Couchsurfing
across Russia
How a website helped me cross a continent
By Fleur Britten
CHANCES ARE THAT YOU, OR THE PASSENGER NEXT TO YOU, or perhaps that one in the charcoal suit across the aisle – or indeed all of you – are about to land in a city where you won’t know a soul, where you’ll endure lonely dinners for one, and maybe even resort to discussing the latest meteorological activity with the bell boy for company. What’s more, perhaps you’ll find yourself in a beige hotel room so featureless it could be anywhere – or nowhere – in the world. Just your average business trip, then, where sometimes, one can feel so removed from life on the ground that it’s like looking down on the city through a straw.
Well, there’s a solution, and it’s called couchsurfing – which started a few years ago and has become a global phenomenon, from Australia to Zambia, that harnesses the technology of social networking to connect travellers wanting to meet local hosts, entirely for free. Thus, it was this ‘travel networking’ site that enabled me to sleep in the houses of total strangers for 10 weeks throughout Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. For me, the ‘couch’ included a kitchen in Moscow (whirring kitchen appliances and glowing LED lights came as standard, all night), a yurt in Mongolia with a family of six who had the sleeping arrangements of Charlie Bucket’s grandparents, all under one quilt, and a couple’s bedroom floor in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s second city – after witnessing their force-10 fight.
But it doesn’t all have to be so deep-end. Or indeed reckless. Couchsurfing works in a similar way to Facebook, – your personal profile reveals friends, interests and (flattering) photos, and there is a meritocratic feedback system, so any weirdos are quickly weeded out.
In fact, you needn’t even cross the threshold of a stranger’s house, but can just meet up for a drink with someone you like the look of (provided they also like the look of you). You can join a city’s local group, where you find (often daily) activities to amuse – meals, film clubs, dance classes, all populated by real-life locals to divert you from the tourist traps and grant you access to an area’s well-kept secrets.
And so it was that three hours after landing in Moscow from London, our Russian host took us to a house party thrown by two young ex-pat architects, who had real Russian friends, real Russian Standard vodka and real Russian stories. “Let me tell you about Moscow women,” said one local accountant, conspiratorially. “There are more women than men here, so while they’re better looking than the men, they have to work a lot harder. It’s why you see feisty, dressy Russian women alone in bars – they’re competing for limited resources.” The lone male traveller would quickly be toast in Moscow; far safer to be under the protection of local couchsurfers.
In Vladivostok, after a journey to the very end of the Trans-Siberian railway some 9,302km east of Moscow, I had the privilege of an ‘Ambassador’s Reception’. Like any organised society, the 1,250,000-strong membership of couchsurfing is hierarchical – Ambassadors are a superior form of couchsurfer, one that is extra responsible, organised and hospitable. My dynamic 20-something host summarily rounded up all the couchsurfing travellers in town – a young Russian businessman who stayed in hotels on business trips, but used couchsurfing simply to locate company for dinner and drinks, and a Czech/Slovak duo who had driven a Skoda all the way from the Czech Republic – for a group tour to Vladivostok’s fortress. This might not sound like such a thrill, but given that said fortress was described in the guidebook as “really hard to find” and that visiting on your own was “very difficult”, it was in fact quite the privilege. Couchsurfing delivers access. As well as an instant gang. A volt of pleasure fizzed through my body as I suddenly found myself somewhere where coach trips never came, and with four new, ready friends, all bound by a shared sense of cultural curiosity and a will not to be alone.
After four weeks on the road, I booked into a hotel in Beijing for the first time to test out the Russian businessman’s method. One month of back-to-back couchsurfing is intense, intimate and at times undignified (especially in one-room apartments where their owners insist on wandering around in tiny pants at bedtime, as one of my hosts did). But could I get the same cultural immersion from the hotel/ couchsurfing combo?
I posted a thread on couchsurfing’s forum to recruit allies to climb the Great Wall. I checked out the Beijing group’s Google calendar to find all manner of group dinners, salsa classes and gatherings to watch the game. And I sent a message to Beijing’s Ambassador to meet up for a drink.
A short wait later, and the results were in: two travellers got in touch about climbing the Great Wall. Plus I had a couchsurfing house party to go to, where I would hear both Chinese and ex-pat perspectives on Chinese politics – with China’s grip on the media, you wouldn’t find that in your hotel room. And I found myself ascending a Sino-Soviet apartment block to have herbal tea with an American teacher, the Beijing Ambassador who’d met so many couchsurfers, she’d perfectly sussed the type: “Just grassroots people, environmentally conscious, keen to better the world, idealists.”
There in lies the point about couchsurfing.
It’s not just about grabbing opportunities or freeloading – it’s steeped in virtue. Couchsurfing professes (so endearingly earnestly) to “make the world a better place”, by bridging cultures and encouraging friendships between nations.
For example, when I stayed in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Russia’s autonomous republic of Buryatia, my Buryatian host described how she would visit a shaman in uncertain times. I, in return, recounted how British people went to psychotherapy (at which point she looked at me like I was from another planet). The point is, when you hear such information in context (as opposed to out of context in the media, or dramatised in film), it develops your understanding of a culture and thus breeds tolerance. Worthy, maybe, but it really does.
But the very premise of couchsurfing relies on altruism. Yes, there really are people out there that believe in sharing what’s theirs. The extreme of this for me was when one host’s Russian mother came into the bathroom while I was performing my ablutions one night to – yes – actually go to the toilet in front of me.
But hosts also shared more welcome things like washing machines, dinners and their emotional space. Couchsurfing also depends on a mutual respect of trust – pretty radical in a time when strangers are regarded with such suspicion.
In Yekaterinburg, a large industrial city across the Urals, 1,500km east of Moscow, I arrived a full 24 hours before my host, but it didn’t bother her – she just sent her friend to meet me with the keys to her apartment.
When it all works out, the world of couchsurfing is a rare bubble of humanity, positivity and trustworthy new friends in what’s considered a bad world. What more could you really ask for from a trip abroad?
On the Couch: Tales of Couchsurfing a Continent by Fleur Britten is out now
