When first-year graduate sociology student Catherine Cotrubi travels, she has the choice of more than one million couches worldwide to choose from. This is because Cotrubi is a member of Couch Surfing, an online community devoted to connecting travelers in more than 230 countries and provinces around the world.
“The idea of it is really international relations in its purest form,” Cotrubi said. “It’s a network of people who love to travel, love getting to know other people and aren’t afraid to go out of typical comfort zones to get to know others.”
To Cotrubi, this virtual community is about more than just having multiple places to crash for the night, it’s about cultivating the true spirit of travel. Cotrubi feels that American writer and avid traveler Bill Bryson’s following words best embody this spirit:
“To my mind,” Bryson wrote, “the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”
The site was initially created with the intention of connecting travelers in order to have a place to “surf,” or stay as a guest in the homes of locals in whichever city they find themselves. Currently, the Web site has more than one million members.
First-year graduate physics student Andrew McGowan’s experiences hosting were more about showing surfers parts of the area that they may have otherwise missed.
“A few students from Russia stayed with me for a weekend,” McGowan said, “and I ended up taking them up to D.C., out on the Rappahannock River and showing them a lot of aspects of Virginia they would have never seen before.”
For him, couch surfing is more than just a good way to cut down on expenses, but it is the best way to travel in order to truly experience an area.
“It is a good way to save money, but the most valuable thing is that it provides an opportunity for cultural exchange,” McGowan said.
By making a personal connection first, travelers are able to see the area through the eyes of someone who knows much more than tourist brochures.
“If you go to a city and you don’t know anybody, the degree to which you can get to know the city and people there is much smaller,” McGowan said. “Couch surfing helps you to break through the tourist part and connect with people on a different level.”
A version of this article appeared in the Mar 19 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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That's so weird, because my friend Catherine Cotrupi does the same thing. I wonder if she and Catherine Cotrubi know each other.
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Hey, Liz, if you haven't already joined the Blacksburg & Roanoke groups I highly recommend doing so. Someone usually has a local event planned every month or so. You can attend one of the dinners or other events and meet the local CS crowd face-to-face.
My whole family both Surfs and hosts other Surfers and none of us have ever had any bad experiences. The opportunity to meet cool people, like Amro, who come from other cultures really helps to understand our world in a better way.
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