Saturday, June 23, 2007

Such diversity

I attended a barbecue yesterday in Dubai organised by Graham. I met Graham in February when he was so kind to let me CouchSurf at his place.

Let me explain the term Couch Surfing...
CouchSurfing (and Hospitality Club as well) are online communities of people offering other people the chance to stay at their place for free. You sleep on either a bed, a couch, maybe even the ground ;) but you have a warm home to go to. It's a way to save a buck, but more so, you get to meet a local, an interested and interesting person from a new place! It's a whole different way of traveling. You're not bombarded with all the touristy stuff you have in hotels, instead you get a locals perspective of city you're at! Truly unique!

Yesterday Graham and I met up again and he was hosting a CouchSurfing/HospitalityClub barbecue. The turn-up was not the expected 20-25 people, instead, only 11 people were there. But what struck me was how many different nationalities (and personalities!) were actually there.

The nationalities present were:
English (2!)
Botswanian
Chinese
Singaporese
Canadian
Egyptian
UAE
Indian
Italian and
Dutch (guess who...) :)

Wow! Such diversity! And all very different people too!

And all these people offer complete strangers to stay at their place when visiting from another country! All through the networks of CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club! Check them out!

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