sofasurfers

A new psychological syndrome has just been identified - Couchsurf Guilt Complex (CGC). Here are the symptoms:

- nagging sense of indebtedness to host for agreeing to mother us for three days for free with no contracted returning of favour

- vain and costly attempts to compensate for host’s troubles. This entails repeated purchases for each of her Random Acts of Kindness (book for her initially agreement, a meal for tolerating our two-hour imbecilic behaviour trying to buy our train tickets, flowers for electricity, and <insert suitably lovely gift here for having hosted us> - we depart for couches new tomorrow)

- near-starvation caused by our own martyr-ish refusal to help ourselves to host’s larder, despite her kind invitation. (On concluding that this behaviour was unnecessary and over-sensitive, a quick lesson was learnt when I helped myself to some liquid yoghurt only to find my body spontaneously propelling itself to the sink, in order to dispense of said, dead drink - ie fizzy and fermented)

Prescription: we’re thinking that perhaps some discreet diving down the back of hosts’ couches might be able to fund our guilt habit (FB)

And what of Ollie, you may wonder, and the ponytail putsch?
Bad news, I’m afraid - very bad news: despite the hair salon being a ladies’ salon, and despite Ollie having such luscious lady-hair, all he got was a wagging finger.
The campaign continues. (FB)

Minimally equipped with the Russian for please, thank you, yes and no, plus two able signing hands and a Russian hair magazine circa 2006, I went and got me my Moscow mullet. Well, mullet wouldn’t be exactly the right word, but it’s irresistible alliteration, and tis also true to say it’s longer at the back than at the front, and, I gather, pretty unfanciable. You want a picture?! Can’t have one.. yet - we’re still Photoshopping out my tears.

Of laughter. How exactly do you explain irrepressible smirks and stifled hysteria to your kindly stylist when in front of the mirror ‘aving a do? With a language barrier. I couldn’t obviously. It was all going so well until I was instructed to stick my head upsidedown for the blow dry - after which point, I was well and truly Russki-ed. We’re now off to roadtest it down the Bolshoi Circus. I’m hoping they’ll spot me in the crowd as one of them. Image coming soon in the next thrilling instalment… (FB)

Moscow, 11th October

Instructions… “Outside Tverskaya station, you will see the Pushkin statue. There are a couple of benches near the statue, that’s where I will be waiting for you…”

We have no idea quite what we’re expecting to find here (cf her profile pic of Lake Baikal), but at least we’re pretty conspicuous - fresh off the boat, berucksacked, bewildered… We arrive in the square (confession: no idea what Pushkin looks like). There are 20 or so random Russians hanging around. Eyes akimbo, we scan the horizon, and shrug. Then, out of nowhere Tanya appears… Now what?!

Fast forward to Sunday - it’s 6pm, we’ve been up for about five hours. We got through a bottle and a half of vodka and 25 new friends. We’d been whisked to a couchsurfing party, where the first four people we met had been made redundant and talked of travel, pastures new and doing the things they had always dreamed of but never dared to realise because there were jobs to do and mortgages to pay. In the climate of economic doom, one guy even had couchsurfing (on Ollie’s couch) third on his wishlist after seeking work and excitement in Kabul and Northern Iraq.

That’s what.
Vodka count: 1.5l

This fine pair of Binatone MR 200 superhero devices mysteriously landed on my doormat this morning. Brand new. Addressed to me. Bizarre. It is a small miracle because I’ve spent the last two days on the phone to mobile phone companies trying to find cheap international call rates. A physical impossibility!

But seriously! Where did these come from? Anyone? Aaaanyone?

POST SCRIPT

It turns out that these two delights were sent by those other two delights, Joe et Julie. It’s the kindest thing in the world - and unimaginably useful when travelling with a man with a  broken leg (”Come along, hop-along Ollie!”). Thank you thank you thank you!

I’m going to get a Moscow haircut, with a hairspray finish and everything. It’s a small, dangerous fetish of mine with dubious consequences (just read the comments on this piece I did for Sunday Times: “Is the person pictured male or female or what? Impossible to tell, but I wouldn’t want to meet him/her/whatever!”). I am going to invite Ollie along.

I’m taking sponsors… (FB )

I received a most distressing telephone call from Ollie last night. “I’ve finished packing [distress part I] and my rucksack is small enough to take on as hand luggage [distress part II].” My hand luggage is barely small enough to count as hand luggage. And I haven’t finished packing yet.

How on earth? “Well, I’ve only taken what I really need.”

So have I! I’ve exorcised London and its trappings from my system. I’ve taken leave of my looks. I will be a walking smart-wool animal. With a change of underwear. I will be a walking smart-wool animal. I will be a walking smart-wool animal (I’m trying to get used to the idea, see?). I’ll need all that stuff!

“It’s just that you’ll regret it when we have to walk for four or five hours with it on your back.”

No, no, no - we will NOT be walking for four or five hours. NOT, got it?!

And besides, seeing as you’re empty-handed, and someone invented the word chivalry, we’ll be just fine.

Ha ha ha (FB - obviously)

You might be wondering by now, why the monologue, Fleur? Go on, let Ollie have a go! Well, the fact is some of us have jobs to do. Ollie has been enslaved by the system all day and has had far more important matters to attend to. As for me, I’ve been at home today, “prepping” (which - obviously - means forming a rather sudden and acute habit to blogging). Don’t worry though. I’m sure it won’t last. And - hey - it’s 6.30, beer o’clock. Ollie will be in the pub by now. In the meantime, here’s a little bit of Ollie for you. (FB)

Ollie has been sensibly acclimatising to bad weather

Since thus far, our couchsurfing experiences have been limited to the virtual world (as we simply message and receive messages from prospective hosts), it seems appropriate enough to find oneself treating the whole endeavour rather like a computer game. And so, since we graduated from the entry level (big city - ie, Moscow, plenty of safety shots to take aim at, choice enough for spare rooms and even the wonder of horses’ hooves past bedrooms; see below), we have found ourselves, like naive kittens, seeking just a little bit more danger…

COUCHSURFING LEVEL II

So, for our first stop out of Moscow, Ekaterinburg (some 24 juddering hours away via the Trans-Siberian Express), we arrive at 2 in the morning, where in fact our brave and trusting host will still be on her holiday - she has left us in the undoubtedly curious company of her pet rat.

COUCHSURFING LEVEL III

Next stop, we’ll be staying with a man with a gun in Novosibirsk - really. Look at his profile picture and you’ll be looking down the barrel of an AK-47 (”Get scared of my userpic? Get the fuck out from my profile!” he says). Actually, we won’t let you look at his picture because violating his rights might mean turning the (metaphorical or literal) gun on ourselves. And double actually, he has 23 couchsurfing friends and we have none. So a) who are we to talk? b) he has back-up. And c) he does actually sound like an eminently likeable character.

BLACKBELT COUCHSURFING

And then, there’s the German nurse in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaan Baatar, who sounds so extraordinary/ extreme/ <insert-word-for-totally-terrifying-that-begins-with-’ex’>, that we suspended our “we just wanna stay with natives” rule for the experience. Here’s what one recent guest says: “At Sabina’s i had the craziest CS [couchsurfing] adventures, she is unique, in both really good and really bad ways, but once you understand mongolia you understand sabina, or viceversa. So, in the end, thankyou sabina!” Anyway, she’s up for hosting us in her Mongolian ger (like so:

though this isn’t her ger, but a friendly flickr photo). And we are up for the ride.

And this is David Shrigley’s curious cat…

David Shrigley

“I’m Dead”, 2007, Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery

(FB)

I like to grumble about my insomnia. You see, if I do it enough to enough people, maybe someone one day might just volunteer the ultimate cure. Chez moi, I insist on a controlled environment at sleepy time - blackout blinds + eyeblinds + an interminable supply of sleeping pills at hand. Plus I do what I can to avoid sleeping around. I mean sleeping over at friends, of course..

So perhaps it seems a little ill-advised to set off on what is essentially an extreme camping trip for 80 days, never in the same place, never able to achieve that controlled environment, never able to promise my sleep spirit its much-needed calm and silence. What’s more, our only respite from sleeping on floors/in one-room flats/not sleeping at all because we’re busy being polite and drinking vodka all night with our hosts… will be the judder of long-haul trains. It’s just as well that I like to power the world of sleeponomics.

And so I have been shopping/borrowing/begging.

8 x 20 Boots’ own Sleepeaze sleeping pills. Bought in pairs from four different pharmacies to avoid rousing suspicion.

A “snowman” all-in-one fleecey sleepsuit (it’s not meant to be a sleep suit - really, it’s for ballerinas to warm up in)

male ballet dancer not included, huh huh

Two inflatable pillows

One pillow case

Three earplugs. Please don’t question the logic of an odd number for an even-numbered cause. There is none. Unless preparing for panic can be called logical. Of course it can

One shortwave transistor for listening to The World Service - miraculously soporific

Plus my trusty eyeblinds. Actually, perhaps I should double up, to compensate for the inevitable lack of black-out curtains

Or perhaps I should just read this list. Marvellously yawn-inducing.

(FB)

So Moscow - our first stop, the land of our imminent couchsurfing deflowering… Where on earth to start?

We go a-couchsearching online (ok, we’re late on this blog thing - this actually all happened about a week ago). There are just 20 “definitely” and “yes, have couch” hosts to choose from in Moscow from a total of 301 registered there (the difference between definitely” and “yes, have couch”? Enthusiasm, apparently). Oh. Oh well. Still enough to have quite a good nosey through the virtual net curtain. Profiles are organised similarly to the social-networking template of Facebook or Myspace (ho ho, travel pics, messages from friends, references - enough for untold lost hours in a couchsurf drift). Oooh - “Masha” looks nice. Oh. She has a young baby. Well, what about “Vladimir” and his wife? Hmm. There’d be four of us in his one-room flat. Well, “Martin from Wigan” has a spare room and no dependents. Hit, surely! But then, he’s not exactly very Russian. The perfect fit is a task of tesselation - actually, it’s starting to feel like we’re setting up our own arranged marriages in Moscow. Finally we hit on some likely candidates. No babies, the possibility of a spare room, natives, and crucially, all in the top tier for verification (meaning they’ve proved they’re who they say they are) and with lots of good references.

Hold it, hustlers (that’s us)! The couchsurfing collective is not without their own parameters. “Don’t expect a response if you have cut and pasted your request,” says one. “No couch to those with empty profiles just saying you are “cool, open-minded and easy-going”. [Note to self: delete! Delete!] And get this: “If you’re one of those free accommodation hunters who just read about CS in a newspaper or a yahootravel blog or something like that, DON’T bother applying. You may try to seem what you’re not, but, believe me, it won’t do good to anyone.” Yikes. I wonder - what are we, really? Feeling fully fraudulent, we set about writing a glowing, personalised request. Nothing. We send another. Nada. Send another. Zip. I haven’t felt like this since applying for my first job. Now what?

Some days later, our couchsurfing inbox finally gets a visitation. It’s a match! Now I haven’t done any online dating (honest), but the way my little heart surges when I read the message must be comparable (think joyful rush, followed by a rapid fire of thoughts, adrenaline, questions). What do they look like? Let’s have a squizz at their photo. Better still, all their photos. What will our first “date” be like? Will they match our impressions? Bet they look completely different. Wonder if they’ve Photoshopped themselves…. And just like online dating (apparently), communiques are purposefully cute, flattering, flirty. Both host and guest are suspended in a happy communion of sweet, innocent friend-making. It’s incredibly nourishing of soul.

And so. Tomorrow. We will find Tanya. She will meet us at her local metro station. We have swapped numbers. We have scrutinised her photo. But this will be a blind date - her profile picture is of an empty lakescape - namely, Lake Baikal.

We have bought her a book from London. We are looking forward to hearing horses walking across her building’s courtyard (”If you are a sound-of-hooves-fan, this is definitely the place,” she writes invitingly).

We are fully charmed. So far. (FB)

We are Fleur and Ollie

What to do when faced with the threat of global depression, mass redundancy and general falling in of the skies above? Perhaps make like the Garbage Warrior and build an off-grid “earthship” out of old water bottles? Or maybe buy a hen and a rooster and get building that ark? Or - like we are about to do - go couchsurfing around the world. Ok, that’s an exaggeration - we’re off to couchsurf a continent. But what do we mean? Slobbing out on the deluxe pleather sofas of Kazakhstan, flicking through unintentionally comic local soaps? Quite possibly. But only as a byproduct of Mission Couchsurf.

In virtually every country on this earth, kindly folk are offering their couch/spare room/garden/body-sized pockets to travellers who subscribe to the burgeoning number of travel-networking websites, or “hospitality exchanges”. It’s a match-making site for the as-yet unpaired ‘have couch’/'want couch’ halves of the world. You can couchsurf in Antarctica. In Micronesia. And - happily for us - Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. Is it quid pro quo, everyone asks? No! It works on the premise of Pay It Forward - those karma gods are watching… Couchsurfing is free, friendly, and, yes - thrillingly - entails staying with total strangers met online. Ollie and Fleur are go… (FB)

And where are they going? Well…click on this map to see: