What would life be without some a bit less than positive experiences so now and then? Isn't life including Couchsurfing like a dish with various types of spices? Sweet, sour, bitter, spicy? I needed less than extremely positive experiences to be able to grow up as a person. To be true I never had any really negative experience on Couchsurfing but sometimes it didn't click or probably the circumstances were not right to live up my ideas of Couchsurfing.
I expect from Couchsurfing some sort of friendship between different cultures where people also become friends and host each other. Even before I joined Couchsurfing I have never been a friend of hostel dorms but rather prefer non tourist spots and immerse in cultures. It has been quite disappointing when I sense that somebody originaly has nothing else in mind but to save money at somebody else's expenses. Hopefully people can understand how it feels to be used a free B & B, even when they are respectful and try to connect to you.
The free hostel from XXX in country Neverland
This time I would keep privacy and will not mention the place, name and city where my next host comes from. I will call him host XXX from city XXX. Host XXX was definitely a friendly and laid back host with a hospitality that I cannot imagine. He enjoyed the world coming to his place and was a generous host. However, being hosted back-to-back is not my cup of tea and queueing for the bathroom would make me feel like canned sardines. As I arrived at his place I was totally disappointed because I had to sleep on the floor without a mattress and sharing with strangers I wouldn't be in control of the numbers. The surfers kept coming so I wasn't even sure who was still coming and how many surfers would end up at his place. As the last surfers came I already had panic attacks and I was not used to wait so long for the shower.
I was already aware that we could not rely on Couchsurfing alone and that we should be prepared and have money for a hostel or hotel. That was probably the first mistake that I made. Host XXX and me had email and phone contact for about 3 months. My mistake was of course that I did not ask exactly for my sleeping arrangements. City XXX was busy in the high season and had few hosts compared to other places. I'm not enthusiastic about hostel dorms and hotels were all fully booked and charged triple walk-in rates for those who didn't book far in advance. The budget hotels and single rooms in hostels were booked out for a few weeks and so were the low rates for good hotels. If I knew that host XXX hosted so many people I would have booked a good hotel far in advance for a reasonable rate.
What have I learnt from this experience?
Some hosts don't have limits for the number of their guests and more comparable with free hostels entertaining party guests. Nice......but I prefer personal connections with my prospective hosts. Nowadays I would not only read their profiles but would also ask carefully about sleeping arrangements and make sure that I will be the only guest in the house, let alone sharing a room with a traveler. My idea about Couchsurfing is to focus more on the lifestyle of the hosts and therefore find other surfers rather disturbing. I was too polite to ask about sleeping arrangements because I thought that I should concentrate more on the relationship with the hosts. However, how could I be serene enough to relate to the host when I have 7 sleepless nights?
In total I had only one lukewarm experience hosting somebody and three people that I threw out of my NYE party in Sydney. Being in control of your guests seem to make the experience much more tolerable. In the future, I will book a hotel far in advance for a couple of days parallel to searching for a host. This learning experience was definitely necesssary for me to live up the wonderful ways of Couchsurfing.....
When I think back to all my hosting and surfing experiences: Nearly all of my hosting and surfing interactions were between positive and extremely positive, except of one horrible surfing in Perth with a person who in my opinion was not made for hospex sites. I was traumatised and other unpleasant experiences resulted from this surfing fatigue and trauma. Couchsurfing is definitely a factor with several unknown variables and if we are not up to an unpleasant surprise we can only do our best to avoid it.
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