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As many people prepare to travel for spring break we thought it would be a great time to rebroadcast our show on trust while traveling.
If a stranger sent you an email and asked to sleep on your couch, would you let him? Many people don't even like the idea of sharing their seat on the bus with a stranger, let alone sharing their home. But that's exactly what the idea of couchsurfing is all about: strangers meet online and then crash on each other's couches when traveling. It's popular around the world, particularly among teens. Over 2,000 new surfers sign up every day.
There are other ways that strangers help each other out while traveling. Hitchhiking — once socially acceptable, now illegal in many places — is being organized more and more online through websites like Craigslist and Digihitch.com. House-swapping is where you stay in someone else's home while they live in yours.
In each of these cases people are trusting their personal possessions — and their personal safety — to complete strangers. Have you tried couchsurfing, hitchhiking or house-swapping? What has your experience been?
GUESTS:
- Tim Hagge: Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Portland State University
- Alex Hansen: Couchsurfing Ambassador for Portland
- Heather English: Couchsurfer
- Al Peterson: Former hitchhiker
- Dee Poujade: Home-swapper
Tagged as: travel
Photo credit: One Sec Before The Dub
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We have a home exchange planned for Europe this Summer, was just debating the 'safety' of this with friends. We choose to believe that the vast majority of people in the world are good. Would we trash their home? Of course not! So why would I thinkt they would trash ours? We "met" on Skype and we will be in their home while they are in ours. Both parties have friends/neighbors nearby who will look in on the guests. We will Skype with them while we are in each others homes. We trust that they will treat our home and car just as we will treat theirs. We could not afford the lodging for our family of 4 otherwise. This allows us to have a kitchen, laundry, really get good sleep, etc. Its perfect!
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My sister and I went on a a trip a couple years ago through the UK, Italy, Slovenia, & Austria. We went hitch hiking through the Lakes District in the UK because the buses were so expensive. I was nervous at first but after the first go at it I felt much more comfortable. We ended up doing it 5 times and met some amazing people. Each person that picked us up said they regurally pick people up. I have since been more incline to pick people up here in the US.
On the same trip we also did some couch surfing in Italy, Slovenia, & Austria. Our experience in Italy was amazing. The man and his wife were amazing! When we arrived he had dinner prepared for us, each morning he had breakfast for us. Then he took us up to his mother in-laws where we went on a hike with him and his wife.
Each time we had a great experience with the three people we stayed with. We picked them because people had left them a lot of comments. I would totally do it again because the experience was much better than staying in a hostel. Not just because it was free but you get to interact with and connect to locals. Having a more local experience is what traveling is all about and through couch surfing you get that experience.
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I don't know if it is still done but there used to be a practice called something like a "Driveaway Car". If someone wants to fly to LA instead of drive but wants their car there when they get there, a business would make the arangement for someone else to drive that car. So if you wanted to get to LA you could apply to drive that car and deliver it and only pay for the gas. They would give you a few days to make the drive.
I drove a Mercedes 280 SL convertible sportscar from LA to Portland for someone who had bought it in Phoenix. What a great fun car to drive!
They do a similar thing with sailboats such that you could volunteer to be on the crew and travel to someplace for free, just doing some work while sailing.
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I couchsurfed with a woman in Albuquerque NM last year when I went for a conference. We chatted and had tea at night when I came home, she was lovely and it was a great experience to get to know someone and share a few evenings. I think its a great exercise in trust and community, something our society desperately needs to work to get back to.
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You could set up a safety check-back with your family and or friends by finding out the local police number where you are going to and telling your family that number and then agreeing to check back with them every day and if you don't check in the family could call those local police to check on you at the couchsurfing address. And leave a current photo of yourself at home in case someone needs it to help search for you.
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I hitched around the Martime Provinces in Canada a few years ago. It added a lot of interaction with locals to my trip. My favorite ride was a priest who was blasting Abba.
I then had a debt - so pick up some hitchhikers now. Once I picked up an old friend - who I'd know eight years ago in Corvallis. What a wonderful experience!
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As a female, I have hitchhiked all over the US and in Europe, particularly Spain. On the Spain trip, at 24, I made lifelong friends with a couple I met who saved me from a near sexual attack by a truck driver. (I jumped out of the truck on a deserted road, and they happened to come along. They took me to their apartment in Granada and spoiled me rotten for a week, taking me to all their favorite tourists' attractions and making me incredible meals. I practiced English with their children.
The scariest experience occurred when I was 14 and was hitchhiking with a friend. We got picked up by a very young state senator who eventually took us to his sister's home where we stayed for a couple of days before the senator decided to ferry us back home some 1200 miles to our parents. Enroute we spent a night at his condo where he attempted to get us drunk. He ended up trying to rape my friend. We barracated ourselves in a spare bedroom and then slipped out a sliding glass door and ran into the dead of the night. When the police picked us the next morning sleeping on a lake shore, no one believed our story and the senator got away scott free. We were 14. Fast forward 17 years, and I saw the senator had become a lawyer and was representing teenagers in a case of politiians who were raping teenagers in a very high profile case. The irony slayed me.
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I spent my teenage years as a Hitchhiker all over England (my home) and, mainly, the Continent from about 16yrs-20, periodically interspersed with one year of College and sporadic jobs of great variety, mainly out of England, but what a wonderful experience. I learned adaptability, a sense of how to trust my instincts, never expecting life to be predictable, finding wisdom and trust at an early age - some might have thought me foolhardy though. I remember there were many, many more great/good rides than bad ones, but you did have to keep your wits about you when the rides got tense.
I learned to sing and chat with strangers, be a good listener, sometimes even a shoulder to lean on. I never carried a weapon, relying on my trusty can of cayenne pepper, that I only had to use once. The other thing I found out, as I always hitchhiked with a companion, is that you soon find out what that other person is like right down to their bare soul - what an experience.
Many people, families, souls still stay in my mind all this time later (decades), but one man in particular stands out. He was a man of mid years, we chatted and sang with him, he seemed sad. He treated us to lunch and went out of his way to keep us on our planned route, going out of his way in fact. It became dark and we became a little nervous, especially as the conversation seemed to be getting a bit heavy as he talked of his experience in a concentration camp and why he was still staying in Germany - he showed us the number tattoo on his arm. When he told us he was going to take us to dinner and put us up in a hotel - we drew silent nervous breaths. What did he plan to do with us? He was so sad, we were conflicted, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
We had a wonderful meal, it was a great hotel, nothing sleazy about it. He got us a room for two. As soon as we were in our room, we not only locked the door but barricaded it with a chair and kept half an eye and ear open throughout the night. Our radar was always turned on with any ride, but nobody had ever put us up at such expense.
In the morning, we went to the reception with some fear and trepidation fearing a large bill would be waiting for us and that everything had been some sort of a joke (I think we were intimidated by his horrible experiences), instead we were told everything had been taken care of and there was a note for us. It thanked us from the bottom of his heart for giving him the opportunity in some small part to repay for the wonderful British who had rescued him from the hell hole of a concentration camp he had been in.
It was very humbling.
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Our family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) have travelled to Europe 3 times on home exchanges. We also swap regularly with a couple who are retired at the Oregon Coast, who like to get into the city regularly. Home swapping actually makes travel affordable. With a kitchen and a car, you can grocery shop and pack lunches rather than eating out. With kids, it's so much easier to travel when they have a place to play outside. We've only experinced kindness, caring, and a genuine welcoming from the homeowners and their neighbors in the cities we've visited. Our neighbors are also extremely welcoming to our out of country guests, as well. We use the site intervac.com. We've visited Paris, Vienna, and Gouda, in The Netherlands. All wonderful trips to comfortable, family homes.
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I couchsurfed to the Experimental Airplane Association convention in Oshkosh, had a blast.
I think it requires you to pull out all of what you learned from your parents, be polite, help out to keep things clean, maintain the trust. Leave a gift upon departure.
It's really a neat experience in the USA.
john