By Erik Squire

No, I’m not talking about what Tom Cruise did on the Oprah Winfrey show. There’s an amazing website for the low budget traveller called: couchsurfing.org. Couch surfing (CS) is a community made up of travellers and hosts. If you wanted to travel almost anywhere in the inhabited world, all you would have to do is sign in (once you’ve signed up for one of their free [!] accounts), select a city and ask a host to put you up for x number of nights. It’s as simple as that! Of course if you have a place of your own, then it’s just good karma to host as well.

My most recent CS excursion was in the beautiful city of Montreal (that’s right, don’t hate on Canada and their backwards ways), with my French host, and his two surfers, from Germany and New York. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had thus far, in my well-travelled life. The first night was nothing but drinking wine, eating, being merry, and having stimulating conversations; an experience very typical to have while CS. The next day we went ice skating (though I had ankle socks on and it hurt… a lot). Later that night we had some local CS hosts over for a potluck and to play games. The guests were a native Canadian and her boyfriend from Greenland (who taught me how to do the Rubik’s Cube). The night adjourned with playing cards against humanity and poorly preformed card tricks. Err… I mean real feats of magic.

The next day we did some spectacular sightseeing. Some of the manmade wonders we came upon while out gallivanting were:  One of the LOVE sculptors (a rendering of the iconic Pop Art image by American artist Robert Indiana). Another sight was the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. A quite spectacular thing to see, were some very realistic looking trees made up of metal and Christmas lights. We also stopped at Tim Horton’s. My personal favourite was the true Quebecois cuisine poutine: french-fries, covered in gravy, and mixed with mozzarella! The meal was served at a restaurant that had a line waiting outside the door (even at 3 in the morning, I was told), open 24/7. We capped the night off at a local pub and watched the favourite sport of the Montrealers: hockey.

The whole experience was amazing. When it came time to leave, no one wanted it to end. We had sort of become a family in three days. Originally my host had offered to put me up for one night, because he already had four strangers sleeping on his living room floor, and two roommates. That one night invitation turned into my entire mini vacation.

If you plan on going somewhere, whether you have money or not, I highly suggest considering using this invaluable tool. It might simply be a good substitute to shelling out money for a hotel, or who knows; you may just make a lifelong friend to boot.

(Disclaimer: if you do decide to host: Two out of ten surfers are from Germany.  Don’t worry though, unlike most Americans, they actually learn a foreign language in high school, so most of the younger generation know English).