exactly where are you travelling and the exact time. And Couchsurfing will find you hosts of those places. Sometimes it may be that people write to you and invite you to their home, but often you must find them and write to those people. But the question is how can we choose the one we do not know? How can we open our homes to them or stay in their house? Isn't that terrible? Of course, this is a matter we need to be careful about. We should carefully look at their profiles, in particular, references section. If there are too many positive and almost zero negative references, then we can be comfortable. Couchsurfing sends a request to write a reference to both parties after each experience and doesn't share those comments in profiles for a certain time unless you both write about each other. So, both parties are unaware of one another's reference, which in turn makes the interpretations more objective. The other thing I can say is that keep the Couchsurfing days minimum, 1-2 days is ideal because it is unlikely that one person will be able to open their doors for a long time to you. In the next post, I will share my first Couchsurfing experience with Nicolas. If you have questions or comments you can write in the comments section below. I would like to read your Couchsurfing experiences if you have had.