CouchSurfing in Salamanca.

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When I was backpacking around Mexico and Central America, trading starry-eyed plans for upcoming trips, there was something unfashionable about dropping the word “Europe” in casual conversation. Forks hit the ground; people threw their hands up, taking offense. I almost came to blows with one scruffy stoner, whose eyes snapped out of their narcotic stupor at the words “Eurail pass,” as if I’d just voted Republican.

Honduras, Myanmar, the African bush: if you wanted to earn your travel stripes, you had to start racking up visas for countries that were all but convulsing from social unrest. Stable governments were - like flush toilets and periodontics - relics of some outdated, bourgeois, neo-colonial system. Never mind the Alhambra, the Acropolis, the treasures of the Uffizi: Europe was where stale pensioners - their bank accounts fattened by Euros, dollars and pounds sterling - went to bask in the warm afterglow of empire.

It doesn’t take much imagination to suspect that the exorbitant costs of European travel are a not-insignificant factor here. Backpackers are a thrifty lot. In their most virulent strain, these guys can choke ten cents from a penny. In Mexico, I met some kids so lost in a fog of hash and psychedelics that they couldn’t tell Diego Rivera from Geraldo Rivera; yet they could recite - with the maniacal precision of an idiot-savant - their day-to-day expenses, down to the last peso.

Fortunate to have a steady income as I traveled, I was spared the rigorous mental gymnastics that took place whenever the waiter brought us la cuenta. But I knew that Europe would be a different beast; that the dollar was taking a beating abroad; and that if I didn’t tread with well-budgeted care, I, too, would be bickering over the bill, a few pesos shy of the poorhouse.


By now I’ve forgotten just which good-hearted traveler first put me on to CouchSurfing. It might’ve been that organic farmer on the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago; maybe it was the hippie with wild eyes who - sitting cross-legged on a hammock in Maui - told me about his plans to start an island commune, once the threat of Peak Oil became a reality. But whoever he is, wherever he is, I hope his head is sleeping soundly tonight - preferably on someone else’s couch.

The idea behind the site is to connect like-minded travelers around the world, proving one couch at a time that this planet’s really a tiny place. In spite of my suspicions - echoed by pretty much anyone first hearing about the site - there’s really no catch. As a surfer, you’re not bound to accept anyone into your own home - though the expectation is that if you’re drawn to the site’s philosophy, you’d probably want to have some straggler - fresh off a flight from Ulaan Bataar - plopping down for a couple of days.

Call it travel karma. We all have stories of some kind stranger who - swooping down like a guardian angel - saved us in a pinch with a spare sleeping bag, a few quetzales, or a shoulder to cry on because you can only take so many cold showers before losing your shit. Now, instead of entrusting yourself to happenstance in a bus station in Quito, you can hop online, click on a profile, and meet that stranger before you’ve even booked your flight.

The CS community is thousands strong; you can find a couch in Karachi, a sofa in Siam Reap, a floor in Florence. I’ve arranged to stay with Karla, a bubbly Mexican girl, when I get to Salamanca. She has an enthusiastic profile peppered with exclamation points. Her pictures are all smiles, and I imagine it’d be a cold heart indeed that couldn’t warm to her. We exchange a few emails, but there’s a bit of trouble over a reluctant roommate. I conduct a full-frontal charm offensive, battering the roomie’s defenses with an arsenal of sympathy (“I don’t blame her for being wary; who wouldn’t be?”) and offers to do the dishes. After a couple of days she’s sold: no small thing. I’ve just managed to save myself €20 a night.

Karla meets me in Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor with a smile and two kisses. Her boyfriend, Patrick, a handsome Frenchman visiting from Paris, gives me a firm handshake. She lives about two minutes from the plaza, in a spacious and airy walk-up overlooking a busy café. I’m worn out by a short night of sleep and a very long walk from the train station, weighed down by what - in retrospect - is maybe more crap than I really need to be carrying. She shows me into a spare room and offers me a drink. Patrick brings out a case of beers: he’s a sales representative for Heineken. For the next two hours, I’m working really hard to convince myself that every couch I surf will be this good.

As an American abroad, I’ve quickly grown accustomed to the fact that I’ll always be talking politics. People tend to give me the benefit of the doubt; more often than not, they’re just looking for some reassurance that not everyone in the States is as mad as our policies might suggest. I try to describe the climate of fear in the months after 9/11, the difficulty of learning, as Americans - separated from Europe by thousands of miles and centuries of war- how to see ourselves as part of a global enterprise. For Americans, the world was irrevocably changed on one clear, late-summer morning in 2001; for the rest of the world, though, it was the days and weeks that followed that have had the gravest consequences.

Patrick recalls the despair that gripped the continent during our last election. While a mock vote saw Kerry win worldwide by a comfortable margin of 80%, an anguished Europe watched with disbelief as American voters went to the polls. Though I do my best to explain how the Democrats bumbled, how the Republicans played upon American fears with mastery, the result - for Patrick, for the world - was a slap in the face. In spite of the bitter lessons learned in the years after September 11, we went and put the same arrogant regime in the White House.

To this day, as Patrick suggests, it’s hard for most Europeans to forgive us.

You get the feeling that far more than an ocean divides us. Patrick’s sold on the European system. The grandson of a Frenchman and a German who fought on opposing sides in the Second World War, he’s convinced that centuries of staunch nationalism and bloodshed can’t stand in the way of progress. In Europe at least, the world is coming together. While Americans have shuttered our borders in recent years, Europeans have watched theirs dissolve. He remembers the day he met Karla, at a World Cup party in Kaiserslautern this summer. Their host - a German - had opened his doors to friends and strangers, and for three wild days, Germans and Italians and Poles and Spaniards turned his place into some motley mix of Oktoberfest and the UN. He remembers that party with significance: he could see the future of Europe drunk and sprawled out on the sofa. Karla, part of a solid Mexican contingent who had made the trip to Germany, gets bright-eyed when he talks about how they met.

She probes me on her native country, flush with the high color that comes with shameless flattery. In my two months in Mexico, I grew very attached to the country and its people. Her questions come in quick succession: “What surprised you most?” “What was your favorite place?” “What do most Americans think about Mexicans?” I suspect Patrick’s coming to the grim realization that we can both talk about Mexico for hours.

He listens attentively; since they met in Germany, Karla’s been working hard to sell him on her country’s charms. We gloss over the tacos that grounded me for four days in Mexico City, and the hostel in Oaxaca where I - with no small degree of technical interest - manually flushed the toilet by dumping a bucket of water into the bowl.

“We have nice hotels in Mexico, too,” says Karla.

“That means someone else dumps water into the toilet for you,” I say.

It’s clear there’s some good-hearted ribbing that goes on between them. Karla keeps referring to him as “an arrogant Frenchman,” making fussy little faces that, I suspect, are meant to evoke images of a stuffy Parisian inspecting a bottle of wine. Patrick, tidily summing up the difference between France and Latin America, offers, “You make drugs, we make wine and cheese.”

Diana - Karla’s Colombian roommate - gets a fiery look in her eye. You get the feeling she’s heard that line one too many times before. I’m trying to forget that this is the same roommate who had doubts about the whole CouchSurfing enterprise to begin with, but it’s a losing gambit. Even as the night wears on and she begins, I suspect, to warm to my distinct brand of American charm, I can’t help but look at those dark, severe eyes and wonder how long before she chucks my bags out the window.

But my fears are unfounded. After what is - I’ll admit - an impressive little improvisation on Latin American politics, I get the sense I’ve won her over. For the rest of the night I’m at ease. They all work hard to make me feel at home, and I’m practically embarrassed by their kindnesses. Karla cooks a hearty Mexican feast; afterward, eager to show some small measure of gratitude, I do the dishes. As I’m drying, Patrick comes in and - with a fine stage whisper - says, “Don’t give her any ideas.”

They disappear into the bedroom. Patrick just arrived last night, and they haven’t seen each other in weeks. It’s late in the afternoon by the time they emerge - rumpled, sleepy, looking slightly drunk - and they suggest I take a nice siesta, since we’ve got a long night ahead.

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