Ask HN: Do you couchsurf?
Myself and a friend are looking to Couchsurf in Paris, so that we can attend dotJS 2013 and it made me wonder, how many of you HNers are also couch surfers? If so, what have your experiences been like?
But I stopped after a few crazy-guests. Not horrible experiences, but enough to make me decide I had no desire to do so again. I'd often considered surfing, but since I deleted my profile it seemed a little cheap to look for a place to crash when I wasn't reciprocating myself.
These days it seems there are several alternatives to couchsurfing.com, with a less "corporate" feel to them.
Every host was nice, and even if we didn't 'click' it was still a great experience. And after four weeks of that I realized that I'd stayed in many corners of the city, knew a lot of the best places in those areas because my hosts would show me around, and felt like I'd lived there for much longer than just a month.
I can definitely recommend it as part of traveling, or even part of relocation. The occasional discomfort is offset by really getting to know a place quickly.