The Only Bad Couchsurfing Experience

I almost get into a fight with an old lady, we host lots of people, and I make some doodles move.

As I write this it’s 11PM on Halloween night and I’m sitting at the Vancouver airport. On my way here, the skytrain was packed with young people partying, all led by a knight with a suitcase-sized speaker strapped to his back. I sat as far away as I could, and was surprised when we arrived at the airport and the whole party got off. They danced through the airport and were finally kicked out by police once arriving at the International Departures Terminal.

I’ve written a lot of newsletters from airports, but this time I’m not flying anywhere, in fact I’m staying here for the night.

I’m working!

You’d think the flag is for Halloween, but it’s actually for September’s “Talk Like A Pirate Day” and they just haven’t taken it down yet.

THE COUCHSURFING CORNER

We get 3 to 4 requests on couchsurfing every single day. More accurately, Avvai gets these requests, as she is the master of our account. If I were in charge we’d have guests every night because I’m bad at saying no.

Avvai has a rule — we only host those who are on grand adventures or live in places we’d like to visit.

This month we had some incredible people stop.

NICK FROM CHICAGO

It was Nick’s first solo International trip — all the way from the distant land of Chicago. For his Canadian tour he’d decided to take the train from Vancouver to Winnipeg, with a stop-over in Edmonton.

I informed him that every Canadian would find this itinerary strange, but he was unconcerned, for Nick is a more open-minded traveller than me.

Nick loved Vancouver. No matter how normal the activity, Nick saw it through a sheen of exoticism, which made him a delight to be around. However, Nick’s visit became memorable to me for a different reason that I like to call…

THE ZINE ACTIVISM WORKSHOP

The workshop was Avvai’s idea, and Nick was eager to come, despite having no idea what a zine was (it’s a little one-page folded book). The event consisted of a short lecture about the history of a woman-owned zine collective in Switzerland, and then a hands-on component where we all made zines.

We sat down at a table with an older couple wearing masks and Nick promptly started being his very friendly self.

“I just love Canada,” Nick said. “Everyone is so nice here.”

“Oh, we don’t mean it,” the Lady said. “You’ll learn that if you stick around.”

I took a closer look at the Lady. Other than the mask, she had white hair and big square glasses, which made it hard to read her expression.

“Canadians are evil,” she continued. “We have a great reputation but it’s all lies.”

She didn’t sound like she was joking, but before we could follow up, the workshop moved onto the “how to fold one piece of paper into a book” section, which took all of our attention.

A young lady from Brazil joined our table and Nick asked her how she liked living in Vancouver — he was about ready to move here too!

“Don’t move here,” the Lady interjected. “Vancouverites are cold people and you won’t make any friends. It’s one of the things they say about us, that we’re a famously unfriendly city.”

“I’m finding people to be very friendly,” Nick said.

“Yes,” the Brazilian added. “I am enjoying Vancouver a lot.”

“That’s because you’re a tourist,” the Lady said. The Brazilian shook her head, but the Lady wasn’t done. “As soon as you move here, Vancouverites will be flaky, cold, and mean to you. We’re all just out for ourselves.” The man next to her, who didn’t say a word the entire time, nodded.

“I actually disagree,” I said, “I think things are changing.”

“It’s not changing,” she said. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Yes I do. I’ve made tons of friends here,” — and as I said this I realized that the blood was pumping in my ears, my heart was pounding, and I had officially gotten worked up.

“They won’t last.”

I couldn’t believe this. “You have no idea about my friends.”

“It’s because you’re in college!”

“I’m not in college. I’m thirty-four years old!” My whole body felt hot. “I talk to people all the time when walking around the city.”

“Well, they don’t want to talk to you.”

“What? Yeah they do.”

“No they don’t!”

“Yes, they do.”

“I’ve seen them!” The Lady stabbed her finger at me. “And believe me, they don’t want to be talking to you!”

“You’ve seen them talking to me? What are you even talking about!”

“They think you want something from them and they DON’T want to be talking to you!”

Luckily, the Brazilian girl leaned interjected. “I’ve had no problem making friends here.”

The Lady pivoted on her. “Probably with other Brazilians!”

“Yeah,” the Brazilian confirmed. “A lot of them are Brazilian, but also I’ve made Canadian friends.”

This small break in the conversation allowed me to take a breath and see how absurd everything was. I sat back and let the Lady talk a bit more about how shitty Vancouver and everyone in it was, but I stopped responding. Eventually we got back to making zines and I wrote down a few things about her that weren’t very nice but she didn’t read them so it’s fine.

Why did this bother me so much? Because she’s right — it is hard to make friends. Not just here, but everywhere, especially if you’re a newcomer. You know what doesn’t help the situation? Making everyone think it’s so impossible that they don’t even go out and try. Our words have power — each time we say Vancouver is unfriendly, we make it a little unfriendlier.

If, for a wild example, we were to tell newcomers that Vancouver is a warm and welcoming place, then maybe they’ll be smiling on the street, which will then encourage others to do so, and the warmth will be created. Maybe we can do something about this problem rather than complaining about it to visitors.

Though of course, I was not faultless in this interaction. It takes two to argue, and there is no doubt I have a lot to learn from the Lady about how I can calmly disagree with others and recognizing that my own words have power. But that’s for another piece of writing.

After, Nick’s report on the event was, “I thought you were going to fight her!”, which is pretty accurate. He also made a nice little zine about how much he loved couchsurfing, which I thought was nice.

“I thought you were gonna fight that old lady!” — Nick

NENAD THE SERBIAN HITCHHIKER

“This was my sign,” Nenad said.

Not the most hopeful expression, I must admit.

It took me a minute to realize it was his “hitchhiking to Hope, An Actual City In BC” sign. He then showed us a huge stack of papers, each with a city name, that had earned him passage all the way across Canada.

“Do you keep all your hitchhiking signs?” I asked

“Oh no, there would be too many.”

Nenad has been traveling for 16 years. He’s thrown away stacks of papers with cities from USA, China, Africa, South America, the Middle East. Everything he owns is in his backpack and in total he’s hitchhiked through 109 countries.

He was our “on a grand adventure” couchsurfer of the month.

Nenad uses couchsurfing everywhere he goes and has over 1600 reviews, though he’s sure he’s stayed with at least 3000 people through the platform. He lives on $3000 dollars a year because the only thing he spends money on is food and coffee. While walking around Stanley Park he pulled a loaf of bread from his coat pocket like he was a hobbit and informed me that he’d been saving it since Hope, (it was a little stale).

Nenad stayed with us for five days and I could write a small book about him, but one anecdote really stands out.

THE ONLY BAD COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

“Have you ever had a bad couchsurfing experience?” I asked. The platform works solely on reviews, so it’s pretty much one-strike-you’re-out, which keeps the bad hosts to a minimum, but I figured that in 16 years Nenad must have a few stories.

“Not really no,” he said. But then he perked up, “Actually there was one…

“It was a small apartment,” he continued, “the guy was in the bed and I was on a mat next to him on the floor. He was nice, but then in the night he got up and started sneaking around.”

Nenad got up and tiptoed across our living room to show this.

“He snuck to the bottom of my mat and knelt down. Then, very slowly, he lifted the blanket to uncover just my feet.”

Avvai and I leaned forward.

“Then he took out his phone and started taking pictures of my feet.”

“What!” Avvai cried out.

“No he didn’t!” I exclaimed.

“Yes! I pretended to be asleep and he kept taking pictures of my feet.”

“Why pretend to be asleep?!”

“What else can I do? I just laid there for one hour while he took pictures.”

“An hour!”

“Then he covered my feet and sneaked back into his bed. I left right away in the morning.”

“That is wild,” I said. “Where in the world was this?”

“It was in the worst city I’ve ever been to,” Nenad said. “Washington, DC.”

We also got to show him Canadian Thanksgiving, which he said was his favorite Thanksgiving.

YARUM’S VANCOUVER HIGHLIGHT

Our final couchsurfer was a young Korean guy, who was fresh out of his mandatory military service and eager to see the world. On his first day he wandered down onto East Hastings, which is where the majority of Vancouver’s homeless live.

He spent four hours there, walking around and talking to people.

“Are they smoking marijuana?” He asked that evening.

“Uh… no,” I said. “They’re smoking meth. And fentanyl.”

“Really?? Are you sure?”

Apparently, the Korean government is extremely strict about weed. He told us that when he goes home they can randomly check your blood at the airport — if they find weed you’re off to jail. I told Yarum about fentanyl and he was shocked.

“I have been brainwashed!” he exclaimed. “The Korean government says that marijuana is the worst thing you can possibly do. Are you sure that’s not what they are smoking?”

This seemed to really rock Yarum’s understanding of the world. He went down to East Hastings the next day. He ate lunch at the community center and met an older man who showed him his bag of weapons. He saw multiple overdoses and even tried to help once. On his last day, before catching his bus, he left early so he could spend one last morning down there.

Yarum wasn’t able to articulate what his thoughts were on the Downtown Eastside, despite my many questions. But there is no doubt that he had a very different tourism experience than most people visiting the city. He said it was the highlight of his trip; he travels to meet people, and he met a lot of people while here — he even made a few friends.

At least there is one part of Vancouver that isn’t cold.

That’s the blurry face of a guy who loved his visit!

SKETCHES AND ANIMATIONS

When we aren’t hosting, I’ve been making a lot of videos with the Smashed Potato Kids. I’m grateful I have a team of people eager to fail and learn, because we sure are learning a lot right now!

I’ve also been trying to make some stuff on the side and this month the experiment was mixing storytelling, animation, and humour.

To that end, here is the animated story of meeting my baby nephew Jude when he was a week old! I told a simpler version of this previously, but wanted to bring it to life and add a bunch more jokes.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND FUN STUFF

I read quite a bit this month, but the highlight was a graphic novel about the history of ginseng. Craig Thompson is one of my favorite graphic novelists, known for his incredible art and memoir style, he begins the story in his hometown of Marathon, Minnesota — the capital of ginseng in the USA — and travels all the way through Korea, China, and beyond.

If you’ve read any of his work (Blankets is a masterpiece of the genre), Avvai and I both agree that Ginseng Roots is his next masterpiece. I know it’s crazy to have two masterpieces, but I think he’s done it.

Definitely worth reading if you like stunning art, stories about finding your identity, or ginseng.

AND THAT’S IT FOR THE HALLOWEEN EDITION

It’s now 1AM, Halloween is officially over, and I’m still at the Vancouver airport.

This is part of my latest side-gig, which is that I do meet and greets for a tour company. I pop down to the airport, help people board their flight or find their taxi, and then head on home.

Today, due to cancellations and weird scheduling, I’m here all night. I meet a trip arriving from Egypt in half an hour and then I greet a group leaving to Tunisia at 4AM. Easier to just sleep here and catch up on newsletters than go all the way home for maybe an hour of rest.

I must admit that spending all this time at the airport is giving me some itchy feet. Today the flights to Mexico City and Osaka were especially alluring… but for now I’m happy to have a place to write, to work on improving storytelling skills, and to experience Vancouver through other traveller’s eyes.