Social Experiment

I took a little road trip this weekend with two German assistants (Joachim and Cornelius) and a French guy who works at City Hall (Tom). The four of us packed into Tom's little Peugeot Friday night with our sleeping bags and gear and a couple of guitars and headed for the coast.

Rather than booking hotels or hostels for the weekend, we decided to try a concept called couchsurfing. I had heard a lot about it and Joachim had actually originally met Tom at an event at a bar that was organized through couchsurfing. For those of you who haven't heard of it, couchsurfing is a website where you create a profile (similar to Facebook) with the intention of contacting people where you are traveling and simply sleeping on a strangers couch. Of course, it is assumed you will reciprocate if anyone ever contacts you to crash on your couch.

I had talked to a number of people who have done some couchsurfing and have only heard of positive experiences. People who crash with someone usually write reviews of their experiences, vouching for the character of their hosts etc. I was still a little skeptical, but figured that while traveling with a group of guys I knew and trusted was probably not a bad time to try it out.

It turned out to be a great experience; the kind of thing that restores your faith in the inherent goodness of human beings. We crashed with three French people in a house in Vannes the first night. They happened to be hosting two Americans and one British assistant the same night (so there were ten of us in the house, plus one rabbit). They were extremely welcoming and one of the girls worked at a pastry shop so we ate a lot of day-old French pastries that the shop usually throws out. We went out to a concert at a local bar in the middle of a cow pasture and then came back to play some music ourselves until about 4 am.

Saturday we worked our way up the coast, checking out the beaches and cliffs in Quiberon and the sunset in Concarneau along the way. It was beautiful most of the day, except for a brief but impressive hailstorm that gave us an excuse to take refuge in a cafe at about 3 pm. After the squall passed, the sun came back out and we wandered the coast, basked in the rays and enjoyed an awesome sunset over the Atlantic.







Saturday night we crashed in Quimper with a 21 year-old art student named Romain. He didn't have a couch, but after a dinner of baked sea bass that Joachim had prepared, a bottle of whiskey and a few hours of guitar playing we were good enough friends that Joachim passed out with Romain and his girlfriend in his bed. The rest of us made do with a nest of thermarests, blankets and an inflatable pool lounger on the dining room floor.

Sunday morning (early afternoon actually) Romain joined us for a trip up the coast towards Crozon. We saw rain and snow and beautiful countryside and ended up taking refuge in a creperie to drink some tea, eat some crepes and play Trivial Pursuit in French before we packed back into the car to drop Romain off and head home to Nantes.