One of the greatest joys of traveling is befriending a local who then invites you stay with
their family. Having traveling solo quite often, this happened an amazing amount of times to me and has always
improved my trip exponentially. I’ll never forget the time I spent a week with a Russian family in
Kazakhstan and was invited to accompany them to a “coming of age” ceremony for the 12-year old son of a
local mafia kingpin. That’s something you just can’t book ahead.
But now, thanks to the web, a couple of sites are replacing the casual-meeting-of-a-local with more of a
premeditated, interactive strike.
Couchsurfing.com has 48,000 members around the world willing to
accommodate you and your stinky socks on their couch, or other horizontal surface, for absolutely free. Each host
posts personal information about themselves as well as a photo. Judging by the handful I perused, they tend to be
young college-aged students who are probably looking to practice their English, or otherwise have fun entertaining a
foreign guest. Some photos are a little scary, however. Thankfully, the site also lists testimonials so nefarious
hosts with sinister, ulterior motives, would hopefully be weeded out of the lineup. Hopefully.
Appropriately named, Globalfreeloaders.com, is based upon the same
concept but the site is not as well organized as CouchSurfing. Indeed, there are no photos, and for some reason,
this worries me a bit. Nonetheless, it also carries a substantial amount of hosts and looks like a great backup
if CouchSurfing doesn’t come through for you.