CouchSurfing in Good Magazine: ‘This Isn’t Just About a Place to Crash.’

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  12.19.06 | 7:50 AM ET

The story of CouchSurfing, the fast-growing site that connects travelers with fellow travelers and their couches, begins with founder Casey Fenton. Peter Alsop tracked down Fenton and several CouchSurfing devotees, aka the Collective, in Montreal and profiled them in an intriguing story for Good Magazine. Fenton, it turns out, has a motive beyond bringing travelers together. “His mission,” Alsop writes, “is to transform people’s lives.”

Alsop continues:

This narrative of transformation is common among CouchSurfers. I’ve heard variations on it from a dozen different people. It seems to go like this: Being welcomed into someone’s home, perhaps the most private place in which to meet, creates instant, deep connection and lasting friendship. In having to tell our own story to others, over and over again, we come to realize certain truths about ourselves. If we are shy, we begin to talk more. If we are brash, we begin to listen. And by witnessing other lives, we open to possibilities that we were once blind to. Alex Goodman, 23, a member of the Collective who, as it happens, is also a sociologist studying the group, said this: “If I were 16 and in search of answers for how to live my life, I wouldn’t go to a rabbi or a priest or a Buddhist monk. I’d try to find a way to systematically evaluate the experiences of everyone around me, to see what has worked and what hasn’t, what makes for a good, happy, worthwhile life and what doesn’t. Information technology and the emergence of social networks are making this possible.”

Despite a technological breakdown earlier this year, CouchSurfing is strong and growing. It claims more than 145,000 members, a number that at present growth rates could rise to 500,000 by the end of next year.

Related on World Hum:
* Secrets to Sleeping on a Stranger’s Couch

Tags: Couch Surfing


1 Comment for CouchSurfing in Good Magazine: ‘This Isn’t Just About a Place to Crash.’

Terry Ward 12.19.06 | 11:26 AM ET

I just returned from Morocco, and most of the travelers I met were talking about couchsurfing.

There was Salvo, a Sicilian, who had been doing it during two years of travel, mostly in Eastern Europe.

Chris, a writer from Brooklyn, had spent 90 percent of his summer travels in Europe on fellow travelers’ couches. And he had just surfed in Fes with some American students studying Arabic there.

Then there was Gabriela, who Chris surfed with in Portugal and who had come to Marrakech to travel with him for a week.

So intrigued was I by the buzz, that I decided to try couchsurfing myself in Limerick, Ireland last week.

Mike and Carlo were my hosts in a great pad in the city center. And not only was the room free (a couch is the bare minimum, but many people actually offer entire rooms to travelers), but so was the great conversation and the insight into the lives of the locals.

Now, if I can just get a couch of my own (not to mention a semi-permanent address), I’d love to start returning the favor by hosting some CSers myself.

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