As I tossed and turned in a bed I’d never slept in, staring at a ceiling I’d never once seen, and listening to the snores of the stranger sleeping next to me, a wave of panic hit: Where the fuck was I?
Literally, at 1:30 a.m. I could list off only three things I knew for sure.
1) I was somewhere in the city of Philadelphia, the fifth largest city in the country.
2) The potentially half-naked girl next to me was named Laura.
3) I wasn’t getting much sleep that night.
Which left me with quite a few questions, namely: What possessed me to do this? Could this room get any hotter? And is Laura, in fact, topless?
But I guess we signed up for this. And by we, I mean all 563,698 of us currently registered worldwide on couchsurfing.com. The launch of the site in 2004 sparked a trend that opened up couches, spare beds, and floor space all over the world. The idea was to connect perfect strangers by opening up the homes of thousands to those traveling.
Naturally, I had to try it.
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