SB is proud to have published more blog entries over the last few months than I did. So, though am not really keen to do some blogging I’ll just summarise some of what’s been going on – I have been starting to participate in the Couchsurfing networking site.
As I haven’t been able to stay anywhere yet, I have just hosted people, and experiences differed quite a lot: my first guest was a really nice guy from Germany, who cooked us an excellent Salmon and Leek lasagne and we got on really well. My next guests were from Australia and America, and because I have written in my description that I like leftwing, alternative people I ended up with some kind of spiritual ghostwhisperer and energyhealers on their way to Findhorn Community. Now, they were very friendly, but I was slightly annoyed in that they did not contribute to any food costs, despite coming with a rental car and spending about £700 or so each on a week of spiritual self-discovery in the Findhorn community. Given that I am quite skint I thought that was a bit unfair though, especially as I opened my best bottle of fairtraded, organic wine for them and they also got a good share of the Lasagne.
The next guest was a really wonderfully smiley girl from Taiwan, who was incredibly nice and actually very keen to socialise a lot and go-out and make friends with other couchsurfers, whereas I am not that keen on partying anymore. It was quite interesting also listening into the discussions about Chinas and Taiwans political disagreements – did not know that both countries speak the same language and that China constantly tries to claim Taiwan as being part of China, whereas Taiwain claims its independence.
I had numerous exchanges with people wanting to come and stay and then it did not work out either with the date or travel plans. Some emails I got read like spam with really bad spelling: “am bored today but have found this amazing thing called couchsurfers”, came from an Australian Au Pair teenager wanting to stay with couchsurfers for the whole August period during Edinburgh Festival Time, another person tried to subsidise his English language course by staying on other people’s couches for two months or so but was getting kicked out, and a third girl booked the couch but then never appeared, so I was wondering what to do.
Then there was the Swedish girl, who seemed to ask me the whole time what I do, in various forms like “what do you do? What did you do today? What are you going to do tomorrow?” In the end, I just answered “no comment”, but luckily about two hours before she left we finally found one topic we could both seriously engage with each other: books.
So, at the moment I have decided not to take on any more couchsurfing guests for the next three months as it is a bit of a tricky and busy period with a lot of things coming up.