The Couch Surfing Project

This sounds like an interesting and inexpensive way to see the world. (The link goes to an article on the NY Times site, which is now free but you do have to register and they do ask you nosy, off-putting questions.)

The article is about a social networking site called The Couch Surfing Project that allows travelers to find people who will let them sleep on their couch and who will introduce them to their city or town. You could travel around the world without ever staying in a hotel, motel or hostel. You could avoid all the guide book tourist traps and see how the locals live. Or, conversely, you could offer up your own couch and meet travelers from around the world.

At the end of the article, they liken it to the hitchhiking days.

Mark Ellingham, the founder of the Rough Guide travel guides, noted, too, that what couch surfing seems to diminish is the idea of the foreign country as a commodity to be sampled and purchased. “It sounds more empathetic than the old hippie-backpacker thing of seeing what you can get out of a place and moving on,” he said. “It reminds me of when everyone was hitchhiking, a practice that stopped in the 1990s either because of fear or a new affluence, or both. Hitchhikers were very committed, too. It’s a new idea but an old ethos.”

I figure I hitchhiked about 15,000 miles in my youth. There’s no better way to see Canada. (Well maybe that train through the Rockies followed by the cruise up the west coast to Alaska might be better.) It’s kind of sad that people can’t hitchhike anymore…but on the other hand, I’m happy I got to experience it and greatly relieved that my son didn’t. I’d sleep a lot easier at night if he was couch-surfing than if he was hitchhiking.

There are 318,662 couch surfers in 31,238 cities in 220 countries. There are hundreds of people in Ottawa who are part of the Couch-Surfing Project. There are 20 in Newfoundland too, which is great because I want to go there. Thousands in London, thousands in France, 40 in Fiji, 17 in Iraq, 296 in Bangkok, 10 in Malawi. There are couches waiting for you all over this world!

(If you do go to the Couch Surfing Project site, be sure to click on Couchsearch! rather than using the search box on the home page.)