Where hospitality can be illegal

„All Couchsurfers are a bit crazy“, Daniel said while walking down the main road in Tabriz. „Yes, most of them are crazy, but in a good way.“ I added.

What is couchsurfing?

It is an internet based platform for exchange between people. After creating a profile on the site you can ask people/travellers from all over the world about their experiences, their cities, best routes to travel or the cheapest internetplace nearby. You can also meet locals for a coffee or a drink and you can also „surf their couch“ = sleep in their home.

For me, this is the best way to get into touch with people, to learn about their way of life, about their attitudes and dreams. It is a deeper and faster way to learning, sharing and understanding.

A reference system like ebay gives it more security as the community controlls itself.

In two countries, where I had one of the best couchsurfing.experience, it wasn't officially allowed to host people like this. Aswell in Marokko as in Syria, we had to be careful with talking about couchsurfing. If Syrians for example, want to host foreigners in their home they (officially) have to tell it to the government first, which would be a lot to do with all the people they keep hosting...

When we were asked in Syria, we had a name of a hostel we could say. We never stayed there (instead we slept in couchsurfers' working places in a language school and in a shop in an old caravanserei). We spend time with the local couchsurfers, but had to keep an eye on the police or other people that may get suspicious.

Two times it happened that the „tourist police“ approached us, because we were a mixed group of foreigners and locals. One time in marocco, our canadian host could handle it smoothly by showing her marriiage certificate with our second morrocaine host and by getting rid of them with her fluent arabic. The second time, our syrian host bribed the police as we vanished around the corner. In Iran aswell the locals should have an official license to show foreigners around. If not, they might get into trouble.

Couchsurfers are crazy, but mostly in a good way. In some other countries they risk more than just being thought of as crazy. Or as a syrian couchsurfer would put it: „I love couchsurfing so much, I would even go to jail for it.“.