Couchsurfers is an online organisation linking people looking for free accomodation. The idea is that you register for the site, and then 'host' people coming to your area by letting them sleep in your spare room or on your couch, and 'surf' other people's couches when you want to travel. I guess the general idea is not only providing a means for people get free accomodation, but also a way for people to share cultures and learn from each other. It's a pretty huge organisation, with 3 million members worldwide.My former flatmate and I joined in 2010, and had people sleep at our place twice with no problems at all, they were all cool people to meet and hang out with. I haven't surfed anyone else's couch yet, I guess I've never really needed to because I usually know people where I go anyway. There are fewer bad instances occuring with couchsurfers than you'd think, because the site stores your profile, verifies your physical address, and records who is going to stay where - you'd be pretty dumb to steal from a place when there's a website that saves your request to stay there!
The other aspect of Couchsurfers is the meetings, most major cities have a Couchsurfers group that get together every so often, both the 'hosts' living in the city and 'surfers' who are only in town at that time. Luxembourg has a really active community, people get together for drinks every week or so, and every week there are people organising hikes or trips or BBQs. I was a bit skeptical before I went to my first Couchsurfers meeting, but everyone there was really cool, almost everyone was a foreigner who had moved to Lux and used Couchsurfers to meet other open-minded and interesting people.
The Couchsurfing website is here.
