Couchsurfing, Servas & Other Remarkable Friendships

Some people thought I was nuts to join Couchsurfing, but it has proven to be an exceptional way to meet local people on my travels, and I am overwhelmed by their generosity and openness to friendship. Before I left on this trip and shortly after joining Couchsurfing, we hosted two different sets of couchsurfing travelers -- two young women from Hamilton College in upstate NY who were traveling on a grant, and a young Frenchman who has been teaching in San Francisco and was exploring the western U.S. during his summer break. All were delightful house guests.

Couchsurfing.com is an internet project started by a couple of guys just 2 years ago. It now has more than 3 million participants worldwide. Based on Servas (servas.org) --which is a 50-year-old host-traveler organization built on the premise of building world peace one friendship at a time, of which David and I have been members since 1996 -- couchsurfing provides a less-formal, internet-based, self-regulating approach (through posted recommendations by friends and fellow couchsurfers you actually meet) to people meeting. As a host, you can offer a couch or bed or simply offer to meet for coffee or a drink (what Servas calls "day hosts").

While Couchsurfing tends to attract and serve mostly the twenty-something crowd, there are older members and I used the brilliant and simple website to search via criteria for those over 40. Following are some of the experiences I've had so far:

Photos: 1. "Chiles," a Couchsurfing friend, and me in the plaza at Los Molinos, where she owns a second-home in the foothills of the Sierras, an hour from Madrid.

I wrote her an email because her profile, with a beautiful photo of her laughing, said: When women are laughing, something good is happening in the world." She responded with a phone call to my mobile and an invitation to join her that day at her weekend home for lunch and a car ride back to Madrid. I took a train to Los Molinos and was met by her at the station from which we walked a few blocks on dirt streets back to her beautiful home surrounded by high walls, fruit trees, palms and a swimming pool.

Immediately, upon meeting this energetic and fearless woman -- she is passionate about riding her bicycle around Spain on the old Roman roads and purchased a plot of land on an island in Lake Nicaragua where she is in the process of building a 16-room hotel/retreat -- we fell immediately into conversation (in Spanish) about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. After a glorious day, we met the next, enjoyed another meal together and took her 83-year-old mother to see Woody Allen's new film, "Vicky, Christina, Barcelona", in Spanish. She and her husband are off on a week-long bicycle tour and we hope to see each other again before I leave.

Photo 2: Emecee at the Bilbao Guggenheim.

I had written to Emecee (at Couchsurfing) before leaving the states to ask about staying with her in Bilbao. She honesty replied that I was welcome although her apartment in the city was not central and not really suited for guests, although she liked to offer her summer place in the Pyrenees. I thanked her and opted to stay in a centrally-located hotel in Bilbao. I checked into my room and shortly received an unexpected phone call at the hotel.

This sweet woman, who has traveled extensively in India, took the Metro 12 kms from her apartment to meet me at the hotel that afternoon. We walked along the river past the Calatravas bridge to the Guggenheim. Our conversation (in Spanish) ran to travels, art, relationships. She spent the whole afternoon with me, enriching my experience of the otherwise busy, gray-washed and industrial-feeling city (despite accounts of how much it has changed in the past decade since construction of the Guggenheim).

Photo 3: Susana and Daniel with the Alhambra in the background.

Last November, after 5 days as a visiting journalist guest of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, I spent 2 days in Toledo, a 45-minute high-speed train ride south of Madrid. (I will post about Toledo soon, as I have another special friend from there). On my last evening, I was in a small bar drinking red wine and eating tapas -- a marvelous tradition wherein a small plate of food accompanies each drink for free -- when this couple squeezed in, fellow travelers.

I made room for them and invited them to join me at the bar. For 4 hours we spoke non-stop, in Spanish. I had to often use my dictionary to find the right word in our conversations about politics, travels, philosophy and work (she is a family practice doctor, he's a social worker), but we persevered as they speak no English. At the end of our evening, they graciously paid for my drinks and food saying it was their pleasure as I was the first American they had ever met and they were surprised at how amiable I was.

They had told me I must visit Granada and, somehow, I assumed they lived there. When planning this trip, I contacted them via email about getting together in Granada and learned they live in Murcia, 5 hours' drive east of Granada. Although I was welcome to visit them, they said Murcia wasn't worth the trip. Instead, they came to Granada for the weekend and rented a hotel to play host and guide to me for two days. We had a fabulous time, and I will forever be touched my their friendship.

Photo 4: Juan, Ines and Anouk, my Servas hosts in San Sebastian.

Juan, who works as a salesman for IBM, his wife Anouk, a self-employed pharmacist, their daughter Ines and son Daniel (not shown) welcomed me to their large apartment on the hillside overlooking the spectacular Concha Beach. Anouk lent me her mountain bike and I spent a day exploring further and more easefully than I could ever have done on foot.

This gentle, ordered and widely-traveled Basque family ensured that my time with them, and in their fair city, was one of comfort, security and interesting insights gleaned from being a part of another's family.

There are others, not pictured, like Emma and Anoud, fun and hospitable twenty-somethings in Toulouse, who invited over English-speaking friends for lunch, took me shopping and to enjoy drinks with other friends at a cafe in an ancient square, gave me use of their washing machine, a comfortable bed and prepared a marvelous regional stew for dinner. Emma had spent a year abroad in high school living with a family in Colorado Springs. She and Anoud travel widely and had recently returned from Iran. We spoke of women's rights, world politics, career choices, relationships (the ever-present topic among women) and, as my first couchsurfing hosts, I felt incredibly lucky to have been so lovingly received by them.

I highly recommend Couchsurfing and Servas as ways to enrich traveling, to bring back not only memories of place but of friendships. For me, this is the most valuable reason to travel...and, when at home to be a host.

Toledo Spain

I have tried to be sequential in this trip, but most-recent adventures tend to eclipse what happened last week, or yesterday, so I am taking the liberty to write without concern for actual dates...what difference does it make? It all happened and is now just a story anyway...a very good one.

There is an intensity in newness that must give way to familiarity and comfort in order for us to function. Such a pace as I've been on for more than 2 weeks is starting to feel exhausting. Originally, I planned to spend a week in Madrid and head out to Granada and on to Barcelona then up the Costa Brava and back to Toulouse in southern France to meet my flight back to the states on Oct. 7. But my experience in Madrid is so welcoming -- and I still haven't made it to the Prado! -- that I decided to go to Granada for the weekend as planned, and return to spend another week in Madrid. I will fly directly from here to Toulouse on Oct. 6.

TOLEDO

I enjoyed a beautiful blue-sky day in Toledo (Sunday, 22 Sept.) after a late start. It's difficult to get to sleep in a city where people begin dinner well after 10pm and normally turn in about 2 or 3 in the morning, but it's a rhythm that suits me fine. I hurried to catch a 12:20 train to Toledo but, in typical Spanish style, the vague instructions from the so-called Information booth put me in an hour-long line to buy a ticket for a 40-minute train ride. Oh well, standing in lines here is part of the culture... and now I know there are special fast lines for impending trains. In Spain, one has to discover these things for one's self.

After getting on the 1:50 train, I was met an hour later in the main plaza of Toledo by Professor Abdurrazzak Douhal, a famous nano-chemist from Morocco who I met on the train from Toledo to Madrid last November and he expedited my tightly-planned trip to the airport. He had said, "Next time you're in Toledo, I'll give you a tour of the university." I thought it a fat-chance that I'd ever be back in Toledo, but there I was again.

Toledo is an extraordinary city of tiny, steep and winding cobblestone streets; alleys actually, and its a sure bet that you will get lost in the maze, even after living there 25 years like Abdurrazzak. Actually, I think he has the worst sense of direction I've seen, and I seemed to know my way better than he after only spending 2 days there a year ago. We wandered, and in a delightful mix of Spanish and English, we talked about theoretical science and applied Life, like human nature and will and the magic of the moment when things shift; and they always shift in a moment.

We ate lunch (gaspacho and ensalada mixta) at a sidewalk cafe and visited one of the four Toledo campuses of the Universidad de La Mancha, which presents a good example of melding modern and ancient architecture; there is even an interior area of excavated Roman ruins. Because I was with a professor, we obtained a large iron key by which to visit a terrace which gives an elevated view over the river and crammed-together tile roofs (from the same era as those in Florence) under which dozens of generations have lived and died.

Every twisting street is a photo op of ancient stone and plaster buildings in a variety of colors -- yellow, pink, tan, blue -- with wrought-iron balconies and light fixtures, window boxes and shutters. We visited the huge cathedral, which I did not see last time. If you overlook the catholicism, it is pure art -- vast interior spaces with soaring columns and a plethora of compound arches between which are a myriad of paintings, bas relief sculptures (my favorite) and gold-encrusted designs that attest to Fibanacci series centuries before it was identified mathematically. The sheer size of it -- it felt at least 3 times bigger than Notre Dame in Paris -- was awesome.

There is so much more I could write about Toledo, having spent two days exploring it last November -- El Greco, the Sephardic Jewish community, the Moors, the Inquisition, the capital for a brief time of Isabel & Ferdinand's rule -- but it will have to be another time.

I took the last train back to Madrid at 20:30, the Metro three stops and then, within a block of the apartment I call home this week, I had to use my map to find Calle Relatores. The narrow street, one block long, is in the old part of Madrid, which is all angles and alleys and streets changing names at each intersection. I like it here, and plan to return for another week after this weekend in Granada. Granada! I have found, through www.craigslist.com, a room to rent at a woman writer's apartment nearby, in the old city. I will fly from Madrid to Toulouse Oct. 6, from where I'm ticketed to leave for the States on the morning of Oct. 7.