The first image to come to mind upon hearing the term “couch surfing” is a large, bald man balancing precariously on his sofa shouting “Cowabunga, dude!”

As entertaining as that image is, “couch surfing” refers to the global online community of travelers with the sole purpose of sharing your life. That’s right, people want to experience your life.

The creators of Couch Surfing, Casey Fenton, Daniel Hoffer, Sebastian Le Tuan, and Leonardo Bassani da Silveira, came up with the idea in 2004 after emailing a group of students in Iceland. The foursome learned people all over the world would want to share their homes with strangers, or as CS likes to call them, friends you haven’t met yet.

According to the CS website, CSers envision a world where everyone can explore and create meaningful connections with the people and places they encounter. Building meaningful connections across cultures enables us to respond to diversity with curiosity, appreciation, and respect. The appreciation of diversity spreads tolerance and creates a global community.

CS values sharing your life, whether that be your home, your smile, your favorite bar, your extra almonds, or a majestic sunset while creating connections with strangers to strengthen our faith in one another. By offering kindness, tolerance and respect for differences while staying curious about the world around us is an important aspect of couch surfing. Lastly, leaving it better than you found it, which applies to the world, relationships, to your host’s home, or the sidewalk you meander down on your way to the coffee shop is another important ideal, according to the CS website.

The online community has millions of users from every country around the world. A quick search by country, city, or zip code, brings up thousands of hosts with available couches for you to crash on. Sound too good to be true?

Andrew Morrison, a senior at University of Illinois, couch surfed while studying abroad in Denmark.

“We were in Berlin for a few days and my friends had a profile so we figured we had nothing to lose,” said Morrison. “We ended up staying with this German man and his Thai wife and they had the cutest daughter who was three.”

Morrison spent four days in Berlin with his two traveling buddies, and felt comfortable staying with the family.

“It was great,” said Morrison. “They cooked us dinner every night, which was awesome because it was either German or Thai food and we crashed in their living room where they had two couches and blow up mattress. They were so nice and welcoming and I don’t think it could have gone better.”

Some tips for surfing, provided by the CS website, are to send your host a personalized message explaining the experience you are looking for and why you want to surf with them, be clear about your plans, and to be a respectful and courteous guest. If you’re not an avid traveler, or uncomfortable surfing, hosting may be more of your thing.

Irno, as he prefers to be called, is very involved in the CS scene in Chicago and has hosted lots of surfers over the years.

“It’s great, it’s fun, and demanding, it can also be very dangerous if you think about it,” said Irno. “You have to be careful and look at their references. Even if a person has good references, they can still be weird. I think people have stolen little things, like nail clippers, which is really nothing but also annoying when you think about it.”

Some tips for being a host are to read the traveler’s profile carefully, be clear about your expectations and house rules, and to open your home to travelers and share your life, according to the CS website.

“I always make dinner for my guests.  So they can feel like they’re welcome,” Irno said. “It’s a way of sharing something new and food is always a great way to start a relationship. Food and a beer.”

Although Irno has had countless good experiences, he has had more than one bad encounter that is now an angry blot on his profile. 

Hosting a girl from France, Irno had to work while the surfer wanted to see the Sears Tower, but they agreed to meet up later in the evening.

“I texted her when I got home and got dressed and ate, but she never answered me. I got on the train still texting her, every thirty minutes telling her what I was doing. I got off the train, still nothing, and I was going to meet up with another CS person and we hung out and I keep texting her, and nothing,” said Irno. “I was starting to get worried because she still didn’t answer. My mistake was probably not having a separate set of keys to give her. We were supposed to meet and she didn’t show up and then I kept texting and calling her. And I came home and she was waiting at my front door all mad because she thought I was waiting at home. Her phone was dead so she didn’t get any of my texts or calls. So that’s why I had a neutral recommendation on my profile, which was really unfortunate.”

However for Irno, the CS community has brought many positive experiences.

“There was this one German guy, Guiro, who wanted to meet up with a bunch of people to see a movie and all these people said they would go, including me, but then I was the only one to show up. He was a totally cool guy, it was so fun. Every night, we just partied a lot and I really felt like we were friends and I feel like we could have been really good friends if we lived in the same place,” said Irno. “We were just laughing all the time and we would go to weird places and would just go on adventures around the city.”

Irno has his regular spots he loves to take surfers to where he hopes they can see more than just the regular tourist spots of Chicago.

“We want to see everything but it’s so hard to know where to go when you travel to a new place. So it’s fun taking people to the places I found cool in Chicago so they can see new sides of it other than Michigan Avenue and the Bean.  I take them to Second City and this bar called AliveOne and the blues scene and rooftop bars and I even took some Swedish surfers to a drag show, which was hilarious,” said Irno.

Although many use the website for surfing, some have other purposes for the website.

“Whatever you use it for is what you use it for,” said Irno. “I use it to make friends and meet new people, but some use it as a dating website. Which kind of makes sense because I feel like everyone on CS has the travel bug and has similar ideals and views about life.  For me too, it’s a learning experience because I studied anthropology and it’s so interesting to see how people interact. You’re also seeing them at their most vulnerable because they’re in a new place.”

Sound like a community you want to join? The best way to get involved is to show up to the meetings in your city or just meet up with people. There is always someone who wants to hang out, go to the bar or a museum, and just meet people.

Happy surfing and stay curious.