On The Couch. Fleur Britten

       CHAPTER 1 LONDON: A REVOLUTION TO RIOE

      AUGUST 2008 LONDON

      ‘I have an idea.’ I was on the phone to my great friend, Ollie. ‘It’s a little extreme, but I think you’ll like it.’

      Ollie and I had been friends for so long that neither of us could quite remember when or where we met. Suffice to say it would have been drunken, at university, about fifteen years ago. We had a shared appreciation of the night, of the world and of the new; especially new chocolate products. Well, today, I had something new for us to try and it wasn’t edible.

      ‘Let’s go couchsurfing.’

      Couchsurfing was not, as might reasonably be assumed, synonymous with bed-hopping, or being a couch potato, but was the name for a one-million-member strong, international ‘hospitality exchange’ website, connecting people who wanted to stay in other people’s homes around the world with people happy to host them; it was like one big notice board. When I’d been abroad before, I had always longed to have tea with a local, or be invited to a party. I’d done some home stays and had once gatecrashed a house party in Berlin after seeing it spilling out of a high window, but when it came to talking to the natives I suddenly felt stuck. Couchsurfing seemed like the ideal mediator.

      If Ollie agreed, couchsurfing would become the theme of a ten-week trip to Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan alone boasted an impressive 124 couches). We were both drawn by an irresistible call to the East, intrigued by societies in varying degrees of ‘post-communism’, and for two years had been discussing planting our flags on what was over one-fifth of the globe’s landmass. We wanted to unpick the world’s largest country (Russia) and most populated nation (China) from the media myths they’d been reduced to—couchsurfing promised the inside track.

      No more homogenous hotels for us, no more formulaic checklists and guidebook dependence deadening the whole experience. Couchsurfing presented a timely switch from passive observation to participation—we’d be hearing the truth, whether settled around the kitchen table, lounging naked in the Russian banya, or relaxed and disarmed on the sofa. And what an apt metaphor the couch was for a warm welcome. Wasn’t couchsurfing what holidays were waiting for?

      Couchsurfing was founded in 2004 when an American, Casey Fenton, spammed about 1,500 Icelandic students asking them to let him stay. He was inundated with replies, and the idea became a phenomenon. There were devotees who’d sold up everything they owned to couchsurf the world, and couchsurfers offering ‘couches’ in virtually every country across all continents, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe, where a ‘couch’ could be a bedroom, a garden, a corner of the floor; or even just a couch.

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