Anyone ever tried any of those couch surfing sites? Do they

>>1161877

If you're thinking of the specific site couchsurfing.com, I've had my very best travel experiences through it.

Just to be clear, I've never actually stayed over at anybody's place, but not for lack of offers. But quite a few of my friends have done so, and I don't know anybody who's ever had a bad experience. Of course, there are weird people on there, but I've always been able to weed them out through exchanged messages.

I always put out a message on the country's/city's page, saying I'd like to meet up, a little about my plans for the stay, and an invitation for people to join in. I'm a guy, and it's always seemed to me that girls make out about 4/5 of the people that contact me. I've heard the opposite is true for girls, though. But I've always gotten so many messages with invitations or just travel tips, that it's even been hard to prioritize who of them you'd like to actually meet up with, as there simply isn't time for everybody. The definition of a luxury problem.

To give you an impression of just how big a resource Couchsurfing has been for my travels, I'll give you some examples:

1. South Africa
A friend and I had decided to hike up the mountain side of Table Mountain in Cape Town with a bottle of wine and some food. I put my number and an invitation to join us out on the city's CS page, and we were suddenly joined by a Norwegian girl and two Australians. We ended up hanging out for the rest of the evening, going out partying and eating together. I still have a standing couch offer in Australia.

>>1161877
>>1161915

2. Kyrgyzstan
After having seen my message on Bishkek's page, a girl contacted me, saying she'd love to meet up. If I wanted to, she'd hook me up with guided tourist trips and whatever help I needed. She and her family were working at a festival, and suddenly I ended up being brought along, and spent an evening at what was like a parody of Eurovision, along with her Kyrgyz grandparents and parents, and ended up drinking vodka with the entire family. In the end, I was practically adopted by the family, and we still keep in touch often.

3. Georgia
I went to Georgia this summer, and did the same thing. I think I received messages from around 17 people, who wanted to meet up, and got a lot of good advice about where to go from others. I ended up meeting up with two of them. The first was a girl and her boyfriend, who invited me back to their parents' place for a nice evening with traditional food, drinking, and talking. The second one was a girl I ended up spending almost every day with, as she took it as her personal responsibility to make sure I got to see all there was to see both in Tbilisi and beyond. I still keep in contact with both of them, and will definitely be visiting them again some time next spring.

There is no doubt in my mind that I'll be a CS host myself as soon as I can. There are a lot of dedicated hosts that make sure the community is an amazing resource for travelers. A lot of cities also have their own CS evenings once a week, where anybody can come and meet up with other couchsurfers. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the community isn't spotless, but to me it's an invaluable resource.

I hope this answers your question in a not too ecstatic way. I'll check in on the thread in case you have any more questions.

>>1161877

I gave up on Couchsurfing a couple years back.I got the impression that it doesn't work spectacularly in many touristic cities.

When I was in Scotland, I fired off dozens of personalized messages to prospective hosts, many of whom were recently active. The best I received was a single "Maybe" from a man who never wound up providing his address. I wondered what was going on, and then I realized: most men, based off their references, seemed only willing to host women, and most women either don't host or host only other women or couples.

The last time I tried Couchsurfing was last winter. I put up a "Trip" and got one message from a young Indian lad which read, "hey Anon ...... u gay?"

Never bothered with it since, though I did host a Nepali couple and a handful of other folks when I had a nice apartment in New Delhi. Similar to what the Anon above wrote, I've also had some okay experiences with Couchsurfing meetups. However, I don't count on the site to find me accommodation.

I'm in India (again) and suspect it would work rather well here. The same goes for a lot of the developing world, wherein many people seem genuinely interested in meeting foreigners and strangers. I've just not had reason to find a host, given that lodging is so cheap.

>>1161923

To relate a story from a German friend:

He told me he stayed with a gay guy from CS in Istanbul. Since he's gay himself, it wasn't much of a problem, and I think they probably wound up having sex. Some time later, he made friends with another European man and added him on Facebook.

A while later, this guy started telling my friend about an awful CS experience he'd had. He'd stayed with a dude in Istanbul who was very friendly and hospitable but made him sleep on the couch (obviously not a big deal). He drank a bit and then fell asleep.

When he woke up, he felt a very odd sensation and realized that his host had crawled under the blanket and had started sucking his dick while he was asleep. Wound up having to run out of the apartment.

My friend asked for the guy's name and they realized it was the same dude.

>>1161923

The guy from the first two replies here.

Turkey seems to be a strange place when it comes to CS. A German girl I met up with in Kyrgyzstan, said she had posted her trip on CS only to receive messages from Turkey (!) inviting her to come there instead. Then again, those people immediately get a big "NO" stamp, and you definitely won't end up actually meeting them. Unless they're one of the stranger people at a CS gathering.

It takes a fair share of common sense and critical thinking to use CS. Try your best to root out the ones that give you a bad feeling.

And I partially agree with the observation about touristic cities. Naturally, there'll be a lot of CS traffic there, and for potential hosts and meet-ups there's a lot of messages for people to sift through, so it's only natural to become picky. The less touristic cities probably have a more dedicated CS community.

And to balance out what Anon said about hosting preferences, a woman in Tbilisi amazingly offered to host me for 3 weeks without even having spoken that much. I don't know if that's a serial killer alert or the mark of a good person. But I also agree that what Anon said is the general consensus.

Riga's a touristic place, though, and I had very good experiences there.

>>1161925
>Gay German guy having sex with a Turkish man
Sometimes the memes just write themselves...