Sofa Surfing

Story by James Andrews // Photos by Kathryn Bachen

Two years ago, Western junior Lara Buelow and her roommate, Randolph Rhea, huddled and shivered in a cramped, smelly tent they had pitched in a patch of woods beside an old cemetery. All night rain pummeled their tent while a dull, 24-hour sunlight suffused in through its fabric, waking them every hour or two. They had no place to stay.

They were miserable. They were two American students visiting the arctic tip of Norway.

Days before, Buelow, 22, and Rhea, 21, embarked on a dream trip from northern Sweden up to the city of Tromsø, Norway. Though they had little money between them and no semblance of an itinerary, two free weeks of summer vacation in Europe was reason enough to venture out.

After days of riding trains and nights of camping in national parks, the friends finally reached Tromsø: the place where the dream trip gave way to a reality check. The city hostel would not open for another month, no hotels fit their price range and they knew no Norwegians. Despite it being May, Buelow and Rhea still noticed snow on all the surrounding mountaintops when they wandered into the drizzling woods near the city limits to set up camp.

Thankfully, the next morning, they met Scott Meyer.

Compelled by fantasies of sleeping some place warm and dry, Buelow and Rhea walked to the Tromsø city library that morning to use a Web site Rhea had recently learned about-one where hospitable locals from all around the world offer their couches to travelers who need a place to sleep. There, at CouchSurfing.com, they contacted Meyer, a Tromsø resident and seasoned couch surfer.

"Scott instantly became our savior," Buelow says.

Within minutes of meeting Buelow and Rhea at the library, Meyer assured them they could pack their tent away-they could crash at his apartment. No charge.

"He pretty much gave us the keys to his apartment on the spot and was like, 'Oh, yeah, you can totally stay with me-I'll meet you back there in two hours,'" Rhea says.

The two friends slept in Meyer's living room for the next three nights. They made pizza with him, partied with his friends and visited places around the city based on his recommendations. Overnight, Buelow and Rhea's first couch surfing experience jump-started their love for a new method of travel, introducing them to roughly 100 individuals across the globe and giving them new perspectives on other cultures they could not gain without staying with locals.

"You meet people from a lot of different backgrounds," Buelow says. "You become familiar with this whole new international community so quickly."

That international community consists of more than 1 million couch surfers from almost every country on Earth who use Web sites like CouchSurfing.com, HospitalityClub.org and GlobalFreeloaders.com to stay with locals during their travels. With the global economy suffering in recent months, the community has grown at an exponential rate. In April 2009, an average of 14,000 new couch surfers registered with CouchSurfing.com each week, nearly doubling the growth numbers from April 2008, which also had doubled from the previous year. Approximately 300 people in the Bellingham area are now registered couch surfers-many of them Western students.

While CouchSurfing.com and similar Web sites attract most of their new users with the prospect of reducing travel costs, veteran couch surfers say the mission behind the project has very little to do with monetary savings.

"It's a super economical way to travel, but it's more so a wonderful way for us to have a cultural exchange," says Rick Bulman, a Bellingham artist and longtime couch-surfing host. "Suddenly someone's in your home from another country and you get to ask questions like, 'What's your life like?' 'What was going to school in your country like?' 'How does your society handle jails?' 'How do they look at gay people?'"

Since joining both Couch Surfing and Hospitality Club in December 2005, Bulman and his partner of 28 years, Jim Rich, have hosted more than 20 travelers in their Bellingham home, sparking long-lasting friendships in the process. Aside from their couch, which has cushioned guests from countries such as Turkey, Japan, Denmark, Guatemala and Finland, Bulman and Rich sometimes lodge their guests in a cabin above the sloping gardens of their backyard-a serene, Eden-like space the travelers share with chickens, hummingbirds and a busy koi pond.

Like most people who first hear about couch surfing, Bulman says he and Rich were initially skeptical about opening their doors to anyone who could find them on the Internet.

"Couch Surfing-when I first heard that name, I thought, 'That's not something I want to be involved with. That sounds like your out-of-luck buddy asking if he can come crash on your couch, and we don't do that,'" Bulman says. "But it's different. It's much more positive than that."

In fact, the couple says using Couch Surfing and Hospitality Club has bolstered their social network more than they could have imagined. Even more, they say the cultural exchanges they gain through the service have affected their lives deeply.

"Once you both agree to let someone into your home, you have to expect that things are going to change in your private life," Bulman says. "It requires you to communicate with each other to make it happen. It's strengthened our relationship-absolutely. You experience it and you have to agree, 'OK, we want more of this.' We usually go to sleep at night and talk about how great it's been."

One of the couple's most memorable guests was a Japanese man who flew from Tokyo to Los Angeles and bought a bike that he pedaled up to Bellingham, couch surfing along the way. He wanted to take a ferry from Bellingham to Alaska, but after learning how expensive ferry tickets were, he rode back to Seattle and bought a plane ticket to Anchorage, the couple says. From there, he biked across Canada until he reached New York City, where he reunited with his girlfriend, had a baby and started a restaurant that is only open on Thursdays.

Though the Japanese man only stayed with them for a week, more than two years ago, Bulman and Rich maintain good contact with him. In the world of couch surfing, strong bonds between hosts and guests form regularly. Of nearly 3 million feedback ratings exchanged between users on CouchSurfing.com, the Web site reports that 99.8 percent have been marked as positive experiences.

"The only problem we've run into was one obnoxious guy-just one of those obnoxious humanoids you wouldn't want to expose yourself to. But that's typically the biggest problem," Rich says. "We've never really found anyone who just comes over and wants to be a slob. They always want to cook. They always want to do dishes or help out around the house."

But for many women, the concept of couch surfing sparks thoughts of bigger threats than just obnoxious dudes.

"There are always people who tell you that you're going to get robbed or hurt if you travel like this too often," Buelow says. "But the truth is that there are millions of people out there who are just trying to make it work."

CouchSurfing.com tries to ensure the safety of travelers and hosts through a number of measures. Users write feedback on one another's profiles, while many also pay an optional $25 deposit to verify their address and identity. Experienced users can also "vouch" for friends they meet through the Web site, giving their profile more credibility and their visitors extra reassurance.

But the best prevention against danger while couch surfing, says Lara Buelow's sister, Maya, is to simply be smart about choosing a host by thoroughly communicating, and only contacting users with detailed profiles and trustworthy pictures. She also recommends meeting in a public place beforehand.

Western junior Peter Donnelly couch surfed for the first time during spring break 2009 in Greece. He and a friend arranged to meet their host at a metro station in Athens and he remembers feeling a rush of anxious anticipation as they waited to meet the stranger whose couch they would sleep on.

"We were just waiting and going, 'Oh my God, what are we doing? Are we crazy? This is ridiculous,'" he says. "But soon enough, he rode up on his moped with a big smile, and after the initial formalities, we knew he was going to be a lot of fun."

Donnelly, 20, says during the short amount of time he has spent couch surfing, he already notices a positive change in his disposition. He is more outgoing. The world feels like a smaller, more manageable place than before. He knows now he is free to travel the globe as long as he makes a priority of experiencing cultures beyond his own.

"Pushing your comfort zone can make you grow and stretch as a person," he says. "It's important to realize that our own way of looking at the world is not the only way, and that while we do have differences with people from other cultures, we have a surprising amount in common."

The experiences of many couch surfers mirror Donnelly's. By seeing life in a foreign country through the insight of a local host, they gain a perspective on a new culture they might not have obtained as a tourist passing through.

Rich suspects that as the couch surfing community continues to grow, so too will the number of culturally conscious, thoughtful people in the world. It is a growth he cannot welcome soon enough.

"When I'm emperor," Rich says, "I will require that everyone travel to foreign countries for two years minimum, and they will have to be in cultures they're not familiar with."

"After all," he adds, reclining on the couch he has invited the world to come sleep on, "nothing ventured, nothing gained."