Couch surfing is a verb for staying at some strangers house for free. However, the principle of couch surfing is not to have a free accommodation (nor to charge or expect any benefits) but to get to know how the local people live, what they eat and what they think about the world.

A “surfer” respects the lifestyle of the “host”, does not steal or in any ways disturb the life of the host and stays as independent and self sufficient as possible. The host can guide or give tips on what is worth seeing around and perhaps cook a local meal or show the best supermarkets and bars in the area.

Couch surfing is an idea of free and global culture exchange that has grown from accommodating homeless and penniless hippies into worldwide mean of travelling that keeps on spreading in the internet.

I logged on www.couchsurfing.org about a year ago when I had a spare bedroom in my apartment in Rovaniemi. I got a couch surfing request from an Italian couple who spend a weekend in my city. We spend one night on a bond fire barbequing sausages and talking about couch surfing. I got a hang of the idea.

After travelling for almost 30 hours from Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland to Athens in Greece I got to know that the metro line to my host in Athens was closed. I started to sweat. Not only because of being by myself in the middle of Athens in bitch black night carrying almost 20kg on my back but also because it was close to thirty degrees hot and I was wearing jeans. I stood by a metro map trying to figure out how to proceed but it took only some seconds before the first Greek stopped to ask if they can help. I had missed the Greek food and I had missed the sun and the sea and the sandy beaches and white and blue houses but most of all I had missed the Greek people! In no time I was being escorted to a bus station where a punch of people involved in helping me to find my way were guiding the bus driver to stop on the right bus stop. I arrived at my host’s apartment before midnight for a Greek dinner.

Our host, Eleni and her friends and family welcomed us with open arms and we were pampered, driven, fed and we got really good tips for our travels. We relaxed, slept and ate well. We visited a grand mom in the countryside, cuddled with dog puppies, ate freshly picked cherries, played with stray cats and swum and sunbathed.

In the middle of Athens, though, we met other kinds of Greek. We met beggars, drunken and homeless but the best memories are, ah, from the full metro in peak time with smell of human around and a young guy pushing his hip against mine and whispering dirty in Greek to my ears. Or a young man in a suit watching us from the bushes and wanking of in the Geographical Gardens of Athens. Welcome to Greece!