Feature: Surfing the globe, one couch at a time

Layout design by Jay Huerbin and Giles Howard Photos and graphic by Ben Filio… Layout design by Jay Huerbin and Giles Howard Photos and graphic by Ben Filio

Ashira Greene learned her lesson the hard way when she agreed to host a brand new member of Couchsurfing.com who had a barren profile.

“In my experience hosting, I’ve run into a few vagrant youths,” Greene said. The new sign-on was one of them.

He had been working at a summer camp in the States and was traveling through Pittsburgh for a day on his way back to Austria. Drawing on her maternal instinct, Greene agreed to meet him at the Greyhound station so he wouldn’t get lost finding her house.

That night, the new surfer went out in search of the arena. He took a bus the wrong way on his return trip and called Greene at 2 a.m. pleading for a ride home.

“At 2 in the morning, picking him up on the North Shore, I was annoyed,” she said. Though Greene did feel partially responsible, the mishap was “[beyond] the call of duty,” she said.

To show his gratitude, the guest bought her a pizza the next day before he left. He did just want to be friends, Greene said, but guests must be aware that oftentimes hosts have their own lives to worry about.

As far as these so-called vagrants, most “haven’t quite figured out what they are doing with their lives, maybe they haven’t finished their degree, they’re in this 22-to-25 [age] bracket, and they’re just kind of floating through. And that’s OK,” Greene said. “But, if you’re going to stay on someone’s couch, I feel like there should be some unsaid expectation that eventually someone will be staying on your couch.”

“It’s a pay it forward kind of system,” Greene said. “Part one is you get to stay with people for free, which is great. Part two is you become a part of a reciprocal community.”

Founded in April 2003 by 30-year-old Casey Fenton, a self-described “adventurer extraordinaire and social networker” originally from New England, The Couchsurfing Project on Couchsurfing.com is an Internet-based community for travel junkies worried about lodging and safety.

Its short-term goal is to provide a couch to any member of the network in need across the world. The long-term goal: to spread tolerance and cultural understanding, ultimately making for a better world.

Jason Kirin, Pittsburgh ambassador for CS, gave a quick history lesson on how the site came to be: Prior to visiting an out-of-country college, Fenton frequented a campus message board asking if he could crash on someone’s couch instead of paying for the traditional hotel or hostel.

The response he received was overwhelming, and with that, CS was born – at least in theory.

Here’s the deal: Anyone can register as a couch surfer online for free. Members are encouraged to act as hosts, offering their spare bed, couch or floor to traveling members in need.

Being a surfer is also a possibility and means requesting couch accommodation from members located at the destination. Lodging is entirely dependent on the mutual consent between host and surfer. Surfers can travel in groups or alone and may stay as long as is comfortable for both parties.

“I’ve heard of instances of people staying for months and being fine with that,” Kirin said.

The best thing: Zero money is involved. For stays that last an extended period of time, dish-washing, grocery shopping and other non-monetary forms of repayment are common. Yoga instruction and household repair are also some frequently shared skills.

“When people stay with me, we usually talk sign languages or juggling. These are things that I have to exchange with people that aren’t material. It’s fun,” Kirin said.

“There’s no rent involved. I feel totally disgusting when I exchange money with anything,” said Kirin, who has an entire bookshelf full of gifts (a stuffed koala bear from Australia, a Russian book of poetry, one-of-a-kind CDs from traveling musicians) from couch surfers he has hosted.

As one of the two Pittsburgh ambassadors, Kirin, who has hosted surfers from Australia, Russia, Austria, Germany and all over the United States within just this past year, is responsible for greeting new local surfers via e-mail and organizing monthly meet-ups at local bars, coffee shops and hot spots.

Past meetings have been held at Silky’s sports bar in Squirrel Hill, the Beehive coffeehouse in the South Side and The Quiet Storm coffeehouse in Garfield.

As with any Internet community, CS has taken the necessary steps to build a safe and reliable network of hospitality.

Surfers are completely in control of the information they publicly display on their profiles: Typically, personal cell phone numbers and home addresses are exchanged only after the lodging is settled.

There are three different levels of member verification, which cements your credibility as a surfer. Level one designates a brand new surfer sign-on. Level two requires a $25 or greater donation to the website via credit card.

Essentially, Kirin explained, because the donation is done with a credit card, the bank has already done most of the security work for CS: People with a certifiable identity are the only ones who can rightfully obtain credit cards.

To obtain a level three verification, CS sends members a letter to the street address they registered with. Enclosed in the letter is a confirmation website URL. Once members visit this URL, their street address is verified.

There is also a vouching system, through which surfers can vouch for one another and be vouched for themselves.

“If I’m vouching for somebody, essentially I’ve looked at the person’s profile, I’ve met this person in real life, we have spent time together, and I verify that not only everything they say in their profile is true but they’re a nice person to hang around, they’re a good person,” Kirin said. Members are permitted to vouch for other members only if they themselves have been vouched for at least three times.

Alexandros Labrinidis, co-director of Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory and assistant professor of computer science at Pitt, compares CS to eBay and Amazon. In the same way that sellers ask for comments and reviews, he says, CS members solicit references. When couch searching, results are listed in descending order of most highly vouched-for members.

“It seems that with some common sense, if you would like to get to experience new places on a very tight budget and meet new people, this seems to be a place to do it,” Labrinidis said. He also feels that the website is safer than hostels, where travelers are more likely to be victims of theft.

“You’re going to essentially stay with friends that you haven’t met before,” he said. Labrinidis does offer a safety suggestion: Do not give away all of your personal information, in particular your exact birth date, this could put you at risk for identity theft. It’s also important to be rational when it comes to taking precautionary measures, he said.

“If someone is on an exotic location and they say ‘I can put up 10 people at the same time’ and only one other person has vouched for them, maybe it’s not a safe bet.”

As with anything, though, CS is not exempt from the occasional security mishap.

“On the grand scale, if you add a million people to one thing, you are going to have things that screw up here and there,” Kirin said, who has personally heard of only two instances where people actually got hurt.

“You have some instances where you get a creepy guy who lets only women stay at his place, or you get a born-again Christian who doesn’t agree with somebody else’s views, and they just harp on them about life and their morals.”

Kirin made a point: “That’s not unique to Couchsurfing.com, that’s unique to existence.”

“If you have two people that have conflicting political views, just work it out,” Kirin said. Particularly in large cities with large numbers of CS members, surfer-swapping in the middle of the trip is not unheard of.

Age is no obstacle for CS wannabes. The youngest surfer request Kirin received was from a 17-year-old in Israel:

“I told him no, and he actually e-mailed me back and said ‘My parents said it’s fine,'” said Kirin, who was still uncomfortable with the situation and didn’t go through with it.

The oldest surfer Kirin housed was a 48-year-old English teacher from southeastern Pennsylvania.

Statewide, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have the largest couch-surfer populations, with 500 profiles in the Steel City alone. California and New York City are other highly involved locations.

“You have to have a real hippie mentality to travel around and stay at random people’s houses,” said Kirin, who adds that advertisement for the site can often be found in “esoteric coffee shops” and by word of mouth.

“The couch surfers are all looking out for each other,” he said.

Chris Wilson, a fifth-year senior English literature and philosophy major at Pitt, made his first trip out of the country to Costa Rica with his girlfriend in the summer of 2006.

“It was awesome. We taught English and lived in this little village up in the mountains. After that, I fell in love with travel, and I’ve been trying to do a big trip every summer since,” he said.

Since then, he’s been to Italy and Croatia. A new recruit to CS, Wilson heard about the site from an atypical source: a mother and daughter on their way to Europe.

“They said that was how they were arranging all of their lodging, through this website,” he said.

Though Wilson wasn’t as cautious as some are when requesting couches, he claims that his sex helps him out in that respect.

“I don’t think I’m the right demographic to be victimized,” he said.

With the help of CS, Wilson planned a trip to Montreal over spring break. He admitted that despite the funds he saved on housing in hotels or hostels, the trip was still pricey.

“Hostels are nice in that you can keep your own hours a little more. You can come and go as you please. But, it’s definitely a unique host-hostee relationship when you stay with a person. And it’s free,” he said with a laugh.

To prepare for his trip, he e-mailed a bunch of surfers.

“Even the people I didn’t end up staying with were really friendly,” he said. “Everybody that returned my e-mails was really friendly and eager to help.”

He hasn’t hosted yet, but is willing.

“I figure give and take. If I want to take advantage of the service, it’s kind of my duty to do the same for others,” said Wilson.

Greene has been a surfer since January of 2007. Her father works for an international organization, and her parents live in Singapore. One of her folks’ living conditions is a home-leave trip every other year – a round trip ticket from Singapore to the States.

When she graduated Wellesley College near Boston, Mass., Greene’s parents bought her an around-the-world ticket instead. She planned her own itinerary and set off for a trek around Western Europe making stops in Israel; Berlin; Barcelona and Bilbao, Spain; Nice, France; and Stockholm, Sweden. Before she left, a high school friend let her in on CS.

“I knew that I didn’t need anywhere to stay, I just wanted people to hang out with,” Greene said. Her first stop was Israel, where she began to contact other surfers around Europe. She offers some words of warning.

“I didn’t realize this at first, but you really need to contact a wide net of people. In the U.S., people check their computers all the time.

“People are more likely to have personal computers and be very hooked in. Europe, it’s not the case. People just don’t check their e-mail every day.”

According to Greene, at CS there is an unwritten, slightly awkward etiquette.

“On principle, if you want to explain couch surfing to someone in one sentence, it’s: ‘You get to stay for free with strangers on their couches.’ This can be abused so easily.”

Greene, who has now hosted six people in Pittsburgh, had some suggestions.

Rule one: Be “polite and interesting” when requesting a couch: A lengthy letter to introduce yourself to prospective hosts is not a bad idea.

Rule two: Be thorough. Be wary of new sign-ons with barren profiles and few references. Greene put it bluntly: “If you’re traveling alone and you’re a female, you are at the mercy of your intuition.”

Rule three: Cast out a wide net of communication. If you’re looking to meet up for coffee or a drink in a new town, get in touch with as many people as you can.

Some hosts, Greene said, are more independent and busy – and less willing to show you around or be your friend – than others. The same goes for keeping in touch post-couch crash: Some surfers do, some don’t. This brings up the ever-present couch surfing conundrum:

“Are we a hotel service, or are we friends now? Or are you just staying on my couch?” Greene often wonders.

Finally, Rule four: Keep your prospective host informed of your whereabouts. If you don’t show up, let him know you’re still alive:

“This is not a transaction of money, and this is not a transaction of friendship: You’re strangers. No one owes anyone anything,” Greene said. “But, if someone is expecting you to stay in their place, it just seems polite to let them know.”

Inevitably, Greene said, the point of couch surfing is to meet one another. Unlike the popular Internet social communities of Facebook and MySpace, users must be much more conscious of their activities, and that requires some responsibility.

Being the site proponent and seasoned surfer that he is, Kirin has gone as far as leaving his house key under his door mat for a couch surfer he’d never met before – after checking his verification level and references, of course.

“The wonderful thing about it all is you have complete control over who stays with you and where you stay. You can always say no to anybody you want to. People are really looking out for the well-being of everybody else. It’s really radical.”