Кауч
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“couch" – это трэвелог, состоящий из ста историй о людях из Couchsurfing – глобального сообщества путешественников, которое помогает остановиться у местных жителей или принять гостей у себя дома.
В книге запечатлен период backpacking путешествий автора с 2014 по 2022 годы по разным странам, таким как США, Индия, Таиланд, Gulf Countries, а также по разным уголкам Европы – от Лиссабона до Саратова. Примерно треть историй из книги повествуют о том, как автор сам хостил путешественников, как в Пензе – родной русской провинции – так и в Берлине, городе, в котором автор нашел чувство дома.
Основное внимание в книге уделяется людям и их культурному разнообразию. В конечном итоге читатель узнает из этой книги не только о том, как путешественники общаются с хозяевами и как функционирует как хостинг, так и серфинг – но и о бесконечных перестановках, от братаний до конфликтов.
Содержит нецензурную брань.
- Миша Чинков Кауч Примечания
Миша Чинков Кауч
To the readers of my telegram channel Paranoid Android for their interest in my texts. I wouldn’t have the guts to write this book without you.
To IT industry for the money I could save to spend three months without making a living. I don’t know when I would be able to write this book without these three months. I guess, never.
To all the hosts and surfers for the mutual experience, for the chemistry that keeps the memories of the past alive. Due to privacy concerns, names in the stories are replaced with fictional ones.
Couchsurfing (also couch) – one of the biggest communities of independent travelers. Unites more than 6 million people over 246 countries. Its members offer free homestay during travelling and organize trips together.
Couchsurfer – member of the Couchsurfing community.
Host – a person who offers homestay; to host – to offer a homestay.
Surfer – a person in search of a homestay; to surf – to stay over.
Having finished the first university year in Penza, my hometown in the ass end of nowhere, I spent my summer holidays trying to move to Saint Petersburg. Initially I wanted to leave and become a bartender, though a figure of a military commissar1 – horny for idle boys to recruit – blew it off. Another way was to transfer to Saint Petersburg State University. Alas, the academic deficiency of 13 subjects was too much to overcome despite my success in the entry exam.
Pretty soon, I had to take a backseat with moving. A quick 5-day visit to Petersburg turned my world picture inside out. I’ve seen the whole world without leaving Russia. Dazzling beauty of streets and yards was a common thing in this world. People travel all over this world: sometimes carrying Dostoevsky's anguish or Mayakovski's pep. I fell for anthropology and embraced the spirit of wanderlust into my soul.
Having returned to Penza I spent the rest of the summer quarrelling with father, working as a courier in the tax office and hanging out with strangers. That summer was much better than the previous ones as I was obsessed with computer games, poisonous pubertal virginity, thoughts about teen suicide and fear for the future. Still, that summer was boring, so I was making my plans for the next one.
That’s how I got that idea to go to the States via Work&Travel. Many students knew about it, but few would actually try it out. I saw the goal, not the obstacles. I was able to save money for the first payment by working small jobs, and I was lucky to make it before the ruble collapsed. For the second payment I borrowed money from my mother which I returned to the cent upon the end of the program. It took me half a year to improve my English to look smart enough at the interview in Moscow U.S. Embassy. I even managed to surprise my interviewer by knowing a bunch of hotline numbers by heart.
I had one month left before the trip. Finished the summer session ahead of schedule and was looking forward to having a great time. I didn’t want my Work&Travel to slide into Work&Work, so I planned a trip across the States. Just draw a circle route between the biggest points eastwards and closed it in New York.
The only question was where to live. That’s when I learned about CouchSurfing. Honestly, I can’t really recall how I found it. Most likely it came across in one of those TED videos watched millions of times. I instantly fell in love with an idea of multicultural homestays. I felt vibes of freedom, adventure spirit and desire to discover something new.
The States seemed both familiar and strange piece of land for a Russian. I’ve had no idea of the subtleties of life overseas. What's important for them, what worries them, what they dream of.
CouchSurfing seemed like a perfect place to get comprehensive answers to such complicated questions.
I live in New Jersey and have an occasional commute to New York by train – I go there in the morning and go back in the evening. New York reminds me of my mission in the States. Right now, I’m on my way to New York to stay over so that I see more and feel better. I need a couch.
Before my moving to the States, I asked my friends from an English-speaking club to write some reviews for me on couch; however, three reviews like “his English very good” weren’t all too impressive to find a host. Suddenly, as if according to the canons of Batman comics, a guy named Robin came to help. Robin migrated to New York from the Philippines a few years ago. He lived in a sort of communal apartment and worked as a physiatrist.
10 p.m., Brooklyn, Utica Street subway station. I feel weird as it's bloody dark around here. People say it’s dangerous out there at night. It turns out, it's easier to love Brooklyn from afar – when you see it through 90s hip-hop songs. Reality is different.
Robin meets me at the entrance with friendliness, uncommon for a stranger. He notices my skinny body, worn out by overtime hours. We go to a store and get some food, so there’s something to stuff me up. We sleep in a single bed – nothing new for someone who spent the whole summer in one king-size bed with a guy called Bogdan.
Robin left to work earlier than I woke up. During breakfast, I got to meet Robin’s roommates: Maxi from France, Karim from Tunis and Ahmed from Syria. Maxi came to New York for a month to learn cooking local thick crust pizza. Karim and Ahmed worked in a Middle Eastern restaurant.
– [Me]: Ahmed, I believe you have a war in Syria, how do you feel about it?
– [Ahmed, smiling]: I don’t watch TV.
Robin ended up leaving me no review on Couch. I think I must have offended him somehow.
At the Philadelphia bus station, my host Jim is waiting for me.
Jim is 28. Afro-American, originally from South Carolina, bald, average height, works as a nurse in a hospital. Strictly speaking, Jim doesn't live in the city itself, but in its suburb township Abington. It takes half an hour by train to get there from Philadelphia city center, and around twenty minutes more on foot from the train station to Jim’s house. Jim lives in a classic American house with his girlfriend.
The evening we spent together with his girlfriend drinking hard liquor, smoking bong and gobbling pizza from delivery. Jim ecstatically tells me about the benefits of marijuana. We read a themed journal he gets by subscription.
Jim left to work early in the morning. I have breakfast alone and notice his girlfriend is still home. I opened the door.
– [Me]: Hi! Would you like to keep me company on the way to the train station? You are going to the University, don’t you?
– [The girl]: Thanks, but I still have things to do here.
3 p.m.. I’m walking around the town, do sightseeing, get disappointed in the local delicacy Cheese Steak. Jim’s calling.
– [Jim]: My girlfriend told me you entered her room without knocking.
– [Me]: Well, yeah, my mistake.
– [Jim]: You disappointed me.
– [Me]: I get it, sorry.
– [Jim hangs up.]
On my way back home, I buy an ice-cream bucket and prepare a thousand apologies.
– [Jim]: Pack your shit and get the hell out!
– [Me]: Please, let me explain…
– [Jim]: Nothing to explain here, pack your shit and get out!
A cultural shock overtook me. There was a huge contrast between the society I grew in and the one I find myself in here and now. My parents never knocked the door before entering my room. In New Jersey I lived with a crowd of students and private boundaries had nothing to do with it. Someone could wake me up at 1 a.m. asking for weed which I never had. I can’t say I liked it, I just … got used to it. And here we are: all I did was just opening the door without knocking. And now I’ve got a harassment accusation for that.
That was my one-way trip from “welcomed guest” to “filthy scumbag”.
9 p.m., the last train to Philadelphia. Three heavy suitcases and there’s my whole life. I drag these suitcases across downtown pavement. Late in the evening, American downtown sucks. People don’t live in business centers, so deserted skyscrapers welcome all sorts of outcasts and lowlifes when working shifts are over. Looks like a poor “Mafia” storyline: town goes to sleep, rabble wakes up. Scared and pissed off, I run into the first hostel that comes to my eyes. No free beds there, but the girl at the reception calls another hostel and gets me a bed there for a couple of nights. I’m safe – I have a place to stay over.
Hey Jim, I think you must have taken me wrong, bro!
Next on the line is Baltimore.
I enter the home of my host, Diego, and immediately feel an alluring smell – he is cooking dinner.
– [Diego]: what about mayonnaise?
– [Me]: I hate mayonnaise.
– [Diego]: why so rude?
– [Me]: You see, for me, “Baltimore” is a ketchup2.
Diego is from Columbia. He moved to Baltimore half a year ago. He never had any steady profession or job: he kept doing some side job or volunteering, focusing on traveling. In Baltimore, he got a job of sysadmin in a local school. Diego himself is a simple, easygoing guy. Hanging out with him is nothing but pleasure.
Baltimore looks just like Tyler Durden – it has two faces. One of them is ugly, with bums in downtown, crime activities and atmosphere of some kind of total fear. Every local I met on my way asked me to be careful. The other face is nice with hipster features, tons of places to visit, stories and feeling that the town is somehow special. That’s the Baltimore Diego shows me in the evening.
We speak about travelling, adventures and hobbies. It turned out Diego also participated in Work&Travel (not in the States though, but in Australia). Our conversation passes too quickly: we go back home and sleep. The next morning, Diego is at work.
I think Diego is like me – but seven years older and some thirty centimeters taller.
Washington DC is not the best place for couch. I managed to find Airbnb somewhere far in the suburbia.
– [Chris]: How’re you doing?
– [Me]: Fine.
Chris is from Nashville, Tennessee. He is volunteering in Peace Corps3 here in DC. The day before my arrival he got expelled from university where he supposed to get a second degree. He looks upset.
Sunday, Labor Day. Chris joins me in my trip around the town. He is one of those locals who don’t do sightseeing unless invited for a company. First thing in the morning we go to the museum of ancient history where you can see lots of artifacts. Next thing we go around the US Capitol surrounded by scaffolds, walk across the town, explore colorful houses, parks, fountains, discuss history and politics. Chris remembers the 9/11 attacks, asking this and that about Russia at the same time.
– [Me]: Chris, tell me, how do you imagine your old age?
– [Chris]: I want to live in Costa Rica, it’s shiny and cheap there.
– [Me]: Sounds great.
After eating burgers for lunch in a food court, we try to part our ways in subway. Chris is heading to the Cinema for a janitor job interview. He tells me about Arlington National Cemetery, and that’s where I’m heading. DC subway might be rightly considered one of the worst in the world: expensive, unclear price policy and scheduled trains doing “ass-backwards” routes. At some point, our train stops for ten minutes. Running late for the interview, Chris rushes out of the car at the nearest station hoping to find a more practical mean of transport.
In the evening, we meet at home.
– [Me]: How was it, did you get on time for the interview?
– [Chris]: Yeah, just on time. It went well, they should be hiring me.
– [Me]: You are a smart guy, why do you need this cleaner job?
– [Chris]: Well, that’s temporary.
In think there’s something wrong in your American dream.
Teresa has a two-story house in Pittsburgh’ suburbs and rents out a room there on Airbnb. There is a handmade wedding dresses store. Laura herself has no family or kids. She rents two rooms in the house for Nasrat, an exchange student from Afghanistan, and Ostin, a security guy from Florida.
– [Teresa]: How old are you?
– [Me]: Nineteen.
– [Teresa]: I would give you twelve max.
Laura has wide bulging eyes, serious face and officious cold tone of voice. Despite the first impression, I soon plunge into the atmosphere of the hostess’ warmth. Teresa tries to give me as much warmth as she physically can.
– [Teresa]: Make yourself at home.
– [Me, inwardly]: Just don’t forget to knock before entering.
Ostin feels a bit easier to speak to. Despite all possible clichés – his large size and guard job – Ostin is quite a melancholic type of person. He worries about our future, worries about the questions we have to answer to move forward in life. I was only nineteen and couldn't comprehend many of his thoughts, never mind a twelve-year-old look.
I think that was much of a heartwarming Airbnb, though I didn’t have a chance to speak to Nasrat – it would be interesting to learn how he got his name4.
Mary and Robert in Columbus – a typical young family in American suburbia. They both work at school: Mary is a teacher, Robert's a counselor. In childhood, Mary went to France for an exchange program and lived there with a local family. She liked the spirit of hospitality for strangers. That’s why she decided to become a host.
The first day I meet Robert while Mary works late hours. We spend an hour chatting and drinking coffee when Robert suggests going to a student house show. As for someone who’s not experienced in student life, I am all in.
Wednesday evening, student apartment, party with an indescribable atmosphere of youth. Music scene down the basement. You can hear a mix of beatbox and some electronics. Half an hour later, Robert and I leave the basement, say hello to some of his old pals and meet some new.
I see a girl in a Nirvana T-shirt. Nirvana is an idolized deity for a concrete jungle boy I am. Before my trip to the States, I learned English by listening to their songs and write the most beautiful idioms out in my personal dictionary. I fancied picking up local girls with quotes from their songs, like “I wish I could eat your cancer”5. In the end of the day, I didn’t really speak to her.
The next entire day I roam around Ohio State University campus. Columbus doesn’t have much to offer, so I focus on exploring American student lifestyle: attending mathematical analysis classes, doing small talk with a football team mascot, interviewing protesters disappointed with the quality of the campus food.
I think the folks here are having fun speaking to an alien interested in the way things are here.
Having left the Chicago bus station, I jump into the car of my host Charlie. Charlie looked like a real baron from a gypsy camp – a sturdy, positive infused guy. The big guy like him came along with a big car.
– [Charlie]: Look who’s here! My Russian man!
– [Me]: From Russia with love.
On our way to Charles’ apartment, I feel like the guy knows absolutely everything about Chicago: every building, most likely every citizen.
– [Charlie]: You see that high-rise? That’s the Trump Tower, the most despised building in Chicago.
– [Me]: You think Trump will win next elections? (2016)
– [Charlie]: Impossible, he has too few supporters.
Charlie works as a tour guide in a local company and knows Chicago like the back of his hand. He lives in a newly built two-room apartment on the fifteenth floor. He is around fifty and lives alone. His mother, sister and some cousins live in Chicago, too.
There’s one thing in Chicago that interests me more than the city itself – Riot Fest, with System of a Down and The Prodigy as headliners.
After the first day of the festival, I come to Charlie’s home with lots of emotions and dirt in my pants. Heavy rain turned a park lawn into a mess. I’m knee-deep in mud, there is no way to guess the color of my sneakers.
– [Me]: Charles, look at that mess on my pants and snickers. What are we going to do?
– [Charlie]: Ha-ha, you better do some striptease before entering my apartment!
– [Me]: Fair enough. [I take off my pants and snickers and pack them in a bag from IKEA Charles gives me]
At the dinner after the second Fest day, I’m impressed when Charlie shows an interest in Russia. He’s concerned with Russian province. He realizes life there differs from life in Moscow. I make some calculations to convert average monthly salary – 25 thousand rubles – to dollars.
I think at that point, Charles' mouth fell open.
Buffalo, 9 a.m., my host Bob is already at work. The station sends its first buses at 10, the only alternative is $50 taxi. Annoyed, I strategically choose waiting in the hall with a rubber hot dog in my arms.
[Bob]: “The keys are under the rug. Don’t hesitate to come inside. Don’t mind the dog“.
This man leaves the keys from the house to a stranger he has nothing to do with, for a chatting in an app for cultural homestays. How is that even possible? How can you trust people so much?
The dog Pinky was astounded by the presence of an unwelcomed guest, but didn’t bite me. I leave my bugs in the living room and go explore the city. Buffalo is yet another place in my tour where there’s not much to do, though it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m staring at the nearest embankment, cracking up as I see a half-dead tram proudly called “Metro”, sneaking to the baseball team stadium bleachers.
As the evening comes, I meet Bob with his bunch as they play kickball. Kickball is like baseball: instead of batting a small hard ball, players kick a big pumped rubber ball. They’re drinking beer from aluminum cans in-between the “innings” and I’m just puzzling my head over how they manage to combine one with the other.
Bob was born in San-Francisco and grew up in that holy place. He moved to Buffalo five years ago. Bob got tired of Silicon Valley and rat races for all that glitters: from behind-the-scene games to green notes with Franklin portrait, from nootropics to cryptocurrency. Bob’s willing to go smoothly through the life in an American suburbia way. He’s up and running here: white collar job from nine to five, a devoted doggy, great pals, occasional girls, house on lease and local puny teams to give you a minute for cheering. Pretty much the same goes for Bob – he is a nice, calm guy who knows how to have fun and so helps others.
Bob showed me the room I was supposed to be all on my own. He assured me I could take everything I wanted from the refrigerator and gave me instructions how to look after Charlie.
[Bob]: “If Pinky goes nuts – open the yard door, point him a finger on the road and command – Go pee. Right after he pees, make sure he runs back inside the house. I don’t want him locked in the yard – he’s gonna be stressed, poor boy“.
Having finished with Pinky, I take a bus to Niagara Falls. Water runs intensely under the cliff. There’s a footbridge to Canada right to the waterfall. Having left the park, I stumble upon locals complaining about extremely high crime rates, absence of decent job places and other drawbacks of life in a tourist city.
When I return to Buffalo, Bob and his pal comes to pick me up. We go to a bar. At the table, Bob offers to check out a masterpiece of the local cuisine – Buffalo chicken wings.
– [Bob]: If you eat up a portion of twenty wings, I’ll give you a ride to the station tomorrow morning.
– [Me]: You know, I’m hungry as hell, never mind paying damn fifty dollars for a taxi – so that’s a bet.
– [Bob’s pal]: You have it.
Having an empty stomach since the morning, I am swallowing these wings as if in a speed contest. I nail it eventually, though that must be gross to look at. During the breaks between my gluttony sprints, we have some funny exchanges:
– [Bob]: How do you say “yes“ in Russian?
– [Me]: “Da“.
– [Bob]: And “no“?
– [Me]: “Njet“.
– [Bob]: That’s it, now I can survive in Russia with my vocabulary: “da“, “njet“ and “vodka“.
In the morning, Bob drives me to the station. I think he’s a cool guy, because he kept his promise.
My new host Richard gives me some weird vibes when we text. He sets rules like “sleep naked“ as clothes damage the air mattress. He sends a lot of long messages the days before the trip, introduces all guests by the country they’re from – Russia, Greece, China – as if we have an international gang-bang instead of a co-living. Doesn’t matter much for me, though – there’s a couch, and the rest are mere details. Am I supposed to part with my hard-earned dollars to spend a night at Uncle Sam’s hotel? I'd better see how homos live.
Besides the bags with booze which I’d utilized my whole five months of American life, I carry some undigested chicken wings in my stomach. Twenty wings are a serious challenge for the body, better have a hangover. Looks like my body threw all reserves to help the stomach and screwed my brain. That’s the only way I can explain the fact I left my credit card in a ticket machine. That piece of plastic gives to lucky one access to all the money I've earned in four months of slaving away in the States. Such hard-earned money is so easy to lose.
I come to Richard and start to exhaust both myself and him with disturbing thoughts concerning the fate of my card. Richard immediately turns on a “fixer mode“ and calls to the bank hotline. Twenty minutes later the problem is solved: the card is blocked, and a new untitled one will be waiting for me on Monday in the nearest banking department. I only have to survive Sunday with 10 dollars cash.
Before we go to bed, I use my last bits of energy to put up private borders.
[Me]: “I will sleep in clothes. And that's that“.
Sometimes such ultimatums may get you kicked out, but not with Richard – he’s a cool guy, and he accepts it.
He is fifty, born and raised in Boston. A bit taller than me, bald, odd accent. But he’s a good fella with a kind heart. He is on welfare now because of a wrist break. His whole life he works with his hands, so such traumas cut the ground under his feet.
He lives in a tiny room, around six square meters. It includes his kitchen, wardrobe, one air mattress bedroom and a little nest for surfers. You can also find a bathroom stocked into every floor. Old posters of pumped-up naked men with big penises' en face are glued to the walls. All these details plunge me into the atmosphere of “American 90s“.
For breakfast, we have pancakes that Richard baked on a camping gas stove. Richard’s neighbor Shawn is sitting with us. Having returned from hotel night shift, he reports how busy he is. After breakfast, Richard and I walk around shiny Boston.
Richard tells me about his life eagerly. About the Polish roots of his mother and the family of like three or five siblings. About his job as a hot dog guy on “Patriots“ matches when he was fourteen, about boys he likes more than girls. Incidentally, we enter a library where Richard connects to the Internet. It’s 2015, and he has no smartphone, no tablet, no laptop. A poor hard worker he is.
In the evening, we go to a Boston Red Sox6 game. Somebody at the entrance to the stadium sold me a ticket for twenty dollars. I borrow a twenty from Richard for a day. Richard doesn’t like professional sport, so he goes back home. He has things to do after all: like cooking breakfast, doing chores.
Instead of a comforting solitude in anticipation of a game I don’t really understand, I get into the continuation of American socialization banquet. A guy who sold me the ticket is sitting nearby. There’s his wife and another sweet couple. They are drunk as hell and ingenuously kind-hearted. They came from Rhode Island – the smallest state with a territory compared to my hometown.
– [The Man]: Where are you from, pal?
– [Me]: From Russia.
– [The Man]: Wow, Russia! Do you like baseball?
– [Me]: Not really, I see it first time.
– [The Man]: Here’s your twenty, it’s on me. I want you to have a great time and bring home some good memories.
– [Me]: Thank you, man, you’re great.
Baseball fells like an unbelievably lame kind of sport. Having enough of that even before the middle of the game, I rush out of the stadium, catch the last bus and hope I’ll be in time for the dinner.
The next day, another surfer comes in – an exchange student from Greece. He came from New Hampshire to a scientific conference. The day after, another tourist from China comes by. My last night in Boston, I spend on an air mattress with three guys. We watch “Home alone” on VHS before going to sleep. True 90s spirit.
Richard changes a dozen Facebook accounts, keeping the same photo with a shitty resolution. He would persistently write me this and that. Here’s his last message:
[Richard, transliterated]: “Zdravstuite Mika!! Nadeiusi Vi Pojivaete Horosho“7
I think Richard is a warm-hearted guy.
My last visit to New York coincides with the visit of the Pope. Millions of tourists gathered in the city from nearby states and countries for such occasion. Among all this, it seems impossible to find a host. Only a couple hosts out of hundreds responded to me: an LGBT-radical from Times Square neighborhood and a student Jongmyao from China. The first one suddenly changed and canceled my request the following day. The second one promised to provide a room for a couple of days and disappeared afterwards. Eventually I lost hope to contact him.
Jongmyao left his address, so I go for a preventive strike and break into his house. Having arrived in the middle of the workday, I stumble upon his parents. They don’t know English, so we speak through Google Translate. His mother explains that they “are not so big“ and I should look for a place to stay somewhere else. I realize I’m going too far with my virtue seeking for a free couch, so I bring hearty apologies and make farewells.
What was I thinking? Breaking into a house to strangers like this? What was my point? Why would I scrimp on a hundred dollars for three nights in a room on Brighton Beach? What was driving me at that moment: greed, stinginess or obsession with challenges?
In the end of the day, I stay in YMCA8 guesthouse in Harlem. I am on my second tour around New Your commonplaces. Admiring its splendor, its history and at the same time terrified by its dimensions, loudness, sewer stench and never-ending scaffolds on 5th Avenue. On Friday – the day of the Pope’s visit – people are crowding the surroundings of the Central Park. I barely make my way through a crowd in a street adjacent to the park. I have a plugged nose and a stuffed ear. Seems like I caught a cold in Boston when I had morning coffee from Richard’s cup.
My remaining days in the States are filled with anguish. I want it so bad to get back to the University, make up lost time for the first term, return to the Internet lab and continue the sysadmin internship. After five years of low-skilled employment, all I want is to study, do something interesting, think with my own head.
After what seemed like half an hour upon my arrival to Sheremetyevo airport, I get a call from my grandma.
I returned to the hometown and dived into studying and work. I would pass terms, exams and course projects ahead of schedule, do some silly things in the university lab and absorb all the study books, courses and reports I could find. Eventually I changed two different jobs and found myself in an outsource company.
Outsourcing was great too. I was hired as an infrastructural engineer in a project which essentially didn’t need any infrastructure in the first place. The client was a kind of megalomaniac who believed the project would go big every minute. This project handed me a blank check to do whatever I wanted and pretend it was all about the client’s whatnot. I tested different tools which would come in handy in the future, got some bumps and bruises in a client’s sandbox, earned respect from colleagues for a bright mind chock-full of ideas.
One day, the project got closed. I jumped at the opportunity to spend my allowance in a two-weeks trip to India with only a small backpack on my shoulders. Why India? Because it’s warm there in November!
I knew nothing about India till the very moment my plane landed in Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. I only read a bunch of trivial click-bate articles during the two weeks in between buying tickets and departing from Moscow. They said it’s a hearty country, with a spicy smell on the markets and dancing people on the streets.
While in the States and Russia you push your way to a host through dozens and hundreds of idlers seeking a free couch, in India it’s all different – hosts message you first. Post your “public trip” where you state the dates of your presence in a town and get ready for a dozen invitations to stay over.
I think I’m in the beginning of the most fucked-up trip in my life.
On Friday nights, Vanya rides from Kuznetsk to Podolsk on work affairs – he assembles kitchens made in his hometown. It’s the second time Vanya gives me a ride on BlaBlaCar.
– [Vanya]: Remember Albina from the last time?
– [Me]: Yeah.
– [Vanya]: I gave her one last ride to Ryazan. She left her kid at her mother and moved to boyfriend.
– [Me]: Oh, my gosh.
– [Vanya]: Hell yeah, she’s a weird girl.
The rest of the way to Podolsk we keep silent, the music is playing in the background. Vanya allows me to play Korn and Slipknot, but then changes music anyway. Gangsta hip-hop, shanson9 something about “sex and drugs“. His music taste aligns better with M5 highway10 at night.
Without having much sleep, I get out of the car on the “Shcherbinka“ railway station and arrive to Domodedovo airport in two hours. It’s going to take me twenty hours to get to Delhi from Moscow, including twelve hours transfer in Bishkek. On the “Manas Air” plane, I meet a couple from St. Petersburg, Lesha and Lena. We beguile the flight to Bishkek by talking about countries, cities and our expectations from India.
Russia and Kyrgyzstan have visa-free arrangements, so you may go outside. On my way to the passport control, my eyes catch the first Kirghiz word – “Chygoo“. It’s printed on the sign with the words “Vyhod“ and “Exit“. I wonder if there’s another odd word instead of “Enter“. In the arrival zone, a guy catches up with us and peddles an overpriced taxi ride. He sees my confusion and says with a smirk: “You shouldn’t expect any help here”. We take a “marshrutka” to the center and forget to pay. The stereo plays a disk with Russian pop-scene hits from ten years ago. October in Bishkek is sad: zero by Celsius, sloppy rain, empty squares, empty malls, local dull faces. We decide to get back to the airport after an hour of strolling. We catch the first checker we see.
– [Me]: How much to the airport?
– [the Driver]: Five hundred.
– [Me]: Four hundred.
– [the Driver]: Four hundred is too little.
– [Me]: Okay, five hundred.
On the way to the airport, I try to get the driver into conversation.
[the Driver]: “I spent a year in Moscow: worked in a taxi, lived in a flat with ten people. I had money, but I had no free time and didn’t see relatives. It got depressing, so I came back”.
We try to get some sleep on cold airport seats in vain. Having got on the plain, we curse Bishkek – and maybe the whole Kyrgyzstan – for the lack of sleep.
I think I stick to my way to the Country of Spices and Dances.
I arrange a meeting with my host Rudra to meet at the “Pitam Pura” metro station. He lives nearby. Locals help to get to the station: someone buys me a metro ticket, someone else lends me a phone to make a call. Among them, I’ve met a “white collar” guy on his way back from a business trip to Mumbai. The guy is sincerely surprised with my idea to travel around India all by myself.
– [the Guy]: Eighty percent of people here – “uneducated”.
– [Me]: At least there are no “untouchables” anymore.
Rudra has a house without number on a street without name. The neighborhood reminds of a view from the game Assassin’s Creed: curvy houses, lots of people in eastern clothes, a hustle all about stalls and trading. There’s a big cow lying on the road – I hope it’s alive and simply enjoys some rest. In a pure fucking amazement from this “Country of Spices and Dances”, I ask myself a question: “Buddy, where the hell are you?”
Rudra is the nicest of all men. He creates an impression of someone who sincerely enjoys possibility to meet people from different countries, sharing some moments of life together. He is a network engineer in an Indian corporate. Three hours by car separate Delhi and his native village. He rents a ten square meters apartment in Delhi. A bed and a bathroom are the only amenities there.
Rudra drives home while I take a subway to center to do some sightseeing and get a sim card. On the one hand, I’m pretty grateful to Rudra for the help. On the other – I’m freaking out without him. On bazaar, I’m being fucked up at every corner: sim card, currency exchange, train tickets. I manage to activate the card by a couple call to the chief, local cronies help with an adequate exchange rate. Train tickets were a bit of a scam: I would learn in a week I bought them for twice the price. Still not that expensive.
On top of all cultural shock related stuff, I got a food poisoning in Bishkek. With a crazy look in my eyes, I rush through the bazaar seeking a toilet – you won’t even find one in McDonald's! Balancing on the edge between the permissible and the impermissible, I run into a local temple and as luck would have it I find a functioning public toilet. Religion saved my life in the end.
[WhatsApp chat]
– [Rudra]: Hey, brother. Call me when you’re there. I’m waiting.
– [Rudra]: Where are you?
– [Rudra]: Misha, do you have a sim card? Brother, send me a message, if it’s all right, where are you, I’m a bit worried about you.
– [Me]: Good, I’ve just come home. I’ve got Vodafone sim card. The guy told me it would be activated in 4 hours, but the Internet still doesn’t work.
– [Rudra]: Okey, thanks god, you’re finally back. I’ve thought, you know, no message, no answer. Sorry, just sim card problems. How was your day?
– [Me]: There’s so much I’d like to tell. Let’s talk about it when you come.
– [Rudra]: Have you eaten something for dinner?
– [Rudra]: A juice, thanks. My stomach needs some rest.
– [Rudra]: Well, fine, fine, take care, sleep well. I won’t be home today because I have an important work to do here, sorry about that, call me when your number is activated.
New Delhi is a town of crowds and jostles. I can hardly understand how people live here. Jostle at a metro entrance, jostle at a metro exit, jostle in a car wagon, jostle at the stall with alcohol, jostle at a praying room in the temple. Even metro's one-minute interval is still not enough for a comfortable ride. Given the Moscow-scale distances, an hour ride turns into torture.
At some point, I lose it, thinking over all possible and impossible ways to escape this flophouse. Soon, I accidentally meet two guys from England and Australia. We pass round a blunt and life becomes more tolerable.
The city is taking a new look. No longer see I any jostles, crooks or vile collectors in buses. Having eased off nuts where self-preservation instinct dwells, I enjoy summer weather and warm sunshine. I talk to the strangers I see, they are all friendliness and curiosity.
I think if countries were mental illnesses, India would be a “borderline personality disorder”.
Tour operators consider Taj Mahal to be the seventh, or like the eighths wonder of the world. The city of Agra – where it was built – lives off mass tourism. There is not much you can do about the human nature of going through check-lists set up by someone on the side.
Having fended off a couple weird guys in CouchSurfing with a massage offer, I finally find Yuvan – a guy nineteen years old. I can’t really say if he’s a student, a tour industry worker, or everything at once. The train from New Delhi to Agra is running for five hours instead of the scheduled three. I first see Agra late in the late evening darkness. The darkness warns me that I’m not going to see the Taj Mahal today – it’s closed half an hour before dawn. I see Yuvan driving up to the station on a motorbike.
We have dinner in a roadhouse with his brothers. Being rightfully local, Yuvan gives a couple lessons how to eat from a shared plate in the right way and how to hold a backpack at the table, so nobody can snitch it. One of his brothers invites me to stay over in his hotel. He’s acting pushy as fuck. On my third day here, I’m starting to get used to the way European look does the same to locals as a red flag to a bull. They’ll do whatever they can to sell you something, seeing no obstacles or borders. The guy is a real pain; besides, he’s breaking the first rule of the Russian etiquette: “When I dine, I’m deaf and blind”. The second brother doesn’t speak English and seems pretty quiet, thus winning my sympathy over the first one.
Yuvan suggest going to some hill in a village with a view on Taj Mahal. I agree with a picture in my head how I would draw this night to my friends: “Taj Mahal and night, and from afar, and with a local!”
Instead of Taj Mahal, we go to a five-star hotel where some local money bags celebrate a wedding. “I want to show you how I see India,” Yuvan tells me. The wedding is all about glamour and glitter: a buffet with cooks, nicely dressed guests, toilet paper in the bathroom and children's dances.
After the show, we go to a gas station, refill Yuvan’s bike with fuel and Yuvan’s stomach with booze. Yuvan is a born “flexer”: eloquent, talkative, energetic, no self-reflection – he goes with the flow, you know. It’s far from safe to be on the rear seat with a shit-faced guy, but the whirl of spontaneous events finally knocks down my self-preservation instinct. I let it go. That night, India was my youth, which forgives everything and promises nothing.
At some point, Yuvan meets his friend with two girls, so it makes five of us. After a dozen questions about our destination, Yuvan answered: “We go to the hotel to see Taj Mahal from the roof”.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Agra, a receptionist welcomes us in an empty hotel. He has a long talk with Yuvan and then gives a bunch of keys. We go upstairs. Yuvan opens two guest rooms wide. He enters one of them with the “girl number one”. I’m getting dragged to the other one by the “girl number two”.
All this surrealism gives me an odd feeling as if something was wrong. My father would tell me when I was a child: “Even cat's fuck has a reason”. I stay still and show the girl I want nothing from her. Yuvan eventually gives up on me being “pussy” and goes back to his lady. As for me, I go to the roof without sight of Taj Mahal whatsoever.
Yuvan finishes his business and invites everybody to his room. I’m sitting next to the “girl number two”. She doesn’t speak English and that makes any attempts to find out “Where? When? Why?” useless. I see some guy on her phone screen.
– [Me]: Is that your boyfriend?
– [the girl]: [silently nods]
We leave the hotel. Yuvan’s quiet brother is waiting for us at the entrance with a stern face. They are arguing about something. Shit hits the fan. A couple of minutes later, Yuvan turns to me and asks for money like we are bros.
– [Yuvan]: “The brother was supposed to pay for the hotel, but he’s kinda bitching about it. Now we need five thousand rupees to cover it. Be my bro, won’t you? I am your bro, bro, give me money, bro, I will give it back to the cent, bro”.
I make excuses since I understand I won’t see them back. Not that I have much money. On the one hand, it seems like the girl in the hotel should have become a legit part of the “blackmail” tourist program. On the other – I admit I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on.
We take a ride in his brothers’ car and stop at the ATMs we see on our way. Yuvan pretends he withdraws the money from his card and tells his bothers tales about technical problems. After an hour-long ride around Agra, I ask Yuvan to get me to the station. We get there after all, but Yuvan still follows my every step and asks to give him money.
3 p.m., crowded station. A group of ten lads sees us. One of them stands up for me and unloads a series of aggressive verbal punchlines at Yuvan. As a result, Yuvan disappears in the direction of his brothers’ car. That’s a nice relief for me: the story is over, I’m safe, and in a couple of hours I'll leave this fucking circus.
On my way to Jaipur, I read reviews to Yuvan’s couch profile and see familiar stories: about hotel wedding, about extortion. I think he must have sort of a long con aimed at tourists.
[Vedansh]: Hello, my friend. I will be glad to have you and show you the way to a good spiritual life with yoga and meditation”.
Jaipur city gives me vibes of hospitality, dignity and sincere affinity. Well, they are still all over you offering to buy some baubles, but it’s somehow kind, with smiling faces and no stress. I’m glad to be in “healthy India”.
These days, the country lives by Diwali. Diwali – the “festival of lights” – symbolizes the triumph of good over evil. To honor this victory, Indians light up candles and lamps all over the place. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a swastika as a solar symbol. Decorations are shining bright; pavement is covered with a red carpet. Noisy scooters are riding over the carpet, locals are hurrying somewhere.
[Vedansh]: “My address – h.no 305, lal ji sand ka rasta, choura rasta lal ji sand ka rasta, near Nawal book Depot. Take a tuk-tuk to chora rasta and there go to lal ji sand ka rasta, and there in lal ji sand ka rasta you’ll see Nawal book depot”.
I arrived to Nawal book depot, but I can’t reach Vedansh. I bother local guys and show them his photo – someone must know him. One of them helps me reach Vedansh and then shows the way to his home. Vedansh welcomes me open-armed. He’s sitting on his home floor, accompanied by Olivia from Australia. I join their get-together and get a joint to welcome company.
– [Olivia]: Dude, you’re so weird, I think you’re stoned.
– [Me]: Guys, I slept two hours last night on a car wagon seat.
Vedansh draws good deeds with an artist’s brush. He gets by selling his crafts to tourists. He makes an impression of a common spiritual Indian: tranquility, yoga, meditation. Again and again his speech slips with worldly wisdom.
[Vedansh]: “The first rule of life – no expectations. Expectations are useless”.
Next morning we walk outside for a breakfast. At breakfast, Vedansh tells us that life in Jaipur is great because nobody cares how much you earn and how much you have in your pocket now. Within four years our lost planet would bear a pandemic, Vedansh would lose his source of income and beg his white Facebook friends for a donation.
But at the moment, I’m sincerely touched by his tales about no-income life.
One can sincerely love Mumbai, hate it with all his or her heart, but ignore – never.
In Mumbai, I notice the same peculiarities I had seen in India: Muslim culture, plenty of meat in the eateries and high humidity. While thirty-degree Delhi and Jaipur feel comfortably due to dry climate, thirty-degree Mumbai dries the living shit out of you, making you extremely thirsty.
My host lives in Colaba – the city’s main touristic region, packed with all kinds of monuments from the times of British colonization. Back then, in the previous century, Colaba took the role of the “India Gateway”. At the times, Mumbai was known as Bombay, never mind it being the capital. Nowadays, you can only find here crowds of tourists, luxurious taxis and Indian weirdos who offer to take your picture for a hundred rupees.
[Meeting in the kitchen, Mohammed’s direct speech]
– “The first night is free, the rest are two thousand rupees each”.
– “You want breakfast, dinner? Two hundred rupees”
– “You want to go to a cave? Let’s organize an excursion, seven thousand rupees. You don’t have so much money? And how much do you have?”
– “Local slums are must see, only in a local excursion, they’ll show you how our people live”.
A dozen guys are hanging out in the apartment. They all need a thing or two from me.
– [an old man]: Buy me cigarettes, will you?
– [Me]: No way.
– [the old man, smirking]: Listen to me – I said: buy me cigarettes!
I give money to the youngest of those jackals. Half an hour later he comes back with the cigarettes, but no change. Eventually, the old man gets the change from the young jackal as he sees the real price on the pack. A complete shakedown at the every corner.
I spend the night curling up on a small bench near the front door while other inhabitants of the moral brothel sleep on the floor. I wonder if they charge me for taking the bench?
First thing in the morning, I rush outside and engage searching of a new host. I send an SOS message to a random guy in coach. He calls me straight away.
– [Natan, a new host]: Are you ok there?
– [Me]: I guess, they let me be, but I’ll really need a new couch tomorrow.
– [Natan]: Sure, come by.
– [Me]: Thanks, Natan, you’re a real friend.
Although the host’s name is Mohammed, I think I would name him Douchebag.
[Me]: Natan, I lost my phone in Borivali. I’m in police department now”.
It all happened at the final Borivali station, which leads to the natural park with ancient caves. One of the local “wizards” snitches my phone out of my backpack rear pocket. Cops suggest I stop bothering them and go back to Russia. Having no connection, I make my way to Natan thanks to a cheap tablet left in my backpack and occasional Wi-Fi hotspots.
Meeting with Natan and his neighbor Prakash makes me completely forget about my phone and plunge into the festive Diwali atmosphere. Lots of dazzling lights are hanging everywhere. Lots of street food load my stomach. We move from one stall to another; the guys treat me with all sorts of spices and sweets. Natan and Prakash work in Bollywood – they organize extras. They look like western hipsters: barbershop beards, Balenciaga clothes. They like cricket and their friends. Basically, they live a normal millennial life – “yuppie” – I would say.
So many thousands of kilometers between us, so many cultural and language barriers, so much different in our lives. Still, we treat each other like bros. We speak as if we're not strangers but friends with traditional Friday get-togethers.
Next morning, I make a video with congratulations to their friends. I do it in Hindi, repeating every sound they pronounce.
I think that turned out like a typical Slav story: where cops are jerks, have faith in your bros.
“Hello, how are you? I have a good apartment. I live alone at the moment. I’m looking forward to having a great time together :) Good luck!”
My host’s name in Pune is Chiraq, but he’s concealing himself under “Enoch” on the Internet because he’s afraid of jokes about Iraq. He’s working in his father’s construction business and lives in a new building double. The guy hospitably lets me sleep on his bed while he takes the floor. Another “wow” from me.
In the morning, I see my next train to Bangalore canceled. My travel route is collapsing like a card house. I look at the map of India in Google Maps with confusion and realize only a single night bus separates me from paradise Goa beaches. Having arrived to the station while listening to Indian school students talking to each other, I buy a ticket to Goa for the evening. Enough of urbanistic India chaos for me – no mote attention at every step, time to relax.
Chiraq adjusts to my plans fairly quickly. We pick up stuff at home and ride to the center on a scooter. After dinner, we ascend the city park hill and see a chapel. The chapel undergoes some sort of religious ritual with a furious bell chime.
– [Chiraq]: Goa is a great place. What if I join you for a day, so we hang out together at your host's? Pick up some girls, smoke some weed.
– [Me]: Sounds great, but I doubt he’d like someone to decide for him what to do with his house.
– [Chiraq]: Well, that’s unfortunate. It was nice to meet you, brother.
– [Me]: Me too.
In short, Pune is a boring place unless you have a comrade like Chiraq.
My new Goa host's name is Cross. We agreed to meet in front of Siolim Church. He seems to be a religious person.
Cross is from Nigeria. He moved to Goa two years ago. He looks like 50 Cent: the face, the smile, the way he laughs, the muscles, the cross on the neck, the gangster appearance. He lives with his girlfriend from South of India and shares the house with another couple from Nigeria as well. They introduce me to an old, dirty, worn-down mattress in the living room, but outside the window it’s all still and quiet, no noisy cities or constant attention.
– [Me]: What do you do?
– [Cross, smiling]: I sell shoes.
– [Me]: [Pretending to believe]
That’s how my day in Goa looks. In the morning, Cross gives me a ride to the closest beach on the coastline – he doesn’t allow me to use scooters, as he’s concerned about my safety. His girlfriend had her leg plastered a month ago because of a car crash, not to mention my young oaf lack of driving skills. Having arrived to the coastline, I take a walk along the line with occasional breaks on swimming in the sea. By dawn, I come to Arambol – the busiest place of the coastline – where I’m meeting Cross.
Cross spends the evening sitting with his friends at the table and selling “Christian substances” to tourists. Every Arambol resident knows where to look for him and what for. Nigerians are holding equal distance along the beach with hands in their pockets.
In Goa, I enjoy my lonely shiny days in India without India. In the evening, I meet interesting characters who come to Goa for downshifting and yoga courses. Generally, they all come from Northern and Western Europe being tired from trivial boring life with how-to instructions. Among the first-world crowds seeking spiritual experience, you can also notice a warm-loving Muscovites11.
In Goa, I met Lesha and Lena from the “Chygoo” story. India shocked them so bad, as if they knew about India even less than I did. Puzzled by the complexity of Delhi, Lesha and Lena headed north to Rishikesh, where you can buy tour packages with yoga and self-awareness. Having got disappointed with the local spirituality, they departed to Goa for a winter much less chilly than in Petersburg. Comparison of their experience in South-Eastern Asia and here does India, no good favor. They are freaked out by the unsanitary conditions, chaos and the way locals bother white people.
My last night in Goa. Arambol, café. I’m hurrying Cross as I need to pack my clothes and be on time in the Airport. On the way home we stop at some guesthouse where Cross had some friend, or client, or both. Cross gets nervous and interrogates local dwellers.
Little by little he summons a dozen of angry Hindus. It seems that they’re going to beat the shit out of us. On my right an old wrinkled man is shaking a stick. After ten minutes of verbal confrontation, we break through the living line with a ram attack and embrace freedom.
Twenty minutes afterwards, we come by a guy named Jimmy in a place looking like a jungle. Covered by an empty darkness, Cross divides the pill into two parts in order to sell Jimmy the right dosage. I don't know what to do: whether to look over for the cops or just keep silence. Most likely, the second. I stop thinking about some cops nailing us and putting me into Indian jail. All I want is to get on the fucking plane on time.
Finally, we get home. I quickly pack my backpack, say goodbye to Cross and take a taxi to the airport. I made it on time, but the plane is delayed. It triggers a chain reaction where I miss all four flights I planned. I change the time of the second flight to restore the chain. I pay in excess with all spare cash I have. I arrive to Bishkek, wait for a Moscow flight the whole night, feel sick and tired on all fronts: physically, emotionally and mentally.
I think that’s the case when you need a vacation after you had a vacation.
I have a childhood friend in Petersburg who could host me for a few days, but not a single soul in Moscow. Though it’s fairly easy to find a host in Moscow since there are lots of them, it’s all different during May holidays. People move to country houses, visit parents and set off on trips. So, my searching led me to expat Jose. He doesn’t have a country house; his parents are far away. Traveling is the core element of his life.
Jose is from Ecuador. He is thirty years old, skinny, intellectual, cosmopolitan; speaks somewhere between six and eight languages – including his brilliant Russian. He moved to Russia for work in a biomedical company. He lives in Lyublino District and shares a three-room apartment in a human hive with guys from Saratov. Couch helps him abstract from “russkiy bydlo”12 and make a personal “Pokémon collection” out of interesting people.
Even before an eye-to-eye meeting, we have a misunderstanding:
– [Me]: Good morning, Jose. I’m looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at the train station. I have your phone number, so everything is ok. Could you give me your address just in case?
– [Jose]: I’m not meeting you at the train station, God dammit!!! I can meet you right away at the exit from the tube station! You can take the metro to Lyublino. I would recommend you to call me when you arrive to the city, so I would have time to prepare. I don’t find it necessary to meet you at the airport or train station, as I doubt it’s your first visit to Moscow… Besides, you can speak Russian, so it shouldn’t be difficult for you to navigate in the city. Thus, you can ask, listen to and read without trouble”.
– [Me]: I believe it’s just a misunderstanding. Sure, I meant metro. See you tomorrow!
We chit-chat in the kitchen about some abstract stuff: cars parked on lawns, environment, technologies, countries and cultures. After our conversation, I start to explore Moscow, looking forward to seeing the match between my favorite team Lokomotiv and not-so-favorite Spartak. Lokomotiv would get aced, and we would get detained on the stadium for a good one and a half hours after the match ends. Thank you, Jose, for opening the door at 11 p.m..
After my trip, we chat on Facebook for some time.
– [Jose]: Too many holidays. That doesn’t suit the country with economic decline.
– [Me]: It’s not about New Year holidays. It’s not caused by lavatories, but it’s something that starts in people’s heads13.
– [Jose, transliterated]: Problema V to 4isle i v golovax NARODA, ne tolko v golovax pravitelei. I etot moment, tot kotory 4itateli tvoego roda, naprimer, o4en “vugodno“ propuskaiut, kogda tsitiruiut Bulgakova. Vsegda dumaiut 4to vina vsiu nado nalozhit na pravitelei, u kotoryx BEZ SONMENIA est bolshaya dolya otvestvennosti. NO na samogo sebya… Trudno smotret'. Budto Russky narod takie “angelo4ki“. Samy takie lentiai i lenivye…14
I think Jose is one heck of a toxic guy.
I meet Nadya at the “Teatralnaya” metro station. On the way home, we try to get to know each other better, but the unbearable metro noise puts in its two cents. Nadya tells me about the meeting with her friends – they've just seen each other. I’m playing my card straight away by telling about my life in the States.
Nadya lives with her husband Dima and a dog named Sky – a reference to Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars. They work all round about film industry, usually as camera operators. Also, Nadya earns money from photoshoots and wedding photography. They live on mortgage in a new built three-room apartment in a residential complex near Podolsk. Because of urbanization metastases, their Podolsk propiska transformed into Moscow propiska15. I spend three nights in their apartment, they provide me with a free room loaded with different stuff. Two years afterwards Nadya would give birth to a boy and this room would become the children's room.
Next day I spend walking between museums and pretend to be a minor to get free tickets. I come back in the evening – happy and tired. Nadya is cooking “frounchosa”, some kind of Moscow delicacy I’ve never heard of. We’re having dinner with her friend who came a couple of hours ago. Sky runs into the room. Nadya hugs him. I manage to take a picture with my Nikon D3200.
– [Nadya]: Misha, where did you have lunch today?
– [Me]: In Burger King.
– [Nadya]: I’m sorry.
During our last evening together, we walk around Kolomenskoye. They tell me about their wedding here, show photos on the phone. We are fooling around with my camera and make some nice photos. Their speech is full of historical facts about Moscow and its overall charms. The guys belong to the sort of people who are mad in love with the capital. Our conversation flows into political history direction: there we find ourselves on the opposite sides of the barricades, though mutual respect and common sense help us keep the conversation cool.
I think Moscow and Muscovites seem to be very delightful.
At the weekend, I go to Moscow to see Rammstein live. Jose is busy moving to a new apartment, Nadya and Dima don’t host anymore. I go for the third round of looking for a friendly soul with a couch in the capital.
“Yeah, feel free to come over. Ul. Vvedenskogo, 11-2. 89061328907. Call me a couple of days in advance”.
Having arrived at Belyayevo metro station, I’m waiting for Yan and Julia in a sub. They should be picking me up in a minute after their visit to parents. Yan doesn’t pick up the phone. I’m trembling from anxiety and cold in the subway. It’s raining cats and dogs today in Moscow, and not a single umbrella in the world would save you from it. After an hour of waiting, we find each other. On the way home, we share a single umbrella between three of us.
Yan and Julia – young family from Makhachkala. Yan has a creative job in a public agency, Julia works in catering service and air travel. They have a three years old daughter. She spends this weekend at grandmother. Julia is pregnant with the second baby. Once again, CouchSurfing blows my mind with the people who are ready to support others, think out of the box, act and help. Guys, you have a little daughter, never mind pregnancy – why would even host some guy from Penza? Perhaps, guys wish an interesting life with little routine, too.
After the last sleepless night when I caught a marshrutka on M5 highway and a busy day I got to spend in the Capital, my sleep is sound and steady. In the morning I have a tea with cookies and the vibe is positive. My soaked clothes are already dry. On the background I hear music by GROMYKA. They occasionally got on their concert a couple of weeks ago, and it stuck to them ever since.
GROMYKA’s soviet-wave sound fits perfectly here: a residential complex with high panel buildings, summer, shiny morning, green trees outside, metro station fifteen minutes away. Turns out you can bring out stagnated art from the archives, make a little polishing in a modern way, and it’s going to sound good.
Rammstein's concert ends up at midnight, BlaBlaCar to Penza sets off at 6 a.m.. I am to choose between a nighttime stroll around sleeping Moscow and an attempt to get enough sleep for the next working week, and I choose the second option: I come to Yan and Julia at 1 a.m. and sleep for a few hours. Accidentally, I woke up Yan when I was leaving the apartment.
– [Me, whispering]: Guys, thank you so much for how cool you are.
– [Yan, half-awake]: Peace))
In short, it turned out to be cozy – like staying with friends.
Golden Ring Ultra Trail – marathon race in Suzdal – is a closed circle with the start and finish lines at a wood hotel. On Sunday, I’m going to run this circle 50 km long. I guess I should’ve booked a bed in the city, had a good sleep before the marathon start at 7 a.m.. In reality, I’m looking for a couch in Vladimir, separated from Suzdal with an hour-long road by car. Gosha is kind of shitting me in VK16 chat. He doesn’t pick up the phone a good half of the day. On the one hand, he doesn’t own me anything. On the other, I’m getting a bit nervous since things go not the way I planned.
Eventually, Gosha and Katya pick me up in the center of Vladimir near café at 10 p.m.. Nine hours left until the marathon. They agree to help me: wake up at 5 a.m. on Sunday and give me a ride to Suzdal. They don’t mind some strolling in the morning, why not. At least that’s what they say. I’m glad I’ve got more time for sleeping.
On the way to Suzdal we get to know each other better. Gosha and Katya are a young family. Gosha is working in a local urbanistic organization as a creative director. Katya is a graphic designer in a web studio. The guys are enjoying millennial life in their small hometown:
●
tons of little things made for the native city;
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hanging out in one specific hip café;
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a rock band formed with friends;
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daily care of grandpas and grandmas;
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spacious apartment in a new built residential block;
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occasional trips to Europe;
●
experiments with looks: Katya has dreads, while Gosha has ear tunnels.
Leaving the car, I give the guys a hundred rubles, which can afford you nothing but a cup of tasteless coffee. I come to the starting line just two minutes before the marathon. After I cross the finishing line, my body dissolves in euphoria.
I think that was the very case when a simple “thanks” doesn’t work when you’d like to express how grateful you are to hosts.
May holidays are coming soon, I feel I want to go somewhere. Let’s see what the map has to offer near Penza. Nizhniy Novgorod, Kazan, Samara – great! I haven’t spent a month on the working place, but here I am – asking for twelve days off and hitchhiking to Nizhniy. I leave all my tasks for the next week. Colleagues don’t understand me. So do I. Where am I going and why? What’s the fuss?
I go to Nizhniy with Dima – a CEO in a firm where my mother works. Dima is from Nizhniy, his family lives there. He goes to Penza on business trips. So, he circulates here and there every week.
[Dima]: “Transport is all fucked-up: you think they are neighbor cities, but in fact they’re completely isolated from each other. Rare trains with inconvenient schedule. There used to be flights – not anymore. Much easier to go on your own – five hours, and you’re at home”.
Despite the obvious generation and social status difference, we get on really well. Dima is a down-to-earth person with a lot of interesting experience. He feels comfy with me.
– [Dima]: your mother told me you like traveling, right?
– [Me]: Well, yeah. I lived in the States, in India. A month ago I came back from the trip across the Baltic countries.
– [Dima]: Sounds great! Youngsters these days live an interesting life. I remember myself at your age, in 1995. I was craving to go to Chechnya, on the front. I was overfilled with energy, aggression, turbulent years. I craved for adrenaline, something extraordinary.
– [Me, inwardly]: O tempora! o mores!17
We are fully engaged in the conversation till we see the sign “Nizhniy Novgorod”. Dima left me on a bus stop somewhere on the outskirts of the city and went home to spend holidays with the family.
Nizhniy Novgorod looked terrible that day. It takes an hour for "Pazik" bus to get me to the center. That’s enough to make me feel tired and disappointed in this city. There I find myself in Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street – a typical Arbat of a Russian city. It’s cold, grey and rainy outside. The only interesting place I see is “Dodo Pizza” which we still don’t have in Penza. I come to the coastline and see the huge Volga River. That doesn’t cheer me up either.
Before the night falls, I take a ride to Sputnik Street, where my host Petya lives. The same hour-long road by the same “Pazik” bus. There’s a metro in this city, but I doubt it leads anywhere. I go downstairs to take a couple stock pictures in the concourse and go back to the nearest bus stop. On my way there, I nervously check the job messenger. As always, there are problems and the work day hasn’t finished yet. I express my numerous apologies to the colleagues for the inconvenience, justifying my absence by “family matters”.
Petya saves my evening. Petya is different from all my previous Russian hosts: he is a hippie – not a yuppie. He keeps his way of life minimalistic: no furniture except mattress and a computer table. He doesn’t show any barriers nor any warm-up questions in conversation. Right from the start, our conversation transforms into a flow of interesting thoughts and I feel gripped by his words.
[Petya]: “Cities are depressing: noise, dirt, jams, angry people. I’ve recently come back from Kola Peninsula. I really liked it there. We spent a week in a lodge of an old, kind man. Around us – nothing but nature. It was cold, yeah, but nevertheless – I was happy there”.
Petya is a truck driver in a local transport company, putting away money on a trip to Crimea. He’s planning to get there on “Harley” he’s just bought. He wants to live in Crimea in a tent with his friends, jump naked from the rocks, feed on sun rays and feel united with the mother-nature. He even looks like Tarzan: long curly hair, athletic, loose khaki-colored clothes. He doesn’t go to the gym – he is naturally well-built.
Before going to bed, Petya plays music from his VK account. That’s how I learn about indie band Alvvays which I would then quarter among my favorites. They disbanded even before our meeting. All they released were two albums. The song “Marry me, Archie” would find its way to my soul, romanticizing the image of a one-woman man.
Next morning, I realize I want to go home: dull Nizhniy and job irresponsibility really knocked me down. I check BlaBlaCar, catch the first car to Penza I find, say Petya goodbye, and thank him for being the person he is.
I think that we – youngsters – indeed live fascinating lives.
I fly to Sochi as a nominee in the IT skills contest called “Free Software Bachelor Thesis”. I’m glad to have at least something free in this country.
The University gave me ten thousand rubles to cover a three night long trip counting thousands of kilometers. I can’t really do anything with this sum of money. My budget traveling finds support in BlaBlaCar to Vnukovo airport, cheap flight tickets from Vnukovo by “Pobeda” airline and couch.
Ksusha can provide me a two nights homestay. It’s not an easy task to get to her: marshrutka to the outskirts, residential house on a hill, the seventh floor with no elevator. In the morning, destiny rewards my efforts: I see a beautiful view from the balcony. It might be the most picturesque homestay I’ve ever had.
Ksusha lives with her husband Pasha. They are from Yekaterinburg, it’s their second year in Sochi. We call it “downshifting in the South of Russia”: the people who are sick and tired with life in the cities of Ural and Siberia and their dirty air are moving to the south. The south of Russia looks like a lodge where you can be a hippie, engage in spiritual practices and expect nothing bad in return. Ksusha is an instructor in a local yoga studio. Pasha is a painter, he occasionally exhibits his painting for sale. Similar to Petya from Nizhniy, Ksusha and Pasha sleep on a mattress with minimum furniture around.
– [Me]: Guys, you’re so cool: paintings, yoga, raw food.
– [Pasha]: People can do whatever they want, get drunk or lie on a couch))
First time in my life I’m facing don’t try philosophy: do whatever you want, accept whatever happens.
We are parted by an obvious misalignment of lifestyles and interests. The guys are Zen and have no wish to hurry. On the contrary, I am hustling: now it’s all about work, study, skills contest. Next week I’m finishing my degree, and there’s so much to do and to try. They are going for raw food, while I stuff myself with everything I can reach out for. The guys speak calmly while I’m always agitated, astonished, as if I’m shouting instead of speaking.
I feel like a fish out of water here.
All is left to do is to find homestay for the last night in Sochi – so I found Sasha.
[Sasha]: “I am vegan, don’t smoke, drink, work in freelance, qualified as a programmer. My interests are psychology, astrology, chakras, various experience, statistics, healthy lifestyle, many things… I played chess professionally, good at table tennis, swim. Have experience in gambling business (poker, sports betting). An election committee member with a casting vote right – I can explain how elections are held in Russia. Invest and attract investments. Trying to help where I can”.
Most people are consumers. They consider couch to be a place where you can find free lodging, guide, free food and entertainment. On the contrary, there are people who open their requests with the things they can give, do, what skills they have and experience they can share.
Sasha is another person who ran from cold weather. In his case, it was Tomsk. He lives in a five-storied “Khrushchyovka” and drives a Renault Logan. His girlfriend has a night shift today, so we are left one-on-one. I check alerts in the business messenger at 9 p.m. on Sunday: I get in touch with a colleague and try to find out if everything goes fine. It does, so I calm down and close the messenger. Sasha has a court held tomorrow – he is at odds with someone. He’ll have to go there and work it out. This matter doesn’t really stand in the way of our conversation.
Though we haven’t got enough time to participate in a chakra-measuring contest, we get highly engaged in the topic of bets. I treat sports betting with a known skepticism – If you don’t have a reliable capper aware of rigged games – that’s a lost cause. Lesha is good at psychology, the way they conduct pre-match interviews gives him enough information. “We’ve avoided relegation. Now, our aim is to show a nice football for the fans” – that’s an obvious throw. We don’t mind a little politics, as every decent confession talk should do.
Sasha just recently moved to Sochi. And it’s kind of cool: the climate, the mountains. But consider scums at every corner, poor driving culture, no action around. Sasha is filled with energy, so he tries to start up different communities: Mafia games, CouchSurfing community – anything everywhere. He’s disappointed with the inactivity and how people are distributed between Sochi and Adler. Don’t expect anybody to go to a neighbor city just to play Mafia.
Next morning, Sasha takes me to the court building by his Logan. Traffic jams are terrible; locals have pretty much no idea how to use blinkers. Sasha is getting infuriated too. In the end of the day, we drive close to the coastline, leave the car and take a warm farewell.
I think Sochi is a weird place to be.
Now it’s my turn to pay off the debts of hospitality and kindness. It doesn’t bother my sick mind that I live with my parents. I set the “Accepting Hosts” status on couch. Here we go!
Couch in Penza mostly attracts hitchhikers. Highway M5 “Moscow – Chelyabinsk” goes through the city. As a matter of fact, the city is located in the middle between the ends of the highway, what makes it a convenient homestay for hitchers.
Ksusha is heading back home to Yekaterinburg from her trip around Russia and Ukraine. She is a facilitator at school. Summer provides her with two months’ vacation for traveling. My mother is on business trip while father will have a night shift – I believe we won’t bother anyone.
The nature of hitchhiking poses the main problem of hosting for hitchhikers. To make the best out of hitching, a person should let perception of time go and forget about punctuality. As a result, a hitchhiker can come to your home any time possible – whether it’s slightly over midnight or six in the morning.
2 a.m., the buzzer rings. I wake up, run furiously to the buzzer and open the door for Ksusha. Well, this time I couldn’t pull that one out on the spot. No big deal though. Here’s your converted sofa in the living room, sleep sound.
We don’t have much time for better knowing each other. My father comes back in the morning, so we miss space for intimate conversations. We have breakfast and hurry out. Ksusha returns to M5 to hitchhike, I go to the park to train for the upcoming marathon. Dad is eager to give us both a ride. He’s really into it: he’s clearly enjoying talking with Ksusha. He also used to travel on his own to Kazakh taiga. He would sleep on a wooden bench in a cold “Ikarus” bus.
Eventually, intimacy find its way into the story when we chat on couch:
– [Ksusha]: Hey, how are you? I came back from Odessa a few days ago. I spent most of the time there. Unfortunately, I have no photos of the city. It’s just there was so much to do. Odessa is a magical city. I came there for three days and stayed for more than two weeks. The days came by too fast. Perhaps I got into the right community, every day was so intense. Generally, I’m good: alive, healthy, full of impressions.
– [Me]: Salute! That’s great you still remember me. That’s great when people keep in touch after a one-day meeting. I’m glad you’ve got some many impressions from the trip. What other cities have you been to?
– [Ksusha]: Of course, Misha, I don’t forget people. Actually, I’m not counting cities – I’m counting people who I’ve met on the way. You can write books or film movies about them!
I think I’m actually writing this book because of Ksusha's words.
“Hey) I hitchhike from Moscow to China with my friend! :) We set off next week. Could we stay for a night? We can sleep on the floor. We’re funny! Have been here and there and can share a lot of surprising stories! :) We don’t smoke/drink”.
I learn to my surprise that Penza can serve as a transit point on the way to “Celestial Empire”.
Saturday morning, parents are on vacation. I’ve got one week to spend alone in a big three-room apartment. I meet Sveta and her friend Kostya with open arms, set the table with oatmeal and a cup of tea. The guys explain their adventure plan:
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get to Vladivostok;
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apply at the local consulate for a tourist visa;
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successfully enter the territory of the People's Republic of China;
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get to the south of the country, to Guangzhou or to Shenzhen;
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decide on the way whether they need this China at all;
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if yes, get a job at a local school as English teachers.
Sveta and Kostya – another couple of native Muscovites in my host's annals. Kostya graduated in economics and didn’t work a single day in the specialty since then. He’s been looking for his place in the world for a long time: an IT-consulting service desk specialist, a system analyst on NTV channel, an administrator in a grocery store, a secret customer, an assistant director in a mini-market. In Sveta’s case, the list is shorter: having finished textile university, she’s been working in a textile factory up to the start line of their trip to China.
It’s September outside, I’m on the final year of my bachelor and work a full-time job at the same time. At weekends, I have to grind out uni labs to avoid problems at the university. After breakfast, we part our ways: they should have a rest after the road, while I’d better focus on my work. After half an hour to work on labs, I hear a noise: Sveta and Kostya are fucking. Right now, in the living room, on the converted leather cloth sofa. I don’t know how to react. Eventually, I freeze in the room and pretend nothing’s happening. In about 15 minutes, the noise is over.
I’ve got a grudge against the guys. Who allowed fucking on our sofa? Why didn’t they wait till I left the house? Should I continue hosting sweet couples? If yes, do I impose a veto on sex?
Having finished what they’ve got, Sveta and Dima fall asleep for a couple of hours. As for me, I’m grinding out one lab after another till my eyes redden. They wake up and head to the center to buy some sturdy shoes in Sportmaster. We gather in the evening and discuss differences between Moscow and the rest of the Russia:
– [Sveta]: On the one hand, yeah, I would like to live in some small town far away from fuss. On the other, I search for textile vacancies and see twelve thousand a month. How am I supposed to get by on this?
– [Me]: Well, Sveta, there are three ways to live in far-flung provinces: webcam, dope or tech.
Having brought up the social-economic topic, we go on to discuss tomorrow’s parliamentary elections.
– [Me]: Tomorrow I will go to the near school to vote against Putin’s party. I am sick and tired of these jerks.
– [Sveta]: I believe we have no alternatives to the current regime.
– [Me]: Well, mkay.
In the morning they head to the direction of Chelyabinsk whereas I go to vote for LDPR. Oh God, forgive your ill-minded kids, all of us.
I go to Saratov for a local Tech conference. Lightning talks in the daytime, bar hangouts in the evening. You might think – go on, talk to people till 3 a.m., rent some hotel room. Well, I’m afraid it’s time to get a couch again.
Strictly speaking, my host Danya doesn’t live in Saratov. He lives in Engels, which is separated from Saratov by the Volga River, with a beautiful three km long bridge between them. Having bid farewell to colleagues, I run to the bus stop to catch the last bus to Engels.
Danya is still awake; he’s even converted a sofa for my arrival. I ask him a row of usual questions: who, where, what, how. He is a marketing specialist in a local firm. He doesn’t appreciate career perspectives and his passive-aggressive supervisor. He longs for changes. Overall, Danya makes an impression of some provincial normie: young family, a couple twin children, an ordinary job, vacations on the Black Sea, a nice ironed shirt, Instagram with “self-development quotes”. Perhaps, Danya is interested in couch, so he could obtain energy from traveling weirdos. Danya’s profile on couch won me over with Depeche Mode in the “Interests” section, although we didn’t talk about it anyway.
I’m starting to feel uncomfortable when I realize his wife with children are hiding in their rooms. Occasionally they go out to the bathroom, or for a glass of water in the kitchen, but that just looks awkward. They move fast and avoid looking at me. Even three rooms are not that much in a “Khrushchyovka”. The atmosphere is tense. I get a feeling that Danya didn’t discuss my homestay and tomorrow will have a quarrel with his wife because of me.
In my conversation with Danya, we manage to lower the tension by switching to bad folks up top:
– [Danya]: They want to join Engels to Saratov so that Saratov becomes a million-plus city and thus gets more money from Moscow. Nobody here wants it; we all are stressed and have no trust in authorities.
– [Me, inwardly]: Kitchen talks about politics, mmm, classic.
In the morning, I wake up first. I chew a banana with cookies in the kitchen, quickly get dressed and go out. I walk through Engels, which looks like a “good old Soviet times” conservation. Then I walk across the bridge over the Volga to Saratov. Strong wind is blowing me away, I feel like I’m a YouTube channel blogger who shows how to survive in extreme conditions. There, in Saratov, I meet an old schoolmate studying for a public prosecutor here. I’m disappointed we lack any other topics to discuss. Danya texts me at lunchtime:
– [Danya]: Hey! How was the night? Are we good?
– [Me]: Wonderful. Once again, thank you.
I think, putting up a façade is yet another coach rule.
[Vasya]: Good day) I am heading to the Russian-Moldavian forum from Cheboksary. It would be great to find a homestay for today, neat and sociable, intellectual and athletic)”.
Vasya might be the first surfer who’ll have to spend a night both with me and my parents. Mom-dad, thank you for the tolerance towards my spontaneity and the wish to help people despite your own comfort.
I come back home tired from work, two weeks ago I returned from India and haven’t recovered yet. Vasya is full of energy and positivity. The evening goes way too fast with his stories about Chuvashia, youth forum, countless achievements of a provincial activist and efforts to teach me couple phrases in Chuvash.
– [Me]: Vasya, the most incredible thing you’ve done in your life.
– [Vasya]: Donated blood over forty-five times.
Vasya liked dinner, breakfast and literally anything we would do for him. We provide him with my room, I go to bed in the living room. At breakfast Vasya has even more energy, all his actions scintillate with buoyancy. On leaving, Vasya thanks us from his heart for the hospitality and asks to follow the forum on Instagram by the tags #RuMdForum и #ChuvashTraveler.
[Max]: Misha, hello =) start is postponed for a couple of days. I just want a normal trip without fuss. If it’s not a problem I will contact you in several days with the same request. But with an exact information”.
Max comes on Sunday, his whole life in a hiking backpack behind his back. He used to live a life of a typical provincial normie in Tolyatti: engineer job in “AvtoVAZ”, marriage by default, little money, little time. But something was eating him up inside, he didn’t want such a life. He wasn’t even thirty when midlife crisis hit. Divorce, job termination, gathering stuff and plunging into nowhere for a new life.
Penza was the first stop on his way. He was clearly worried. I’m all anxious too: loads of work, diploma evaluation soon, mother is wound up. Why would I even agree to host Max? Why would I take a burden of Mother Teresa? Aren’t there any other hosts in our half-a-million city, really?
These nasty thoughts are eating away at me, what in turns affects hosting. Max might live here as long as he wishes, but I say only one night is available right now. Max is in low spirits – he doesn’t feel welcomed.
He leaves his stuff at home, and we take a bus to a new philharmonic hall – the guys asked me to bring them tickets for a concert. We are chatting along the way, so I learn more about his path. We could have stayed in the city center, sit in a café, stroll down Moskovskaya Ul., but it’s all gray, and I don’t really feel like doing it.
Max sleeps in my room, I take the living room. On the Monday morning mom is getting angry. Basically, she likes Max. He is kind and modest, but she can’t bear any more travelers in her lodge. She left to work, I leave in an hour or so. Our conversation is gaining positive momentum, but his introversion and my anxiety have their effect anyway. We make a farewell selfie in the backyard. In the picture you can see his huge backpack on the shoulders and awe of a boundless future in his eyes, while I have a bicycle, a gym suit and a queer squint.
– [Me]: Good luck with your path. I hope you’ll find your place.
– [Max]: You too.
I think it’s high time to move out of my parents.
I moved out of parents, and I am ready to receive surfers at any time of day and year.
Timofey is hitchhiking from Udmurtia to Georgia seeking a new life and adrenaline rush. His smile is shining right from the porch to the very parting. As for me, I can’t respond with the same. I have graduated from the university, begun to live alone, got a top job, enough money, bought a MacBook, but deep inside I’m kind of sad anyway. It’s swallowing me up – I’m crying every day without the slightest idea of what’s happening. I’m gaining weight and beating on myself, laughing at black humor and bawdy sarcasm only, being all too much toxic in conflicts.
Saturday morning, we are having breakfast in the kitchen.
– [Me]: I’ve been thinking about a proper diet lately, so I don’t eat meat anymore.
– [Timofey]: Good idea. I tried to go one day without food, felt wonderful. Closer to the end of the day all toxins come out with shit, the body get cleansed. You feel like a new man.
In parallel to my conversation with Timofey I’m looking at my MacBook screen. Our production environment is down again, I have to contact developer and find out how to fix it. I don’t have any energy or mood to do it. After all, it’s a damn day-off today. Timofey is trying to cheer me up by telling a story how he worked as a stripper in Izhevsk.
“You know, there’s a cliché of how athletic and pumped up a stripper should look. Like Schwarzenegger. It doesn’t matter for real. Once I had a strip battle with a big strong guy, I swept him to the applause of the audience. It’s all about feelings: movements, rhythm, freedom. Audience don’t feel muscles, they feel energy. I gave my all to the dance – it made me a great stripper”.
We go outside. There’s a big square with philharmonic hall and cinema across the street, built for the anniversary of the city. Some festival is going on with lots of small children. It’s a rainy September day. Timofey is trying himself at travel vlogging on the cuff, takes a phone out and begins to shoot surroundings with commentaries.
– [Timofey]: Here’s Misha, my host. Misha, say something on camera.
– [Me, inwardly]: Fuuuuuuck, that’s so lame.
In the evening Timofey suggest going to a bar in the city center trying to pick up some cheeks. I have a sauna meeting with friends from university arranged. Here we part our ways and meet again only next morning. Timofey packs his new hiking backpack and moves forward.
I think I should go for fasting.
[Artem]: “My name is Artem, I go by my car from Bulgaria to my family in Ufa. I will be in Penza on November 16th close to 7 p.m.. Of course, it depends on the road (I drive Kursk-Penza on 16th). I set off next day on November 17th at 7 a.m. in the direction of Samara”.
Artem is 37, born and raised in Ufa. He has a happy family: a wife, a young boy, they’re expecting another one. Artem made good money from building WordPress websites, but cursed as it is technological progress in 2017 made WordPress developers pretty much useless, that’s why he is in search of career opportunities. He went to Varna to apply for temporary residence.
[Artem]: “Listen, I’m fucking tired of Ufa and Russia in general. It’s getting worse every year, people being more and more aggressive. Infrastructure in Ufa is literally a dogshit – no way in, no way out. I’ll have a second baby, but I still have no idea how can you raise children here. I mean, I do, but I don’t want it this way”.
Despite that, we mostly talk on a positive note. I like Artem for how he traveled around Asia not just by himself, but taking the whole family, including a baby, with him. They weren’t really fussed about it; the only problem was the budget. You can’t stay in a tent or a hostel with a baby, but at least children can see the world and realize that it might be different.
I think Artem will move to Bulgaria in three months.
[Denis]: “Retired, travel a lot, mostly on the cheap – hitchhiking or bicycle, generally live in a tent. I like nature and animals. Glad to meet and talk to like-minded and interesting people”.
Denis was 55, he is from that military retirees breed who retire much earlier than mere mortals. He’s taking full advantage of his position: one day he’s cycling through India, another – staying in Malaysia, then he is in Kamchatka. He has two daughters from the first marriage. He lives in a cottage house in Dmitrievka – urban locality of Tambov Oblast. He’s hitchhiking from Dmitrievka to Ulyanovsk where his girlfriend lives.
We meet at the train station on Friday evening: I come from work, Denis – from hitchhiking. Denis is as tall as me, wiry, thin, bald. We go down Suvorova Street by foot under heavy snowfall in the direction of home. Denis finds interesting the way I work in IT while I find interesting everything about Denis – from shoulders straps to retiree lifestyle.
[Denis]: At the end I hated everything about the army. Slave mentality, zero initiative, everywhere at once your work depends on your boss – never mind your entire life. You get a good money there, right now you can sign on to Syria – they give five hundred thousand roubles for three months, but you might catch a bullet there.
Denis doesn’t look like a stereotypical war dog at all – his perfect physical form might be a single exception. Having dinner in the kitchen we unwind social, economic and politic topics. Denis is not a scientist, but he understands clearly that life of a slave is dull and dumb. He knows a thing or two about crackdown, the Internet bans and miserably unreplaceable president.
Eventually we bring up Yuri Shevchuk18’s personality. I suggest watching his latest interview with Yury Dud. We spend the rest of the evening watching it and learning something new from the dialogue between the people of different generations. Denis falls asleep on a converted sofa in the living room. In the morning he proceeds to move forward. In the evening he texts in Telegram that it took him seven hours and two cars to get to Ulyanovsk.
I think I want to be as cool as Denis in my fifties.
Sometimes things between a host and a surfer just don’t work out, what makes both parties suffer. Sometimes you get scammed and end up on the street. Sometimes you are a scammer.
So, I flaked Bogdan.
February, winter, Penza. I feel time dissolving in a paper work routine while I’m waiting for my departure to Berlin in a month. I have a shitty mood – anguish ate me up completely. I feel like not just degrading, but rotting. Seems like a depression. In this state I can’t find any kindred souls – not among parents, close ones or girls in bars on Fridays. People around keep telling me It’s all fine – I’m just too full of myself. Every day is like a living death.
Might sound weird to burden oneself with a hosting in such a moment or meeting new people at all. Making acquaintances is damn difficult. You must present yourself in a bright way if you want to attract people. You must help them and put a lot of efforts. Despite having no energy to do it, yet again for some reason I keep accepting Couch requests. Most likely I’m trying to drown loneliness. I wouldn’t wish a lone life among sixty square meter apartments on my worst enemy.
I meet Bogdan in the evening, show him the kitchen and make a green tea. We agreed he would stay for a week.
– [Me]: What brings you here?
– [Bogdan]: I’m selling jewelry here for a couple of weeks. One week I spent at guys in “Chaadayeva Ul.”, the other one – here.
So, he has no principles? Just saving money on accommodation by staying for free? Uses our couch for commercial purposes? That is, he is not a traveler but a lame salesman? How dared he? We here have principles – to travel, to explore the world. What stories can he be telling for a whole week? About favorite TV shows?
I’m starting to shake uncontrollably. Another second would make me cry.
– [Me]: Listen, I believe I can’t host you right now. Could you go back to the guys from Chaadayeva?
– [Bogdan]: Well, okay.
Being full of self-humiliation I’m trying to close the case with the lowest possible inconvenience for the victim. I pay for Yandex.Taxi and bring a thousand apologies to Bogdan. He gets a grudge as he believes I played low on him. The situation leaves him as a moral winner.
[Bogdan]: Man, if only I’d known I wouldn’t be welcomed here I would’ve stayed at the guys.
Yeah, I flanked him. I could have warned him in advance, said I couldn’t host and pretended to get sick. Anything literally, so it doesn’t descend into absurd as a person has already come and crossed the porch when you kick him away for the night.
I think I’m kind of a scumbag.
I send half a hundred requests for a couch in Tallinn and get only a single response from a kindhearted Italian guy Leonardo. He’s a scientist, physicist, moved to Estonia for a job. He likes it there, digging into quietness and bad weather, though he still can’t get used to the introversion of locals.
Having arrived to Tallinn by a night train from Moscow, I pass the daylight hours in Tallinn's Old Town. Grey sky, moist air, it’s Saturday, empty streets, smells of fried marzipan. I leave the station and stumble upon a memorial tablet with Yeltsin's name. Tallinn’s center is achingly beautiful, almost no concrete boxes in sight. I’m trying to warm up my English after half a year of getting stuck in my hometown – but here people answer me in Russian. I move from one landmark to another, till it gets dark. If it's dark, that means Leonardo's at home already.
Having approached a nice neighborhood with renovated wooden houses by foot I search on the map for the house where Leonardo lives. Having found the right house, floor, apartment, I find myself at a party with a bunch of my host’s motley friends. Around fifteen people are hanging out in a spacious two-storied apartment. I see wineglasses on the table, in the kitchen Leonardo and his Italian friend are cooking polenta with vegetable stew.
Quite a multicultural scene has formed. Leonardo shares housing space with a Russian and an American. Besides roommates there’s Leo’s Italian friend, a Pakistani guy, five Estonian girls and five other people whose origin I don’t remember. The party is filled with the vibe of "hygge" – a Danish word that came into use by millennials in Eastern Europe.
I get acquainted with Estonians and ask standard questions about life in this country. Girls are pleased with how curious I am about their lifestyle. After all, they live in a small, provincial country. People go there on the pragmatic grounds: Russians – for procurement, Scandinavians – for cheap booze, yuppies – to escape from red tape. Seems like nobody cares about the essence of this country with a weird language. In hindsight, I feel like I had strange preferences: it’s much more reasonable to be interested in girls, not countries.
When I ran out of questions and the blood-alcohol level rose to "fornication", I find myself in a middle of a candid conversation with an Estonian girl Anett.
– [Anett]: What does your mother do?
– [Me]: Accountant, yours?
– [Anett]: She’s a daycare assistant… How do you think, is your mother proud of you?
– [Me]: Actually, this Thursday she personally went with me to the station to Moscow. She was in good spirits, she kissed me in the cheek and wished luck. I think, yes, she’s proud of me. What about yours?
– [Anett]: Yes, my mother is proud of me)))
Midnight. We ran out of wine and I can’t eat polenta anymore. Having heated up, the guys decide to go out for a dance in a club. I want to have a little affair with Anett, she is very cute and really drunk. Some Estonian came on her, but he is not a problem – his only advantage is about being able to speak the same language. Leonardo didn’t like him too because the way how shamelessly he asked to stay for a night – it was clear that the couch was mine over the weekend. Me being tired makes problems, not him. It has accumulated from the night in a couchette car and Schengen zone customs at 7 a.m.. I stay home, unfold the couch and crash.
Sunday goes by much calmer. It’s warm and sunny in the city, I stroll around Kadriorg Park and gaze at the sea. The guys are restoring from the hangover. In the evening Leonardo goes to play water polo, I’m left alone with a pack of dates which I literally destroy in a moment.
Monday morning, it’s time to go to the station to catch a bus to Riga. Before leaving, I chat with Kim – Leonardo’s American neighbor.
– [Kim]: Enjoy Latvia.
– [Me]: Was it me, or you’ve just said: “Enjoy mafia?”
– [Kim]: No, Misha – enjoy Latvia)))
The bus Tallinn – Riga is full of fun. I’m hanging out with an old Irishman on the backseats. He is going for a cheap booze tour around the Baltics countries. Having discussed Tallinn bar Depeche Mode, we switch to the topic of the Irish folk’s greatness.
– [Irishman]: Remember “Schindler’s List”?
– [Me]: Well, yeah, but I believe Schindler wasn’t an Irishman.
– [Irishman]: Not, but the actor who played him – Irishman!
– [Me, inwardly]: Oh god, provincial as it is…
By some quirk of fate my host in Riga is also an Italian and a scientist too. He’s a chemist, actually. In between his scientific researches Lorenzo goes to ballroom dances and teaches Italian in a linguistic school.
– [Me]: Lorenzo, what’s the reason for Letts to study Italian?
– [Lorenzo]: That’s the point – there isn’t. They might have a casual vacation there and sure thing order something in a local restaurant. That’s it.
– [Me]: Finita la commedia.
Lorenzo asks me for a massage before going to bed: “I have problems with back, help me, please”. I won’t refuse – he gave me a homestay after all. I'st still weird though: a small apartment, we are alone, it’s late at night – who knows what's on his mind. The whole procedure reminds me of how I did the same for my father. His whole life he had problems with the back, that’s why I’m no stranger to rubbing cream into a hairy back.
Next morning I’m ravenously hungry – that’s how you always feel during traveling.
– [Me]: What do you have for breakfast?
– [Lorenzo]: I’m not serving breakfast to my guests. You should find a café for that.
– [Me, inwardly]: Well, you are completely fine with a massage, but a coffee with croissant is indeed too tough to share.
A dull Baltic loneliness strikes me in Riga. I’m left completely on my own and spend the rest of the second day in Riga eating out my loneliness. The spring sun saves my day: Brainstorm songs are running through my head, I’m exploring an amazing Riga Library, go up to the thirteenth floor of a Stalin’s high-rise, try to get a view of the cityscape from a little window covered with stains and dust. The single street conversation of the day ends weirdly:
[Afro-American, with a stern look]: “Jesus loves you. Jesus created the world where we live. All our creations are made by Jesus’ hand. As long as we have faith in Jesus, our world will remain firm. Jesus loves you”.
I think that if Jesus loves me, he should send me a traveling buddy.
Instead of keeping my Euro tour from Riga to Vilnius rolling I go from Riga to Kaliningrad with a detour where I cross the border between Russia and Schengen zone twice. The detour results in stress, crossing the border at 3 a.m. and a stiff neck in a night bus.
Yet again the Baltic coastline weather became worse, Kaliningrad greets me with freezing rain and grey sky. The city is discouraging: industrial areas with garages in the very city center, dogshit roads, rain-flooded puddles in pavement, old German buildings next to “Khrushchyovkas”, tasteless “Fishing village”.
Speaking about pros – a three hundred ruble business lunch in a sushi bar and a huge organ in Kant’s cathedral. Speaking about normalities – absence of domestic vehicles, the city belongs entirely to the import cars, which is unusual for Russia full of LADAs and Volga's. Comparing with Tallinn and Riga, Kaliningrad isn't a huge favor. Or it’s just my Russophobic thoughts. It’s hard to say what exactly evokes my disdain when everything at once does it.
Local grannies are open for a conversation and share life peculiarities of a sovereign enclave.
“It’s tough to visit relatives in Russia without Schengen visa. Usually, Letts provide you with a transit visa if you go by train, but it’s not enough to even leave the train. Flights are expensive, buses take a lot of time”.
Masha texts me after lunch.
“Yes, come when you can, we are home today. Just write me at least thirty minutes in advance. Have a nice stroll, it’s bad the weather's the way it is… two days ago it was plus twenty and everybody wore T-shirts”.
Masha lives with Gleb on Karl Marx Street. The building seems like it was constructed by Germans. The guys would confirm it later. Masha and Gleb are from Moscow oblast, they moved to Kaliningrad a year ago. They were tired of bustle, crowds of people, they wanted something calm and seclude. They work from home: Masha is a freelancer doing copyright jobs, Gleb is a PHP programmer.
Being with Masha and Gleb I forget about Kaliningrad’s landscapes and dissolve into a hearty atmosphere of kitchen talks, I quite naturally fit into their lifestyle. After the Latvian social isolation this evening is just what the doctor ordered.
After dinner, we crash on a couch and watch a movie with Tom Cruise. The movie truly sucks, I’m falling asleep in half an hour after the beginning. The guys feel the same.
In the morning I hurry to the station to get on time for the train to Vilnius. I hastily cook an oatmeal and eventually scorch a pan. How many times would my mother tell me to cook on a low flame! I fill the pan with hot water mixed with Fairy. Then I pour a thousand apologies into the guys’ ears.
In short, Masha wrote in her reference: “The pan's fine))”.
It’s warmer in Lithuania than in Latvia and Estonia. Finally, I get some replies on couch by natives.
[ABOUT ME]
“I can be different in different environment and conditions, so people around me would understand me better than reading about me here”.
Lukas is a friendly pal. He is twenty-five, originally from Kaunas. He says it’s better in Kaunas than in Vilnius: people, bars, basketball. He’s a videographer on a local channel, in spare time he’s a normal guy: friends, soul mate, likes music and plays football. I’m his first surfer, although he wouldn’t give away any tense: it’s all going smooth and natural.
Lukas sets an incredibly harmonious music for my arrival. We dine with a chicken with rice. We are mutually interested in each other’s lives, we fire one question after another: politics, lifestyle, morals, people. As of any respectable Lithuanian sixteen to thirty-five his speech would show through “time to shove-off”.
[Lukas] “Listen, we are somewhat poor here, provincial, not much to do, dull people. I lived in UK for half a year, now I want to move there for good”.
Having left Lukas in the morning I walk down the sunny city: I climb local hills, get stuck in a vinyl record store, put my stomach under a stress-test with a local cuisine. After lunch Lukas telegraphs me, I left there my toothbrush. I make a play with it in my reference to Lukas on the couch:
“As a result of our friendship I gifted him my own toothbrush. No, you got it right – the toothbrush is like a part of my soul. I hope he was pleased”.
Lukas wrote me he had a toothy smile while reading my reference.
I think, leaving your toothbrush at hosts is a good idea for a tradition.
Belarus is not Russia, but here I feel like at home. Speeding train Vilnius-Minsk is going for two and a half hours. Lithuanians put a stamp on leaving the platform just like in an airport. Belarusians put a stamp after the first stop in Maladzyechna. It’s put by a guy in a uniform, he has a cistern-big belly. He’s stately walking about the car as if he’s drunk as fuck.
I go down to the metro from the station, get on a blue line to the end in Uruchcha. Minsk seems like a miniature Moscow: metropolitan fleur, lots of people, line to the currency exchange. I wouldn’t call it a jam in the metro – just a little tight. Stations are announced in Belarusian language, a little chauvinist is chuckling inside me because of the way it sounds. The sky here is as grey as in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius – but it’s not alien anymore – it feels home.
On the Uruchcha station I meet my hosts – Serezha and Vanya. Serezha has lived in Minsk for five years, he moved from Lida – west of Belarus on the border with Lithuania. He is a self-employed digital-marketing specialist: riveting web-sites, adjusting ads. He accepts order in the currency exclusively. Vanya is working in a kindergarten and lives with Serezha in a two-room apartment.
Uruchcha reminds me of Parnas District in Saint Petersburg, where I stayed at my friend's for a night last spring: blue metro line and its end, outskirts, new-built human hives, windy and cold. Serezha and Vanya show me a couch in the kitchen which isn’t all too big – just for my size. For dessert, we have a freshly delivered “Shakotis” from Vilnius, which looks like a burnt Christmas Tree.
[Serezha]: «Wasteful production, our language got driven to grave, terrible inflation, no trust to the currency. Lukashenko is a fucked-up old man who’s gonna leave only with his feet first. And there’s this stupid law about freeloading. This weekend we had protests in the city center – everyone got beaten up, everyone got arrested. I see no future here. I have “Karta Polaka”19 here thanks to my grandmother roots, it’s high time to learn Polish and get gone for good”.
In the morning I bid farewell to Serezha and Vanya and go to Independence Square to meet couchsurfers who offered to show the city. I gather around mutual strangers – two girls and two boys, students around twenty. It’s rainy in Minsk, the city looks empty. Having walked around the historic center we are hanging out for a couple of hours in Oktyabrskaya Ul. Then we’re heading in the direction of TsUM shopping mall. Generally, we are talking about traveling and that last protest against the freeloading law. The guys bear the same depressed mood and the thoughts about “Karta Polaka”.
Having bid farewell in “Jakuba Kolasa Square”, I take a ride to a bar next to “Kupalovskaya” metro station to meet my fifth couchsurfer in this city. His name’s Valya, born in Donbass. He moved to Minsk in 2014 with his wife Sveta and her daughter from the first marriage. Valya is a DevOps engineer, Sveta – junior school teacher. Valya likes Minsk and to travel around Europe, mostly by bike. Taking advantage of the unusual background and age difference, Valya chucks a couple wisdom of life into the conversation.
[Valya]: “What happened with Donbass taught me that home is not a place where you bought an apartment – it’s a place where your heart is warm and soul rests in harmony. I had an apartment in Donetsk, but what’s in it for me if I have no wish or chance to live there. These events changed my mind about the nature of home and its whereabouts”.
He has a positive picture of life in Belarus: the city is clean, the electricity is cheap, “Batka"20 is charismatic. I feel a contrast of thoughts and feelings with my generation, a kind of “barter of freedom for comfort”, but I’m not reflecting much – a person being good is all that matters. Having dined with beer and Fish&Chips, Valya and Sveta walk with me towards the central train station. There I take a BlaBlaCar to Moscow to catch the second BlaBlaCar to Penza. At the car I bid farewell to the guys, blurting out the usual “see you later”.
Valya guessed it was a commercial ride, and he was right – 11 p.m., night ride to Moscow, five people in the minivan, the series “Servant of the People”21 on a tablet to pass the time during the road. We cross the border at 3 a.m..
– [Driver]: Get your passports ready, we need to show them to the border guards.
– [Me]: Why?
– [Driver]: So they understand you’re not a Ukrainian – they often trespass here.
– [Me]: What a bullshit.
I think Belarus is a real go-to: welcoming, uncomfortable, kind-hearted, dull, BlaBlaCar-ish, restrained.
In September Bulgaria Air turns into an attraction of generosity – one-way ticket Moscow-Burgas costs around twenty euros, which is ridiculously cheap.
Late Saturday evening Lesha and Lesha meet me at Burgas airport. To make it easier for the readers I would call them “Leshas”. Leshas wend their way through life side by side: grew up and got disappointed in Yekaterinburg, lived in Moscow for a year, decided to move to another country.
During their three years stay in Bulgaria they managed to learn two languages – Bulgarian and English, open an assistance office for people who’ve moved, and transform into digital nomads. In summer season they indulge migrants from former Soviet Union countries – everything from legal paperwork to real estate purchase assistance. In winter, when near-side part of Bulgaria dies out, the guys travel around warm corners of the Earth from Arizona to Australia.
Leshas are happy to have an interesting Russian-speaking surfer; I’m happy to meet people who really want something from life. After a mutual cross-fire with questions I persuade them into going to Nessebar – one of the oldest towns in Europe. It takes us around an hour to get there.
– [Lesha1]: See that unfinished house?
– [Me]: Yep. I wouldn’t even call it a house – just some piles sticking out.
– [Lesha1]: That’s a sort of symbolic monument of nineties in Bulgaria. One guy started construction, took a credit from a bank, then – whoosh – disappeared.
– [Me]: Disappeared where?
– [Lesha2]: To Florida, most likely.
– [Me]: Nice.
Quite a few historical monuments have preserved in Nessebar, though they don’t interest me. Near to Nessebar Bulgarians built a small resort town Sunny Beach. It is the cheapest spot in the European Union where penny cost of lodging and alcohol attracts citizens of prosperous Western countries. In winter, it goes dormant: empty hotels, no electricity, no stuff.
On the way home we bring up the topic of East-European migrants’ “identity”.
– [Lesha2]: Most our clients are being absolute cringe. So, we are riding with this Kazakh girl and hear police sirens behind, asking to stop. We pull over, a cop approaches our car, we talk. Out of nowhere this girl shouts “Just give him the money!” The cop has a microphone attached to the uniform, what the hell? What was she thinking?”
I think, Lesha, that’s just how the world’s spinning.
In Sofia, I stay at a Macedonian guy Nikola. He’s been living in Bulgaria for seven years, he tours around the country with a puppet theater.
In the evening I meet Nikola in the city center and witness him blowing bubbles. From two sticks and soup he makes huge bubbles about the size of a beanbag chair from IKEA. Children are scampering around him overwhelmed with joy. Nikola is also beaming all his thirty-two teeth and constantly shouts out something in Bulgarian. Left to Nikola – a top hat for donations to his magic, to his right – his friend Georgy.
– [Georgy, in Russian]: Where are you going after Sofia?
– [Me]: To Skopje, then to Ohrid.
– [Georgy, smiling]: Oh cool, that means you’ll see our country, too.
Having finished with the bubbles, Nikola gives me a ride on his old “golf” to his place.
– [Nikola, in English]: I happen to know a song in Russian.
– [Me]: Then sing it.
– [Nikola]: Walking with my steed late at night, Through a field so endless and wide…
– [We, in unison]: JUST THE TWO OF US WALKING THROUGH THE GRASS, JUST THE TWO OF US ARE WALKING THROUGH THE GRASS.
I remember that the frontman of the singing band Lyube looks like my father.
Nikola lives on the outskirts not far away from the “Konstantin Velichkov” metro station. Twenty-storied panel buildings from the times of the Warsaw Pact, they emanate vibes of Moscow’s outskirts. Nikola lives with his girlfriend Mila. Nikola and Mila are about to get married. Right now, they are going through the stage “how to share lifestyle with another person and not mess it up”. They let me take a huge living room with a huge couch in the apartment.
Next evening, I run across Mila’s mother. She is a friendly woman, speaks Russian a bit. I’m trying not to spoil family talks and roll into the living room.
I think I should have a good sleep before catching “marshrutka” to Skopje at 7 a.m. tomorrow.
On my second day in Sofia, I arranged a trip to the “Seven Rila Lakes” park with two Czech girls. Anna and Katerina have a car and panda eyes. I’m happy I’ve got a company in traveling.
[Anna]: We had a weird night. We were hitchhiking from Sofia to Priština when this guy picked us up. In the middle of the way he stopped the car at a roadside hotel and suggested fucking there. We managed to escape somehow, had to spend the night at a bus station of that roadside town. We got to Sofia at 7 a.m. by bus”.
Anna tells me the story with a smile and a fleur of Slavic English accent. As if they were nowhere near to catastrophe.
Katerina drives the rented Logan. We make a small talk, but I speak with Anna mostly. We remember our experience in Work&Travel, exchange visited countries and stories from couch. Anna remembers a couple phrases in Russian from the school curriculum.
A jeep takes us from the parking lot of the park to the base for climbing the mountain with lakes. You can’t ascend on your own, it’s off-road – only by jeep and only with locals. My Russian comes in handy: you just have to remember that by “vpravo” – to the right – they mean “pryamo” – forward. It takes around an hour to get on the hill where we see the first two of the seven lakes. At this point we decide to finish our trip: it could and rainy on the mountain, we don’t have suitable clothes and the girls got tired on the way. We drive back with a local family. The mom with a flat-bill cap permeates the interior with tobacco smoke, which makes us feel nauseous.
On the way back we stop for lunch in Borovets. Portions in a local café are huge, as if we were boars. Combination of chicken with omelette makes by stomach bloat. It will bring me enough suffering till the end of the day.
Having arrived to Sofia we part our ways and agree to meet in the evening. Eventually, the meeting didn’t happen as I had a stomachache. Next day I come to realize that I fell in love with Anna.
Till the end of my eurotrip I’m missing Anna: romanticize her image in my mind, imagine various scenes between us, hope for another accidental meeting. I even write a letter expressing all my feelings. Later I find out millennials’ dictionary has a mere “crush” for it.
I think we won’t meet ever again.
Deniz has the Island of Cyprus tattooed on his wrist. His main life dream is to see Cyprus united.
Deniz if from the Turkish part of Nicosia, he grew up side by side with a mockery of the Berlin Wall. He studied for a dentist in Skopje, as education here is cheap and vibes are quite homey and Balkan.
We meet on Alexander the Great Square and go to the Old Town to get some food and drinks. His friend Sasha joins us. It’s fun to hang out with Sasha, he’s a derpy guy. He leaves us after an hour of food and talk. Denis and I catch a red double-decker to home, just like in London.
– [Deniz]: Honestly speaking, I’m gay, for some reason it disappoints some surfers. I remember a host from Kazan, he was all about homophobic at first, but then he confessed he felt an attraction to me.
– [Me]: Yeah, serious shit. (romantic thoughts about Anna are running through my head)
Deniz lives on Nikola Parapunov Street in a panel house of brutalist era. It’s spacious inside, two-bedroom apartment seems like a luxury for a dentistry student. Deniz provides me with a separate room and a king-size bed.
Next day I run into problems with finding his home. The map betrays me: the house on the map is not my house. No roaming, I search the house blindly. Eventually I meet Deniz and Sasha in the front yard and calm down.
I think, local sim-card is a must-have for couchsurfers.
Eight hours in a stuffy bus and here I am in Belgrade. My host lives in the Navi Belgrad municipality on the Pariske Komune Street. Belgrade is a big, metropolitan city, but it doesn’t have metro, only buses. Since they laid the first foundation stone of the subway there it still remains untouched, single and unique. On my way to host I pass by something that looks like a presidential palace. It’s surrounded by five dozen cars with “Жандармерија” signs. Sounds so sweet – gandarmeriya!
My host’s name is Luis: he’s Mexican, moved to Belgrade three years ago. He doesn’t directly speak about his former life – only hints and fibs – what makes it impossible to understand what drove him to Belgrade. He is a tester in a local IT firm. In the evenings he hangs out on Twitch game streams, goes to gym and swimming pool. This weekend he has another guest Sasha – his friend from the small Serbian city called Nis. We share two beds among three men: one is for Luis and Sasha, the other – for my noble presence.
Friday evening. I get to know the guys better, piece by piece we raise a common fund of jokes and memes. Luis and Sasha go to the friend’s flat party in honor of Mexico’s Independence Day. I force myself into their company with my backpack being hastily left in the bedroom. We find the apartment in the very city center, shabby houses and yards remind me of Petersburg. Nora – the host of the party – meets us at the porch. She greets us with an emotional Spanish speech, showing how happy she is to see us – I even got a kiss in the cheek. There are around fifteen people here: Mexicans, their Serbian friends and even a Frenchman. The party is inclusive, not knowing Spanish doesn’t bother me.
“What drives Mexicans to Serbia?” – the question that breaks the pattern for me, so I ask this question to one of the hanging out guys.
“You know, I’ve traveled around the world for a long time, and from all the countries I visited Serbia was the only place where I felt at home, like in Mexico. So, I stayed here, ha-ha”.
Slavs and Latino Americans actually have some similar features. Anthropologically speaking, Serbs are South Slavs, more open and friendly than we, North-Eastern Slavs.
There are lots of Mexican stuff: generally stereotypical like tequilas and sombreros as well as specifically weird like a chicken in chocolate sauce. There’s a cultural program, poems and songs with a guitar. In their kitchen-talks Serbs are joking about their motherland, while Mexicans are joking about Serbian motherland. The evening flows seamlessly into the night, somewhere at 1 a.m. our Pariske Komune squad abandons the party.
Saturday morning. I ask Lukas to wash my dirty clothes from the week’s traveling. The washing machine in the apartment is old – produced, I believe, in Soviet Yugoslavia. Without a second thought I put my clothes inside and turn on standard mode. While it’s working Luis and I drive to a supermarket to buy food for his cat. Sasha is still sleeping off the party.
Two hours later we come back home. I go to a shop in front of the house to buy apples. In two minutes Luis runs in with an incredibly worried face.
– [Luis]: You flooded the apartment.
– [Me]: Pardon me?
– [Luis]: You flooded the apartment!!
– [Me]: Oh shit.
– [Luis]: Have you finished here?
– [Me]: Yep.
– [Luis]: Go home, I’ll give you a mop to collect water.
Having come back home I see a huge layer of water poured over the whole floor. Sasha has already initiated cleanup with a rag. This washing machine is old and silly, it has no self-preservation regime. As a result, for two hours it was steadily spilling out water on the floor, flooding the whole apartment. According to the classics of the genre, Sasha doesn’t wake up till our arrival.
While we are dealing with the water I think about where to move at this weekend. Obviously, Luis is going to throw me out because of my fuck-up. I share my distressful thoughts with Sasha, and he answers: “Don’t worry, Luis is not like that, he won’t kick you away”. Indeed, Luis is not like that, he realizes that the machine is old. I try to make it right by washing dirty pans in the sink and get a gratitude from Luis. After lunch, we meet Luis at the gym: Sasha and I report a successful restoration of status quo, he firmly shakes my hand.
I think it’s all right – we are friends.
The first day in Budapest the city carries me away with its dazzling architecture, historical connotation, cheap prices and unknown language. In the evening I meet my host at the opera house, and we go to a bar to meet other surfers.
My host Zoltán was born in a Hungarian village, moved to Budapest for studying roughly ten years ago and stayed here from then on. He is a project manager in an outsource firm and proudly calls himself “workaholic”. Aside from job Zoltán digs into skateboarding and cursed jokes with a Slav fleur.
My Budapest’ fairytale gains extra momentum in the bar. Twenty people at a huge table are glad to see each other. Word by word we all get well hammered. Zoltán leaves us to pick up his laptop and go-to face for a rendezvous with a colleague, though the business environment doesn’t stop him from getting drunk.
Two hours separate Monday and Tuesday. It’s already cold outside, Zoltán and I are waiting for a night bus. While waiting we come up with our own cursed joke.
– [Zoltán]: In the darkest night… I’m creeping up on your bed… and cut out your liver!
– [Me]: So, I can’t drink anymore?
– [Zoltán]: Well, yeah [devilish laugh].
I live at Zoltán for a week but don’t see him much. He’s all at work, sometimes even staying in the office for a night. One evening electricity in his apartments got shut down, and I had no idea why. I had to charge my phone in MacDonald's and at the same time catch Wi-Fi to get the problem across my workaholic. The same evening Zoltán eventually gets home and solves it by a single click of the cutout switch.
– [Me]: What happened, why the lights went out?
– [Zoltán]: So that you don’t masturbate here.
– [Me]: Makes sense.
Later Zoltán would write in his reference on couch:
I had a great time talking to Misha about IT, politics and general questions, related to the PURPOSE OF LIFE.
I think, the purpose of life is its actual purposelessness.
It feels dull in Bratislava after Budapest. I’m tired of the trip, the sky is grey and rainy, a bridge from old town leads to new town with lots of panel houses. My host Leo lives in one of them.
Leo is from Finland, he roamed for a while around the EU: lived in Ireland, Czech Republic, Portugal – now he’s dwelling in Slovakia. He is a storage manager in a corporate – quite peculiar branching off system administration.
Whether it’s the fault of corporate job or Slovakia itself, but Leo looks sad and tired. Without reaching a formal introduction Leo starts complaining about the world around. A horrible country, disgusting people, dogshit job, social alcoholism is exhausting.
– [Leo]: Why come here, not to Vienna?
– [Me]: Because there’s this cheap “Pobeda” flight to Moscow.
– [Leo]: Local airport is a complete dogshit, I can’t understand how people depart from here.
– [Me]: Leo, do you even have a hobby?
– [Leo]: Hobby? It’s been six years I’ve been doing nothing except “Netflix”.
I think let’s watch some “Netflix” since we are both sick and tired.
In Berlin, I had two face-to-face interviews in two companies. There are no normal transits to Penza, so I have to stay in the capital overnight.
“Well, I have this bad habit of working nine-to-eighteen, but during this time You can freely take my bicycle and take a ride among picturesque Moscow’s landmarks. I can provide you a meal in the evening, and we can go for a stroll around the city. If You come by in between Thursday and Sunday we can have an awesome time at some concert, which are plenty in the capital – reggae, punk, jazz and other Auktyon’s concerts are always on the line, so we could consider the idea according to our mutual musical tastes”.
What a colorful character is going to host me today in Moscow! Such a pity it’s only for a night, and I’ll have to go back to my hometown right away. I really crave for concerts, punks, Auktyon’s.
I take a ride by an old commuter train from Domodedovo to the ZIL station. Because of flight delays I arrive to his house at 10 p.m., unreasonably late.
– [Seryoga]: Ahoy, gangster!
– [Me]: And why is it already gangster?
– [Seryoga]: Because you’re late :D
Seryoga himself is from Gomel, Belarus. He moved to Moscow for study and stays in Moscow from then on. I look stupid by confusing Gomel and Grodno. Seryoga is rofling: “At least I’m glad it’s Belarus for you, not Belorussia!”. Apart from amazing musical taste Seryoga has an inner passion for fucked-up adventures: China, Laos, Lebanon, Iraq – no country is banned for him. He hosts even more often than surfs. The fridge in the kitchen is covered in stickers and postcards in English from foreigners what makes a pretty nice picture.
I have enough stamina for no more than an hour conversation after which I crush exhausted from the weekend in Berlin. On Monday morning Seryoga go by foot to work across an eight-lane highway. I get my first rejection from one company: not enough skills, they say. The second I would receive in Penza’s airport what would pull me into hysterics.
Right about now I’m waiting for Seryoga to lunch together. We talk a bit more and part our ways: he goes to work, I go to Domodedovo.
I think Seryoga could’ve been my friend if I lived in Moscow.
What is there to do during ten New Year holidays when it’s cold outside, flight tickets cost three times as much, and you are out of mood for a binge-drinking?
Dealing with this problem in advance I took the tickets to Dubai with transit in Baku for a reasonable price. Meeting New Year under palm trees seemed like an interesting idea.
Morning thirty-first of December I arrive to Dubai, get a new stamp in my passport with the two-headed eagle and get on a driverless metro to Marina – a harbor with high-risers and little boats. My provincial mindset explodes from the high-risers. I make my way to the beach, gaze at the sea, examine hot sand by touch. Having plunged into the atmosphere of summer holidays I head on searching my host’s apartment.
[Saya’s profile]: «I believe in Gandhi and his non-violent preach. I was raised humbly, so I am a down-to-earth person, anybody can speak to me”.
Saya is from a small Indian town in West Bengal, he’s been living in Dubai for five years and considers it his home. He is a marketing specialist in a local corporate, lives with his friend in a double in a new-built high-riser, navigates around town by Mercedes.
– [Me]: What are the cons of life in Dubai?
– [Saya]: It’s so safe here you feel detached from reality. Leave the front door wide open – nobody’s going to come in.
In the evening Saya and I take a metro to The Burj Khalifa by subway, planning to meet New Year’s night there. Exactly at midnight they start a visual show on its façade with animations and fireworks. People are really digging it: every year hundreds of thousands gather here expecting a miracle.
Organizations prepared two viewpoints. On the “white” viewpoint they installed seats and other conveniences, if you wish you can visit Dubai Mall before the show starts. Speaking about the “black” viewpoint – it takes an hour by foot to get there, the viewpoint itself is just a circle with cops around it. There’s nothing but pavement and curbs.
We happened to get on the “black” viewpoint. It’s three hours till the start, and I’m already about to crash. The last few nights weren’t relaxed at all: I was excited about the offer in Berlin, hanged out on a New Year’s corporate party, transferred from one plane to another in Baku. There are no food or toilets on the point. You can’t leave it by any reason.
– [Me, pretending]: Let me out, I feel sick!
– [Cops]: What’s wrong?
– [Me]: I have a heartache.
– [Cops]: Fine, we’ll call an ambulance.
– [Me]: Okay, sorry, I was actually cheating.
Saya understands me – he also wasn’t ready for such bummer. There’s no way back, we try to switch from small talk to our mutual existential problems. Here’s our approximate list of questions to discuss:
●
How was your year? What’s on your memories?
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Why Hindus walk holding each other’s arms – are they what, gays?
●
What’s the difference between Hindus and Pakistanis?
●
Oh, that’s great you’re going to the World Cup in Russia. Which cities are you going to visit? Need some advice?
●
Is it really prohibited for couples to kiss on public? Does it lead to jail?
Exactly at midnight we leave our troubles with meeting New Year behind and fully enjoy the start of something new, a possibility to start from scratch.
Half an hour later after fireworks coppers open the barricade. We spend half an hour to get to the nearest metro station by foot. There’s some jam in the metro, cops are guarding the entrance and let people enter in turns. I almost pass out from the accumulated fatigue. I’m holding onto Saya’s shoulders so as not to lose him among the crowd. Eventually they let us into the metro, we take a ride home. Having no strength left I sit on the car floor. I don’t give a damn what people would think of it – it’s not really humane either to restrain people.
Having arrived at home I catch up on sleep till 2 p.m., open my eyes and feel like a newborn. New Year – new energy.
Saya could host me for a night only. He kindly gives me a ride to my new hosts – Om and Diya.
Om and Diya are also from India, being slightly above thirty as well. Diya works in an office, Om – a small trade business with a friend on a share basis. They sleep on a mattress, leaving a couch for surfers. I go for a walk around the city and agree to meet in Marina, so we can go home together. It’s not an easy task to search hosts without Internet on your phone.
– [Om, in a phone call]: So where are you? Come on, we wait no more than five minutes, then we leave.
– [Me, inwardly]: 8 p.m., weekend, what’s the fuss, brother?
Saya is also noticeably hurrying: he asked me to hurry on my way out as he was running late for praying in a temple. I’m starting to get the city rhythm, mad one. People are speeding here for a good 130 km/h and still somehow hurry and get late. It’s all too quick here, too hectic.
At home Om loses his sternness, he’s a sweetheart in socializing.
– [Om]: Oh, so you’ve been to our Delhi?
– [Me]: Yeah, occasionally.
– [Om]: That’s a whole different story there. They’ll beat you for good if you don’t drink.
– [Me]: It seemed to me they can also do it with no reason at all.
At my second night Om takes a flight to Singapore for emergent business matters. We are left alone with Diya to discuss Arabian lifestyle and morals.
– [Diya]: When it’s Ramadan by the calendar our office introduces no-food policy. No employees are allowed to eat in the kitchen, never mind working desk. Nonsense, right? If I don’t believe in Allah, why should I get restrained?
It seemed to me you can get restrained here with no reason at all.
On the border between the UAE and Oman I fill in information with a fake hotel in the residence field as customs officers have no idea about Couchsurfing. After we, passengers of the regular bus, will in the form, we pile up all our bags. Officers set a hound to check it. The hound scans our stuff with its nose to find any prohibited things. Nothing prohibited was found.
I go out at The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque – the main Mosque of the country. It’s empty – no locals, no tourists. Ten minutes later my new host Yusuf drives up in a black Chrysler. I immediately jump into his car. On the road he explains his plan for a road trip around Oman.
Yusuf is thirty-five, native Omani, he is a safety instructor in an oil company. Yusuf lives in a luxurious house, proving the stereotype of an Arabian rentier from Russian kitchen-talks about unfair based income distribution from oil and gas. He works in shifts: three weeks of work, three weeks of rest. He usually has two plans for the spare weeks. Plan A – to fly to Thailand to his girlfriend Natasha, plan B – to spend time with the family and to travel with surfers. In parallel Yusuf is studying for the economics-related second degree.
Yusuf speaks English fluently and creates an overall impression of a pretty Westernized dude. Rebellious spirit is boiling inside him with a concealed Che Guevara silhouette on the left shoulder. He was too young when he tattooed it and then decided to conceal it to avoid problems at work. Apart from the tattoo in youth he had problems with alcohol and weed. These days he’s leading a righteous life: prays to the Almighty, wears dish dash, goes to the gym where possible.
[Yusuf]: “Look at you, Misha, you’re a young guy, you have a life ahead of you. As for me, I’ve already experienced the life’s sweets: alcohol, marijuana, prostitutes. They might be telling it on your TV that we have haram and everything is prohibited –it’s bullshit, here you can do anything you wish. Even our Sultan fucks youngsters: both girls and guys. And gifts each one “Lamborghini”. And we all know about it”.
Yusuf resembles a mid-age guy from the south of Russia: particular English accent, monologues from life experience perspective, frankness and ingenuousness, bitching about clothes. In a way the monologues from life experience perspective ascend him to the “older brother” level in my eyes.
Yusuf already has everything prepared for traveling: tent, camping gas cooker, dry ration. Shores of the Persian Gulf resemble a picture of Mars due to orange color of rocks and absence of green whatsoever. We travel with a tent in “Chrysler” for two days: drive around natural landmarks with sunrise, sleep alone on the Gulf shores with sunset.
On the third day we return to Yusuf’s home in Muscat. Yusuf lives with his big family in a big two-storied cottage house. It’s customary to have a separate bathroom for each room, because the bathroom is a personal space of every individual.
The country celebrates a grand event, historical moment for the nation: Oman plays against Emirates in the Arabian Gulf Cup final. There are three of us watching it: me, Yusuf and his buddy Abdullah. We have tea and dates to replace bear and chips. The game is quite tense:. 0-0 at full time, 0-0 at extra time – and here comes the penalty shootout. Our keeper blocks couple goals, we strike without miss – so Oman takes the Cup. The whole Muscat is getting out on streets with flags, joyous chants and euphoria.
Four days in Oman pass way too quickly, just like every moment of happiness that occurs in our life. Before leaving, I teach Yusuf a couple phrases in Russian, so he could surprise Natasha.
[Yusuf, recording a voice message]: “Nataschaaa, mnye zayebyis’!”22
I think, I also feel fucking amazing.
I have Azerbaijan Airlines transfer in Baku. I have only five hours to explore the city, though in travelling it’s always better to take a bite rather than rot in a heartless airport.
Baku’s center is wonderful, spotless and kind. Locals will tell you where to buy tickets for the metro and at which bus stop to get out. Cream-colored Stalin-era architecture has preserved in the city. Down the road – the Old Town, up the road – skyscrapers built on the profit from selling gas and petrol.
Huseyn paired with his buddy Rustem to reinvent national Azerbaijani clothes with a modern twist. During their student years, the guys collected folk pieces of clothing. Step by step, they release their own collection of clothes with national folklore by name Galamkari style.
Galamkari is a way to produce clothes where all prints on the fabric are made manually, which results in cool ornaments with eastern fleur on the clothes. Galamkari is still popular in Iran, where the guys actually learned to stitch. Galamkari is on the verge of extinction and Azerbaijan, as well as the national folklore in general. Essentially, the guys are saving national identity.
[Huseyn]: This art existed in our country since the times of the Safavid dynasty up to the nineteenth century. In the days of the Russian Empire, the prints were moved out from the country under the excuse of production for the whole Transcaucasia. That’s when the Galamkari art disappeared in Azerbaijan. We had it only in Baku, Shamakhi and Nakhchivan. Nowadays, it’s preserved only in Isfahan and India”.
The brand has quickly caught on. It enjoyed popularity among locals and foreigners. The guys received lots of requests from girls to create a women's collection. Right now they are working full speed on the collection which would include men’s and women’s coats, bomber jackets, skirts, sweatshirts, pants. The guys are obviously enjoying their business.
Huseyn doesn’t speak Russian, he speaks English to me. Rustem speaks Russian, though he’s coeval with Huseyn. By a lucky change the collection’s workshop is right in the Old City, that’s why Huseyn has time to show me what they’re working on.
I am pestering them with questions about life in Azerbaijan in general and Baku specifically. I see love&hate relationship picture. On the one hand, the guys are dedicated to developing their culture, they do it brilliantly with all their heart. On the other, the local combination of conservatism and authoritarianism feels suffocating to them.
[Rustem]: “People here always mind your business: they can approach you in the street, ask why you wear such clothes, what’s an earring for, why your hair’s so long. It’s all different in Paris, we’ve been there a year ago – sometimes we would like to move there”.
Leaving the workshop in the direction of a bus stop, I’m looking for all possible words to explain my excitement about their work. I think, it was great to see you, folks.
I’m flying to Thailand for my last two weeks of anthropological vacation before migration to Berlin. Three days in Bangkok, the capital being the starting point in the Thai coordinate system.
An interesting city comes hand in hand with an interesting host with an interesting name – Wisharawish. Although friends call him “Wish”, which is a lot easier to pronounce.
[Gen.T edition]: “For the past 16 years, award-winning fashion designer Wisharawish Akarasantisook has earned global recognition by combining technical mastery with handicrafts and intricate details. He has found inspiration in Buddhist temples and in handwoven regional textiles; most recently, Wisharawish has been incorporating filagen, or marine collagen peptides from milkfish scales, into viscose fiber, raising both the comfort and protection levels of garments”.
To learn more about his achievements and subtleties of working, I plunge into his Instagram with hundreds of clothes on gorgeous models. The Wish himself circulates between the work in his studio and trips around Thailand, spending his spare time with cigarettes and strong liquor.
He passes me the apartment keys through his friend. There are aggressive street dogs around the house. Wish gave me a separate room with a mattress and a fan. I see a protein tub in the kitchen: once Wish wanted to build up the weight, but eventually remained skinny as a rake – you won’t be betting against the genes, he said.
We meet one-on-one only on the third night – my last night in Bangkok. On the way home he confirms what sort of booze to take. At first, he resents my requests to leave booze alone, but eventually agrees not to take anything. Having returned home, he starts smoking right in the living room and speaks carelessly as if we know each other for years.
[Wish]: “I lived in Paris for five years, studied there the art of fashion and design. Since then, I’ve got hooked on white boys, and now I always invite them to my fashion shows, have little affairs. I can’t fuck with Thai guys – I get this strange feeling as if I fuck my brother”
The same way Wish fires homo jokes at my stories from hanging out with hosts, something about gang-bang. I laugh it off with the lowest possible score on the Kinsey Scale23, inspired by growing up in a homophobic environment.
We didn’t talk about his work. Even if we would, I wouldn’t understand anything. I think, fashion is not my profession.
[Anong]: “Hello, brother! Finally, I’ll host my coeval”.
Indeed, it’s quite difficult to find a coeval on CouchSurfing if you’re slightly over twenty. In most countries people of my age either still live with parents or dwell in shared flats and dormitories, or getting focused on business-youth and self-development too much.
In Chiang Mai – a popular city in Northern Thailand among digital nomads – Anong rents a separate apartment of twenty square meters – minimalism at its best. Surfers sleep with him in a single bed. Anong is finishing his study in a local university in the field of tourism: with his fluent English Anong is bound to find a job here in tourist services. Anong himself is from a quiet Thai village where he returns every month to help his parents with their farming business.
We’re getting started from smiles, friendly vibes, classic stories “who-where-how”. Having left my stuff, I go out to see Chiang Mai’s sights – generally Buddhist temples – and enjoy Thai street food. Anong leaves to the University to pass the last exam. It’s plus thirty-four in Chiang Mai with a blazing sun, while in Penza it’s minus twenty, freezing.
At 4 p.m. Anong texts me in WhatsApp: “The exam is passed, the end-term exams are over”. He picks me up at a temple on his scooter, we drive to a hill outside the city to meet the sunset.
– [Me]: What do you like most in Thailand?
– [Anong]: Nobody minds your business, nobody’s pestering with advices how to look and what to do.
Having met the sunset, we return to the city for dinner. We are back home, chill with David Bowie songs. Then Anong’s got a call from a friend: we set off to a club to celebrate the end of semester.
Thai clubs are hell of a grinding mill. The club building is crowded, getting through looks like a million-dollar puzzle. People are just standing there, drinking Thai vodka from a jar and shaking hips on stiff legs.
Four guys and four girls make it eight of us. The guys are surprised with the fact that I somehow got into their company, they take turns to ask the same question – “Where do you come from?” – and go on speaking to me with smiles instead of words. We order a jar of Thai vodka and drink it up in shots in between five-minute intervals. Tastes like a sweet syrup, you don’t feel alcohol at all – you wouldn’t know when it’s enough for you. We drink fast, one jar after another. One girl in our company gets faint – we must call an ambulance so that they pump her off in time.
We stand at the club's entrance, I ask one of our guys for a cigarette. He has braces on the teeth and a beaming smile on the face.
[the guy]: “I watch Russian porno, I like it, so cute, ha-ha-ha”.
Having returned to the club we go on boozing vodka from a jar. I dive into the crowd, trying to find a toilet, and slice through it like a knife goes through a frozen butter. Seems like I’m the only white person – not just in our company, but in the whole club. People are glancing back at me, touched and smiling. At the end of the crowd I see another white guy: “White Guy? White Guy!” – an American from Florida, he came here solo hoping to pick up some chicks.
At midnight the club suddenly shuts down. The crowd of half a thousand people are thrown away on the street. We are pretty drunk but not yet tired – we need a party. We place our eight bodies on two scooters driven by the soberest of our flock. After an hour ride, we find another club and hang out there for about an hour. The same picture: crowds, madness, once again I’m the only snowflake on the dance floor.
We part our ways at 3 a.m.. The next day Anong and I go cure our hangover at a waterfall outside the city. The waterfall turned out to be wishy-washy, but for a scooter-lover I am, every ride is fun.
Anong gives me a ride to the airport at night, saying goodbye with his beaming smile. I think it was a big time.
Thais have truly beautiful names – Wirshawish in Bangkok, Borvornsit in Krabi.
Borvornsit holds a glass shot in his hand and a sardonic smile on his face in his CouchSurfing profile picture. In real life he creates an impression of a pragmatic adequate person with an excelling sense of humor. He moved to Krabi from the same Chiang Mai where I’ve just come from – like from north to south. He’s a general practitioner in a local clinic. Works in shifts: three weeks of work, three weeks of rest. He spends his days-off travelling, usually to Japan: sincerely confesses his love to that country, its cherry blossom and snowy winter.
While Borvornsit was working I was learning to drive scooters by taking lesson from Russian guys who rent various two-wheeled vehicles. I rented one for two hundred rubles per day. As for driver license, I had a registration certificate from military commissariat, hoping this will look like a driver license for local cops.
I’m hanging out in Krabi for three days, though I don’t see my host much. At 7 p.m. he already drives to the gym, then to work, and returns home at 9 p.m.. Being bone-tired he doesn’t care about any intercultural wrinkles which always occur during homestays: how to wash clothes, how to use sockets, why water in shower is cold and so on.
I think Borvornsit is a normal guy. Probably too normal for Thailand.
– [Rattanon]: Before hosting you I would like to tell you that I’m gay.
– [Me]: I’m ok with that.
– [Rattanon]: Are you open-minded?
– [Me]: Yes I am.
For me, as for someone who was raised in the environment where gays are faggots and cunts – the word “open-minded” stands for a person who isn’t homophobic and accepts the fact that a man can be in relationships not only with the people of the same gender. As for Rattanon – as much as for every LGBT character – open-minded means “to be open for homosexual relationships oneself”. I was not.
Rattanon was born in Bangkok. Now he lives in Ko Samui – an island in the Southern Thailand. He is thirty-two, works in a hostel, loves tattoos – he’s recently got the tenth one on his shoulder. I meet him in the hostel, leave part of my stuff under his table and leave to explore the island.
In the evening we go hanging out on a beach. There’s this Thai lady in our company. One of her arms is holding her eight years old daughter, the other one – trying to rub me. Rattanon says she likes me. That picture renders an absolute cringe. I pretend I don’t notice anything.
Having anchored on the beach, we order some alcohol. The “bucket” is considered to be the delicacy number one in the Southern Thailand, or, at least in its touristic part. In the bucket filled with ice they mix vodka, energy drink and God knows what. The cocktail acts as a catalyst for a frenzied state which holds onto you till sunrise. I refuse to drink, limiting myself to Shrewsbury cider. One bottle is enough to send me to the dance floor.
In ten minutes, I see out of the corner of my eye that Rattanon is leaving the bar in the direction of the parking lot. I’m getting a typical “surfer’s panic”: what, how, where? I am catching up with him and receive a burp of curses and accusations.
[Rattanon]: “You lied, you betrayed me. You said you don’t drink, and then you went dancing. I can’t stand lies, you must pack your shit and get the hell out of my home. I have nothing to do with you, you’re a liar”.
I jump on the rear seat of his scooter, we drive to his apartment only to see the second round of accusations and brainwashing. The second time I get kicked out and the second time the story has no justification but for a craze in the mind of the beholder. The main thing I learned from that story in Philadelphia is to stand my ground and shut down an opponent in a conversation. I make a counterattack:
[Me]: Listen to me, I didn’t even do anything, I just said I wouldn’t drink from that shitty piss bucket. I didn’t give you any promises, you understand me? Everything you’ve said, so fair is just in your head, I didn’t do you a shit, got it? I can get out of here, not a problem for me, but it’s you who fucked up this situation in the first place, you played it low yourself, it’s your decision to leave me ass naked in the street”.
Rattanon jumps over the five stages directly to the acceptance. First, he suggests staying over one night, so I have time to find a new place. Five minutes later he suggests starting it all from scratch and shake hands. Realizing the volume of shit in his mind I decide to stay for one night and look for a way out of the situation next morning with a fresh mind.
Anyway, next day I find a pennyworth guesthouse on Booking held by Austrians. I get back to the “Western bubble”.
Too much shit hit the fan on the Island Ko Samui. First, I caught a cold and got left ear infection with an extremely unpleasant stuffiness and a sharp pain when I was waiting for the transfer between Chiang Mai and Krabi at the airport. I am moving to Berlin in three weeks as an emigrant, with no due date. Prior to Berlin I have four flights back to Penza which would sever my tinnitus even more. On top of that I should deal with the situation with Rattanon and tell myself off for an infantile decision to rest at the edge of the world before an epic migration. I’m going through a terrible inner pain on this “Paradise Island”: physical, emotional, mental.
Three days separate me from the long journey home. In attempts to dull the pain without booze and drugs I meet Katya and Dasha via “CouchSurfing Hangouts”. They are about to sail to Samui from Ko Pha Ngan. The decision to spend these three days together comes immediately. I have one scooter to place our asses on, emotional struggle and mush for brains.
Having met them at the bay I try to solve an uneasy task: how to ferry two tourists with big backpacks to a place for a stay having only a single scooter in possession. Eventually we pay a local taxi driver and redistribute our stuff the way, so we could get to the point without fuss. The girls have their own host Bill from Canada. Bill is looking for a peace of mind after fifteen years of rat racing for a dollar. Girls can speak English one way or another, Bill is a decent guy – so it’s all good there.
During these three days we’re driving around the island. My driving experience – three days and twenty kilometers. Sometimes I try to park on a mountain or let a Thai pass from the curb on the main road. Sometimes I feel I am about to fall asleep – my traveling fatigue and the ear have their impact. The girls are scared but they have no alternatives. On the bright side – we became such close friends that we don’t forget each other up to this day. In a year Dasha would give me a homestay in Petersburg, but that’s a whole different story.
Katya and Dasha are inseparable friends from the student years from Altai. The life had different plans for the girls: Dasha moved to Petersburg, Katya – to Crimea. They worked in tourism: Dasha was an administrator in a hotel, Katya – a waitress in bars and restaurants. Telling from my experience in Work&Travel, I know that tourism is a shithole with overtime hours and low salaries. It’s not surprising that the girls blew it off and left into nowhere. They have a long trip, three months in total: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia.
Right now, we are hanging out together: explore local beaches and temples, eat from a pineapple instead of a dish in a market, catch a beautiful sunset, cracking at my moves on the road.
– [Katya, after yet another maneuver]: You’re one bydlo from Penza.
– [Me, getting into the character]: Damn, bitch, what the bloody hell I've supposed to do here for fuck's sake?
– [We all]: [laughing hysterically]
Katya and Dasha help me forget about my physical pain, emotional fatigue, mental agony. They are careful: they are arguing with each other every day but set no conditions for me. They show interest in my ear and put faith into my daily plans. Our last evening I’m trying to leave a hint for a threesome only to make them laugh uncontrollably.
Our time together is coming to an end. We are driving to the bay on the opposite side of the island by two scooters – the girls have a ferry to Thailand’s mainland. Thank you for being who you are, gals.
I have a transit in Bahrain between Bangkok and Moscow. The transfer back takes ten hours, Bahrain itself is a tiny island. I decided to pay twenty bucks for visa on arrival and look for a kind host.
Hello! My name is Zohaan, I am from India, but I live in Bahrain with my family. You seem to be an interesting guy to meet and talk to. Although I can’t host you at my home (I live with the big family), we can definitely meet, I can give you a ride after work and help to absorb some of Bahrain’s culture during your short stop. I am a gourmet, quite a funny person, I believe, and I would eagerly take this opportunity to get to know you!
By a twist of fate Zohaan works in the airport, so we meet right after customs put a stamp in my visa. Zohaan offers to give me a ride around the island and show all the landmarks. On the one hand, I feel awkward in front of Zohaan for my half-dead state. On the other, the very fact of my half-dead traveler presence would brighten up his routine.
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Actually, I could stay at Zohaan's for a night; Zohaan, big thanks for two hours on your luxurious bed;
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Zohaan lives with his sister, her name’s Señorita; besides a beautiful name, she is attractive and has a charming smile; Zohaan boasts about the fact that nobody here would dare to hurt her;
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Zohaan himself grew up in Bahrain, returned here after study in India – he likes it here, occasionally he plans trips with Gulf Air;
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There are no specific landmarks in Bahrain, but they have a hearty Old Town and tasty Indian cuisine;
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Bahrain is an Arabian Las Vegas; it’s the only place along the Persian Gulf where alcohol is widely available, marijuana is more or less available, and striptease clubs and brothels are flourishing.
[Zohaan]: There is a fifty km long bridge between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A hoard of “religious” Saudis come here at weekends: to get hammered, high and have a fuck. That’s how it goes, brother – market economics.
The book is not about my emigration experience, but it’s impossible to omit it in the context of CouchSurfing.
Thanks to “couch” I met Americans and anchored my English on practice, saw a piece of Europe and a piece of Asia, building up my mind wide open. Thanks to couch I saw how interesting it is to live in a big city, in the epicenter of hustle, in multiculturalism.
I think, moving to Berlin in this context seems like an obvious decision.
Let’s assume that:
●
it’s difficult to find an apartment in Berlin;
●
I want to live in a shared apartment to compensate the lack of student life.
All of a sudden, I came up with the idea to find a room for permanent housing on the couch. I enter all possible Berlin groups with my “cover letter”:
“Hello, friends! Another 20-smth expat from Russian province, go to Berlin for work in tech. Look for a room in the city. Budget – 450 EUR/month for a furnished room. Period of residence – flexible. Actually, I’m planning to stay in Berlin for a long time. I also have a personal blog, pop by if interested: https:// myopsblog.wordpress.com/”.
The single answer I got was from Frenchman, Lui.
“Hello, you look like an interesting and good guy, I can offer you to stay for several days at my home, we can check how it’s working, and I think I can offer you to rent one bedroom for the price you want, for a month.
I’ll have a couple of more guests on Easter, but it’ll be quiet after that. My apartment is ten minutes on foot to north-west from Alexanderplatz, on Rosa-Luxembourg Platz.
Cheers, Lui”.
Lui is forty – he spent ten years in Berlin, a Frenchman, works in a health-tech startup as a marketing director. He likes working, sometimes travelling, often – hanging out. I meet him during my first day in Berlin. He is a lone homosexual, but it doesn’t bother me at all.
Lui is speaking to me and staring at his laptop at the same time. On the laptop’s screen I see a web-site slightly resembling a child pornography portal. In the bottom right of the screen – a chat window with a boy, photos of his skinny body. Having noticed my look, he apologizes and closes the tab only to open it again in five minutes.
Most of my “probation period” Lui stays in Ireland visiting his friend. The apartment is big and cozy, the kitchen is excellent, a lot of food in the fridge, five minutes on foot to the office. Most of the time I feel depressed from a radical location change and suffer from sharp earache. I’m waiting for my insurance card to get an appointment to the ENT specialist. No time and space for building up the relationships with Lui.
Having returned, Lui tells me he doesn’t want to live with me. He does his best at lying, saying something about his landlord not allowing room sharing or something like this. We agree that I stay for another month while looking for an apartment.
Anyway, I moved out in three days when I signed a contract for a room in Wedding.
In Berlin fate brought me to couchsurfers who would play my neighbors in a shared flat.
Hanna and Steven moved in as a couple. They are both twenty-five, both study for physiotherapist in Potsdam, in parallel practicing massage therapy as a mini-job. They live like hippies: riding a bicycle around the city, picking up leftovers from cafés and restaurants through Foodsharing.de, organizing flat parties, making new friends from the air. Even their remarks are funny. Hanna’s complaining that I don’t close the toilet lid, and I don’t really get it: I don’t piss on the seat. Eventually, Hannah would write a reminder to close the lid and stick it on a bathroom wall.
One morning I was sitting in the huge living room and practicing coding in Golang before leaving to work. I hear a piercing noise – that’s Hanna and Steven fucking. Considering the fact they’re both beautiful, sporty and positive, my imagination draws me a picture of a sex between Tarzan and an Amazon. I catch myself on a thought that I’m doing something wrong if they are where they are, and I’m here alone with my laptop.
We understand each other in terms of hosting surfers. Warning is the main thing since people might have their own plans. In a month two more people would move in our apartment – a student girl from Magdeburg and a practitioner from the Czech Republic. The guys are pretty introverted which is kinda spoiling our hippy vibe, but we’re totally on the same page in terms of hosting couchsurfers.
Anyway, I would move to another apartment in three months. All members of our group in the shared flat on Reinickendorfer Straße would part their ways till the end of the year. Occasionally, when I pass by the building, I look at “our” windows and take some time guessing who might be living there now.
Anya and Julia are from Kirov, they moved to Riga for studying half a year ago. Right now they’re undergoing a small eurotrip: Berlin – Amsterdam – Brussels. We meet on Potsdamer Platz: I want to show the girls my new city, even though I haven’t completely learned it yet. We tread tourist-beaten paths: Brandenburger Tor, Berliner Dom, Alexanderplatz.
On the way we pick up Radler from Späti, the evening gets a bit funnier. On the one side, it’s difficult not to feel their shyness, on the other – they have no secrets. It’s their first time on the couch, they’re still trying to understand how it works and why. They are wondering how I ended up in Berlin, why Germany, which visa I’ve got and why I even bothered with emigration. I’m also interested in their fate: why Riga, why it’s so bad to live in Russia, why second degree and how you can settle down in Latvia after it.
At home, we have a free room with two beds. Steven and Hanna don’t mind the girls staying overnight there, just keep the landlord unaware of our whims. The whole group of five people are present at breakfast, the neighbors get across with my surfers easily. On the second day the girls have a stroll around Berlin on their own while I’m working. The only problem they had was the road home from S-Bahn Wedding. I had to hastily leave home at 9 p.m. to pick them up at the station where they were freezing on a cold evening in May.
Then they would have a weird host in Amsterdam. So, damn, cringe, that the comparison makes me Jesus and Mary all in one.
Janos and Nastya, he is Hungarian, she is Belarusian. They are from Budapest, came to Berlin for their friends’ wedding. They need to stay overnight before the celebration – fun fact they ended up staying in my neighborhood called Wedding before celebrating the actual “wedding”. Janos works in NGO, Nastya – at school as a German language teacher. They love German language and generally use it to speak with each other.
The language in this story – an interesting thing as well as awkward one. It’s my second month in Berlin, I’ve just started learning German, so it was kind of weird for me to host guest performers who have better German than I do. Perhaps it’s all the fault of my inferiority complex and the feeling that I must be better than everyone else to respect myself.
I speak with them in English. When Janos is away, Nastya and I switch to Russian. I ask her questions about difference between German dialects. For the rest I emanate questions about an expat life in Budapest.
I gave them still vacant room. From the look of it our landlord got problems with finding good neighbors, as the room stays vacant for the second month. We have breakfast with Hanna. Feeling rising tension at the table, I try to say something in German – ended up making fun of myself. They laugh – because it’s actually funny – but I feel insulted. After breakfast Nastya and Janos depart to their friends’ wedding.
I think they are actually cool guys, why am I even bitching about it?
By the time our next surfer arrived the room was no longer vacant, so we gave Arthur the couch in the living room. Arthur is Belgian from Antwerp, student, twenty-one years old out of the cradle. He’s enjoying travelling and hitchhiking; also, he has a girlfriend from Ukraine – they are in a middle of long-distance relationships. Also, Arthur likes skateboarding and being vegan.
Every day of his staying he comes home with a couple beer bottles in his hand. We drink it in our huge balcony, where you can hear trains’ noise and three horns signaling train departure. We chit-chat about different stuff: Berlin, Germany, Russia, travelling, fucked-up stories from homestays on couch.
– [Arthur]: Belgium is such a weird country. We didn’t have parliament for one and a half years and nothing was changing.
– [Me]: Lol what? Let’s google it.
– [From Wikipedia]: The 2010 Belgian political crisis. The country couldn’t form Parliament for eighteen months straight, during which nothing was happening in the country.
– [Me]: Lol, I want it like in Belgium.
I work in Babbel – a language learning app. At parting, I give him a promo code for a year of free study of Russian so that he could surprise his girlfriend.
Anyway, Arthur goes on hitchhiking in the direction of Dresden.
I host my next surfer in Berlin in the one-room apartment where I live alone. I was lucky to rent a one-room from a hearty lady from Peru with a one-page fourteen font sized contract. The apartment isn’t big, thirty-two square meters, but there’s enough space on the floor for a mattress. The mattress was bought out from a neighbor in my last WG – a fucking devil named Chad.
Sofia was born to a German family in Kazakhstan. She moved to Germany with her family when she was three – I believe, to Oldenburg. Currently, she’s studying in Heidelberg, she came to Berlin for a one-week internship. They paid for accommodation, but she needs a homestay for one day before the internship starts. That’s how she found the couch.
She looks worried with the new conditions: mattress on the floor, size of the apartment. When she gets used to it, we manage to compile an interesting conversation that goes on to the late night. In the morning I offer her to have a coffee with me, but she’s hurrying to the internship.
I think Sofia was the first surfer who didn’t leave a reference in my profile. That sucks.
Kirill is from Lugansk: he was living his life, educated by mother alone, was raising his younger brother, studied in college. In 2014, they had to leave their home. The government promised housing in Kiev, but they got scammed in the end. His family lives in Bila Tserkva in Kyiv Oblast. He has a construction job in Kiev: salary in envelopes, no vacations or sick leaves. He visits his family at weekends.
[Kirill]: “They never speak about the war in Kiev. I see how people hurry to their jobs, take sub, go out to cafés and restaurants, as if there’s no war at all, as if it’s not their business”.
He has an itchy foot for travelling. He doesn’t speak English, so he looks for Russian-speaking hosts. He finds them everywhere: Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, now it’s Berlin, next on the line is Bremen. In case he needs to say something, Kirill uses a translator. He bought a sim card in Poland to get the mobile Internet.
I have no idea how you would speak about war with a witness of war, those who suffered from war. I’m trying not to rock the boat of geopolitical interests, trying to dig in the direction of personal loss grief. What does Kirill feel? How does he see the world now? What is fair for him, what’s not? He doesn’t dig that deep: it’s clear he’s a sturdy guy and not an existential fanatic. I only mustn’t tell him about a sweet life in IT, it would look weird.
In the morning I go with him in the direction of the bus station. Kirill gives me a sticker of Lugansk’s football team “Zorya”. I’m crazy in love with football. And stickers too. When parting – a stern look and a firm handshake.
[Kirill]: “Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Kiev – write me”.
Ljuba came to Berlin from Brussels for the weekend. She got to Brussels via Erasmus student exchange Program to study there for a year. Being born in Moscow, she studies at HSE University. An idol of my post-school times is right in front of me: win on the All-Russian Math Olympiad, free tuition at the best University of the country. But she is not really that happy.
[Ljuba]: Well, it was great in the first year, but I’m in my third academic year now, and I don’t really find it interesting, I’m not sure if I want to go further in this direction”.
Ljuba and I meet in the evening at The Brandenburg Gate. She’s hungry, the food nearby is always expensive and not tasty. We take a ride to Kreuzberg to the nearest diner Sahara Imbiss. It takes us half an hour in road and nerves from hunger pangs to get there. A tasty falafel with peanut sauce compensates the recourses spent on the thorny way. Next thing we go ahead to Neukölln and hit the ground in a bar. With a couple beers we get to know each other better. Ljuba is wondering how I have ended up in Berlin and what’s in it for me. I am wondering how Belgium integrates into her Muscovite mindset.
[Ljuba]: “The University is cool, I like Europe, but I still wish to live in Moscow. So many cool signs and memories of the city: here’s “Pyaterochka24”, we used to hang out nearby, there – “Mutabor25”. My boyfriend lives in Moscow, my friends too”.
It’s her first time in the couch, but we have no routine problems. The floor mattress of the one-room apartment is much more comfortable than a seat in a night bus Brussels–Berlin. At the weekend I try out my new tour program around Berlin on Ljuba: Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg. Here’s a bridge, commuter trains go below it, here’s Späti, where people go to buy some booze, here’s Mauerpark – our place of power. It’s cold and dark in Berlin in November. Mauerpark is empty, bars are just bars.
I think Ljuba didn’t like Berlin. I was so upset as if I felt responsibility to make a person fall in love with my new home.
It all started with a quite odd message:
“Hello, Misha… My boyfriend and I arrive to Berlin on the 9th December and plan to stay for several days… It’s our first time in Berlin, so we would like you to show us interesting places, like museums, some historical landmarks and so on, sort of recommendations, and if you like it, some mutual excursions around Berlin… I noticed that you work in IT sphere, which interests me, considering the fact I’m finishing faculty of computer science and would like to talk to you about that, since I’m not aware of how programmers work in Europe, as much as I would want it… About my boyfriend – he’s all wrapped up in history, absolutely crazy about it, so you two might talk about Russian-Serbian relations in the past and present days:)) also, viva DUBIOZA KOLEKTIV:) Thank you anyway:)”.
It all looks pretty straightforward: the guys come to Berlin for several days and want to meet me. They didn’t send a request, only the message, what means they don’t need a homestay. Three days before that “9th December” Sasha sends me a message in WhatsApp:
– [Sasha]: Hello, Misha, it’s me – Alexandra from Couchsurfing, my boyfriend and I get to Berlin on Sunday… I text you to confirm once again our arrival and the same general information about it… We are going to land at the Schönefeld Airport at about 5 p.m.. So, in which part of Berlin do you live and how we can get to your apartment?
– [Me]: Excuse me, did we actually agree for a “homestay”? I thought you just want to meet and hang out.
– [Sasha]: I thought we were talking about a homestay, I’ve only recently signed up on the couch and don’t understand how it works.
We agree to manage this awkward situation in the following way: Sasha and her boyfriend look for a place to stay, if they find nothing – they could come by. I add that my apartment is too small for two people, looks like Sasha understands it.
The day before arrival Sasha texts me that the search failed. I switch on Mother Teresa mode and say they could stay here, in my small one-room apartment, in my turbulent times when I myself haven’t really adjusted to life in Berlin, when I have to work, study the language and make friends all at once.
I meet Sasha and her boyfriend Dragan near Schöneberg S-Bahn station. I take them to Sahara Imbiss for falafels. They like falafels so much they even paid for mine. The guys have a rusty Balkan accent, they act like stereotypical characters from Kusturica’s comedy movie. Dragan is two meters high, funny, simple, wears glasses, smokes a lot, has a husky voice. Sasha is Serbian born in Bosnia, she studies for an engineer in Serbia, bob cut, black turtleneck, blue jeans. They live in Novi Sad, Ryanair discounts made a significant contribution to their arrival to Berlin.
They are hearty guys, but there’s nothing to talk about. No hobby, simple life, the questions to me are also simple. How did you learn German? How did you get a job? How is it to live in Germany? I’m trying to find a common ground in football and turn on Copa Libertadores Finals between “Boca Juniors” and “River Plate” on the laptop, but the mission to rescue the situation fails. I stick to my Mother Teresa line by allowing them to sleep on my bed.
The next morning anxiety and feeling of psychological discomfort came over me. The three of us have to share shower time, space, sleeping area at the ratio of the mattress for me, the bed for them. The guys don’t even evoke the slightest interest in me, in full panic mode I feel like they use me for a budget trip, the whole chat history seems like a fucked-up Balkan scam. I feel even more hatred towards myself. Why did I even get into this mess? Why would I allow pushing me through in a situation where I did nothing wrong?
Instead of an open-hearted confession about my discomfort and the wish to throw them out of my apartment, I come up with a silly story at work.
Sasha, I'm sorry, but you and Dragan have to leave today. My cousin from Hanover suddenly called me this morning and said he will come by. Usually I host him in my apartment, I'll have to do it again. I booked you a hostel not far from the city center till the day of your departure. I hope you understand, sorry once again.
This is like the story I tell Sasha when I call her after lunch. It was tough to reach her, she has a Serbian sim card without roaming, never mind the “hostel not far for city center” – Schöneweide – is thirty minutes away by a commuter train. They wanted it cheap, didn’t they?
In the evening we meet in my apartment: the guys are packing their stuff, I’m repeating the same story word by word, bringing another thousand of apologies. Sasha asks me weird questions about the hostel, as if I work there. Dragan is chill, he gives me a friendly pat on the shoulder and asks for a couple wraps and filters for a joint.
I think, wraps and filters – no problem, homestay – no way.
Christmas holidays reveal the worst side of Berlin to expats and guest actors. People leave to their families, stores don’t work, cafés are closed, the sky is grey, light day is short. These days I’m seeking relief in a hosting of yet another surfer.
Marcos came from Rio, he was born and raised there, now he studies for doctor. Jokes about criminal Rio are no-goers – his father was shot there. He has never traveled his entire life – except for San-Paulo – but his English is amazing, thanks to series on Netflix. A one-month internship in Gdańsk brought him to Europe. Cheap flight tickets from Alitalia with transit in Rome brought him to Berlin.
In material terms I help Marcos as much I can: give him my second sim card to provide him with the mobile Internet, explain where to go and why. In emotional terms creation of a friendly vibe doesn’t really work out. During these holidays I find myself ill, my soul groans, I don’t want to talk to anybody, I don’t want to go anywhere. Marcos is upset, he’s a sociable, talkative guy – he needs vibe, not a sim card.
On the third day of hosting I get pissed off. It was the second time he left a skidmark on the toilet, which I have to clean up. I’m pushing him in a stern manner, curses, awkwardly put into every sentence, a feeling of frustration – not just because of him, but of the life itself. He’s crying, lying on the mattress and wrapped in a blanket. Seems like I offended him.
Next day Marcos takes a foothold and brings me to a heart-to-heart conversation:
– [Marcos]: I want to pack my clothes and leave.
– [Me]: What’s the problem?
– [Marcos]: You’re always being rude, first with the toilet, then you don’t want to go out to the bar.
– [Me]: What’s so difficult in cleaning a skidmark?
– [Marcos]: You know, in Brazil toilets work different, we don’t have such problem. I didn’t know what to do, it was the first time I saw it.
– [Me]: Oh… sorry, brother, I didn’t mean to offend you.
– [Marcos]: It’s all right.
– [Me]: But how was I rude about going out? If I don’t want to go somewhere, I simply say that I don’t want to go.
– [Marcos]: We don’t do it like this in Brazil. If you don’t want to go – you say “I’ll think about it”. It’s rude and bad manners to say a straightforward “no”.
– [Me]: Gotcha! Would you like to dine together in Sahara?
– [Marcos]: I’ll think about it…
Marcos shares his first hurtful impression of Europe: people here are dull, unfriendly, he almost got scammed on East Side Gallery – he was lucky to have a smart dude nearby who helped him get out. I get his story and feel sincerely sorry for him. Mostly we talk in evenings, when Marcos finishes with observing Berlin and I finish working day.
I think, we meet New Year in the same city, but in different companies: I hang out with Columbian friends, Marcos celebrates with other surfers. The same travelers who arrived to the right place at the wrong time.
Agustin arrives in the middle of my first winter in Berlin.
Augustin is Chilean. He left his Motherland looking for his place in the world. Across December, he travels all around Europe before settling down in Stockholm with his boyfriend from Canada. He stays over for two nights.
– [Augustin]: I’ve just come from Bielefeld, it’s a decent city, why nobody travels there?
– [Me]: Because Bielefeld doesn’t exist26.
The second hour of our conversation leads us to the topic of homosexualism. Having made sure I’m not homophobic, Augustin goes piling up intimate stories from his life one after another: how he met his boyfriend, how he seduced surfers, how a seemingly straight homophobe might be willing to try it out, how it ended up in a three-some. They are nice stories, but why would you tell me them right now? Why all the gays I’ve been meant to come across start the conversation with intimate stories? I wish we spoke about something different – does it make me a homophobe?
In routine Augustin causes no problems: sleeps calmly on the mattress, hangs out at surfers’ get-togethers, returns home quietly enough not to wake me up. He always invites me for get-togethers, but I find excuses: sickness, winter, lots of work. I don’t want to waste my energy on people who I see the first and the only time.
In the morning I say farewell to August, he goes on hitchhiking in the direction of Sweden to the boyfriend and a new life. In the reference he implies I should chill.
Thanks for everything!!! Anyway, don’t forget that life is full of joy, and we are going to see so many things we’ve never seen before!!!
My first two years in Berlin I combine a foul expression of pain and altruism. I get ill a lot, often challenge myself at work and studying German, getting a driver license for an obscure reason. In such turbulent times it’s necessary to find time for a break. Instead, I cram my time vacuum with hosting and constant complaints about my suffering and hardship to surfers.
In April Tanya gets to be yet another person to get under the rink of my sadness. She was raised in Chelyabinsk, she moved to Moscow for studying and eventually stayed there to work as a barista in the coffee shop. She lives in a shared flat on the North of Moscow, loves coffee, digs into beer and wonders about the life in Europe from insiders.
[Tanya]: “I like couch, I’m interested how Russians live in Europe. This way I was hosted in Munich, Riga. Most of the migrants are from IT. When you live with people, it’s easier to understand what’s better and what’s worse here”.
In the evening she always brings a couple of beer bottles as a token of gratitude. These days I prefer soft drinks as once again I’m on antibiotics. Our last evening, we meet at my office and stroll down Prenzlauer Berg, settling in Prater beer garden. It’s already warm and sunny in Berlin, you can sit outside, drink bear and enjoy the big city vibe.
Berlin, du bist so wunderbar … kind of.
Antoha – a good surfer who became a good friend of mine.
[Antoha]: “Misha, good evening! My name is Anton, I am from Moscow. Outside from travelling I also like music (I even travel with my AKAI) and start my first steps in songwriting. For example, in the beginning of December I flew to Berlin with my girlfriend specially for a concert of Ben Howard!
I enjoyed the fact you work in a startup and have already lived in two countries at 23 years old! I also have some plans and offers for a work abroad, that’s why I would eagerly adopt your experience and listen to stories about the most exciting moments)
In early May I head to the city again as a member of student delegation in politology to discuss Russian-German international relations. I will be on my own in Berlin for a couple of days after the 8th of May, so I’m looking for a host to have a great time. I will be glad if you agree to host me)
Have a good day no matter the answer!”
On Thursday evening I meet Antoha at the Innsbrucker Platz station near my home. My colleagues and I have just got served for good 0-8 in the very first game of the corporate football season. We start our conversation with the match and find a common ground in football. Our next common ground would be the fact we are both fans of “Lokomotiv”.
Actually, Antoha has a talent for surprising me:
– [Antoha]: Do you need any help? To wash the floor, or vacuum, for example?
– [Me]: Nah, I’m good.
– [Antoha]: Just keep in mind, if you ever stay overnight at my place in Moscow, I’m gonna drive you fuuuucking nuts!
– [Me]: Ehm… okay.
I leave to work, Antoha goes to Potsdam for a good look and discovery of Russian village Alexandrovka. At the weekend we take a walk around Berlin together: I’m trying to show Berlin at its finest, Antoha shows me “urbanistic freestyle”.
[Antoha]: “Freestyle – it’s when you’re walking around the city without any route, you just take a random bus, get out on a random bus stop, turn to a random street. That’s when you see the city differently”.
Antoha graduated from the philosophy department in the University, he has his own rhythm of life, his own beats in Marshall headphones – generally it’s Boris Grebenshchikov27 and his podcast “Aerostat”. Conversation might take a turn from Russian football to provincial life and attempts to convince a native Muscovite in the hopelessness of it. After a finished bottle of wine on Modersohnbrücke we go on to investigate the noise from the house on this quiet street. We go up Dachgeschoss, knock the door, but nobody opens – there's a party. Perhaps, private. Judging from the sounds – a gay one.
Antoha leaves on Monday evening, having ridden my creaky bicycle before departure. Anyway, I would become BFFs with Antoha and his girlfriend Julia.
[Galya]: “Hello! I’m from Ukraine, now I’m going back home. I’ve already hitchhiked 6600 km, which leaves 500 km to home. I have tasty ascorbic acid and buckwheat. I would love to listen to stories about your trips”.
Galya is nineteen, born in Lviv, dedicates her life to dancing, thinks about future development and possible goals. Sometimes she trains on camera and posts the coolest moves on Instagram stories. In her early age she has already managed to hitchhike half of Europe and even travelled to Israel on a repatriation program.
I meet Galya at the entrance of my office. She carries a huge hiking backpack, and it makes the navigation through the city difficult. I take her backpack to our office till evening, so she could walk around Berlin. In the evening I’m waiting for Galya with her backpack at the entrance, my colleagues are passing by one after another.
– [Colleagues]: Wow, where are you travelling?
– [Me]: The backpack is not mine, I borrowed it from a friend.
We take a sub home with a transit on Nollendorfplatz. In conversation, she’s cracking at my background in Penza, using her elite registration in Lviv, and telling me about her adventures on the road. Galya loves her family: her parents, brother, sister. In our conversation I feel the incredible level of understanding between the kids and parents.
We go out the subway and find ourselves under hard summer rain. On the way home we rush to a Vietnamese stall for wine and chips. We arrive home and wash down our meeting with wine. As far as tradition goes, I give her the mattress. Sleeping time. Galya asks me to share the bed – I give her a fair half. In a minute she kisses me in the lips. Got it.
I’m not a saint, you know, but I’ve never thought about sex in CouchSurfing. Single girls have never hosted me, and I’ve never felt the vibe with girl-surfers. It’s difficult to make a step forward because it’s tough to feel the border between what’s allowed and what’s not. Is it allowed to say “I like you”? But Galya is not me – she is a girl, a brave one, and self-confident too. Usually, it’s up to guys to make the first move, but this time it was Galya, in such a way that it was too dumb to back off.
We fuck every day of her stay. The first time was not so great: my shyness and difference in preferences had their effect. The second time Galya even falls asleep in the end and that hits my male ego badly. Last day, though empirical cognition and conversations about sex, we achieve the necessary level of mutual understanding of enjoying each other. We even have orgasm simultaneously. Not aware of what to do in such situation I jump to my feet with fear and rush to shower. Galya looks at me like I’m a psycho: when it happens you should lie together, at least for five minutes.
At 5 a.m. on Monday Galya leaves to her hitchhiking journey back home through Poland.
Andrea was born and raised in Austrian province Carinthia in a family of Romanian immigrants. Having graduated from an Austrian analogue of technical college, Andrea is spending a month travelling around European cities to see a beautiful architecture and get lots of impressions. First Munich, then Berlin, next – Amsterdam, Paris and London. Classic.
She stays over for two nights. The first attempt to make conversation turns out awkward: her German sounds odd and far from classic High German. Her south Bavarian dialect sounds like a speech impediment. Without the mobile Internet she gets lost in the city. Being neurotic, I’m feeling worried about her, but early at night I let it go and hope she’ll find her way on her own. She did.
On the second day we walk around Berlin. We meet at the Rosa-Luxembourg Platz station at 5 p.m. after my work day.
– [Me]: Let’s switch to English, yeah?
– [Andrea]: That’s just what I thought!
It makes our meeting much easier. I show her the sound-person-Berlin: Volkspark Friedrichshain, tram to Warschauer Str., Modersohnbrücke with a bottle of wine, a party patch of land near Ostkreuz. Andrea is stoked. In parallel, I’m listening to her story: what she wants to do, where she wants to live. The answers are vague, but when you’re twenty-one and live in the first-world country – it’s all how it should be.
Upon our arrival home in the evening Andrea suggests watching a horror about a group of young Anglo-Saxons getting stranded on a pierced boat in the middle of the ocean. I offer her to watch the movie on my bed, since there’s no other place in my one-room apartment.
– [Andrea]: We only watch the movie and that’s it, right?
– [Me]: Well, yeah, what do you mean?
– [Andrea]: Yesterday I was hanging out on a surfer’s meeting, there was this weird guy: he was hugging me, tried to kiss me.
– [Me]: What a creep
Next morning Andrea leaves to Amsterdam. I think she is a cool girl, although her dialect is odd.
Tim is my first German surfer. He is from Baden-Württemberg, studies in Göttingen as a physician. He came to Berlin for a student summit. From Berlin, he plans to go to Frankfurt to visit his grandmother and take a flight to Morocco for a backpacking trip. He is twenty-three, just like me. He sends me good respect when he learns that I work in AMBOSS – an educational platform for students in medicine. As for me, I’m pretty tired of working in AMBOSS, I’m looking for a new job.
He spends work days on the summit, I spend them at work, we talk in the evening. On Friday we arrange our own Freitagabend in the neighborhood. Speaking about cool places on Schöneberg, I know only bar called “Neue Ufer”, where David Bowie used to hang out. In the bar we load each other with questions:
– [Me]: Why would Germans vote for AFD, what are they afraid of?
– [Tim]: How is it going with politics in Russia, not that great, I guess?
– [Me]: Why haven’t they already legalized weed in Germany?
– [Tim]: What about handball, do you like? Is it popular in Russia?
– [Me]: Do you like studying as a medic? Have you already decided what you would like to do when you graduate?
– [Tim]: How do you like it here in Berlin? I like Berlin, a big interesting city, although tidbit dirty.
On Saturday morning I go with Tim to Innsbrucker Platz, he takes the ring line to the bus station. I think we had a good time filled by interesting conversations.
Min came from Korea. Having finished studying for designer in Seoul, she’s travelling around the globe to find her place in the world. She doesn’t want to live in Korea, the society is too conservative. She’s taking measure of Europe, but generally, she has already made up her mind to move to Canada. She wants to stay over two nights, then asks me for two nights more to replan the route and rest a bit.
She goes shopping on Alexanderplatz, I’m recovering from Friday’s hangover before going on the second birthday party. I invite her as well, but she’s got busy. Generally, we see each other in the morning and evening: in daytime she is strolling around Berlin, while I’m working.
In the end of her stay, she made a real mess in my apartments, her stuff blocked the door to the kitchen. I’m getting pissed off, I tell her off how I did it once with Marcos. It might sound weird, after several months I realize it wasn’t worth such reaction. I should take problems easier.
I return home in the evening, she has already left. On the coffee table I see a postcard with a pair of yellow socks.
[Postcard]: “Misha, forgive me, please, for the mess in your apartment, honestly, I didn’t mean it. I hope you won’t be angry at me. I’m grateful for giving me houseroom for several days, you are a good person. As a thank-you I leave you yellow socks, bought a couple of days ago. I wish you luck in all your endeavors. Hugs, Min”.
I think, Min is a warm-hearted girl – even though we didn’t understand each other.
Arina is twenty-two, she studies in Ufa for English teacher. In parallel with studying, she works as an English tutor. She studied in China on exchange program for a whole year, she even managed to learn Chinese. It’s her first time in Europe: after Berlin she comes by her friend in Halle, then to Paris, then back to Berlin with two “Pobeda” flights home.
Arina asks me for a homestay for a good month in advance. We add each other on Instagram and chat there almost every day. Whether it was affinity or mutual sympathy, I’ve got the feeling of spark.
By the twist of fate, Arina arrives to Berlin on my birthday. I meet her in the evening at Hauptbahnhof, we take a train home. On the train, we talk as if we’ve known each other for ages. We come home and have dinner. Arina gifts me a postcard with a handmade sketch. In the sketch Arina hugs me: she has a scarf and freckles, I have a perfectly coiffed hair. To thank her for the postcard I kiss her in the lips. Friendly sentiment gives place to romantic mood. Kisses, hugs, the game “undress an Eskimo”, sex, 3 a.m., talks about love, complements to the facial features, body parts.
On Thursday evening I meet Arina on my way from work on Warschauer Straße. On the way home Arina offers me to meet in Georgia next summer. Maybe, she fell in love with me. Maybe, it’s just a short-time crush. It’s hard to understand, much easier to blow off. We come home, dine with wine and Pringles. I want to fuck, the only condom tears. Stores are closed, drugstores too. The all-night is half an hour away through overnight frosts by bicycle through the darkness of my neighborhood. It got to be too difficult, especially when there is no love, but it’s done.
On Friday Arina would fly to Paris, she would meet her true love on couch – Pier – a lanky French guy in glasses. Their love would go through water, fire and brass pipes: thousands of kilometers between Paris and Ufa, two years of pandemic, closed borders, cultural differences. In two years Arina would move to Berlin on a master program to see Pier more often. Anyway, that’s a whole different story.
The name of my host in Dresden is Nicolas: he is twenty-eight, born and raised in Dresden, works remotely as a tester in a Berlin startup. He lived there for a year, but he doesn’t really like big cities. He lives in a three-room apartment in a five-storied “Plattenbau”28 with an empty bedroom – that’s where I sleep.
Nicolas is an introverted guy, not much eager for socializing, though he is polite. He likes my independence, that I’m not asking where to go and what to do. Also, he’s a fan of rules.
– [Me]: May I wash my clothes here?
– [Nicolas]: Generally, yes, but today is Sunday. I don’t turn on the washing machine on Sundays because it gets noisy for my neighbors.
On Sundays Nicolas completely unplugs himself, idles away, ignores all possible sources of stress. For this Sunday he makes an exception for me and goes with me for a walk to a palace garden. The Palace is right next to the river, a three-kilometer-long footpath stretches along it. We walk along and talk about languages of linguistics and languages of programming.
Anyway, after four years of living in Germany, I can assure you that Nicolas is a typical German with all corresponding habits, manners and rules. And I like that.
My new host Tomas hosts me in Leipzig. He is thirty-five, he makes his living by writing commercial texts and Fang Shui consultations. Though born in Bavaria, he likes Leipzig more. Most likely, it’s all down to his political views.
Hello, Misha, you’re always welcome, I’ll be here at weekends. What part of Russia are you from? Once, I tried to learn Russian, but only for a month… it turned out to be impossible for me, although I really love the language. You might be disappointed in German culture… actually, not much of our culture is left, it all was eradicated by commerce and imposed American influence… although you might like a couple places and people here…
At Saturday breakfast Tomas goes on bending his anti-American line, laying stress on how all humane gets devoured by capitalism. I try to turn our conversation to the topic of travelling. We take turns to tell where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. I remember best his story about Colombia: he said, the cities there are dirty and ill-kept, but the nature is astounding.
Tomas gives me the living room with a mattress. The mattress is good, I sleep sound.
I think, we didn’t spend as much time together as I wanted. I walk around Leipzig alone; in the evening I find myself on a SKA-party on the street of abandoned houses. Tomas spends his entire day with his girlfriend. Would’ve been great to ask him a little more. About the writing, for example.
Emmanuel hosts me in Hamburg. Forty years old, born in the south of France, moved to Hamburg twenty years ago, works as a geotechnical engineer. Emmanuel has just returned from a business trip in the north of Spain. He lives in a spacious one-room apartment twenty-minute S-Bahn ride from the center of Hamburg. I arrive late Friday evening.
– [Emmanuel]: How is it going?
– [Me]: I got fired from my job yesterday.
I have to find a new job or die trying if I want to stay in Berlin. Nobody works at weekends anyway, so why not go out somewhere, unwind.
On Saturday I take my routes to walk around Hamburg. In the evening I meet Emmanuel in a burger joint in St. Pauli district. There is another host-surfer couple: an Iranian born in Hamburg and a student from France. We discuss everything at once: Germany’s technological backwardness, French language, San Francisco’s oddities, frustration of working in tech.
The Iranian guy leaves the three of us. Emmanuel gives us a tour through St. Pauli and tells us how special the city is and how it tears itself from the ideas of the German conservative community. St. Pauli seems somehow shallow for me.
Having seen Guilhem to the subway station, we go back home.
– [Me]: Listen, you’re forty, but you look so energetic. How do you do that?
– [Emmanuel]: I do sports, read, learn languages, do not smoke, drink either wine or beer and never mix them up.
I think I’ve found an elixir of youth.
I found a new job, but I’ll start in a month from now. There are lots of places in Europe to visit.
The first stop – Poznań. There, a Pole named Jakub hosts me. Jakub is thirty-five, works as a project manager in IT-outsource, in parallel studying for the second degree in linguistics. He lives in a two-room new-build apartment with a view of the forest.
I meet Jakub in the evening on the main square of Poznań. There’s a church in the middle, there are tourists around it. Having walked around the city, we land on the embankment surrounded by crowds of students. On the way to the embankment, I load Jakub with tons of questions of anthropological matter: about Poznań, Poland, EU.
– [Me]: How do you like living in Poznań?
– [Jakub]: Difficult question, I’ve lived here my entire life and I don’t know how it might be different. When I was a kid, parents took me to Germany for a year, I studied in a German school, though I don’t remember much those times.
Another surfer joined us during the night. Philip is eighteen, student; he wrote me on couch only for a chat. We drink Tyskie, talk about travelling, food and life in Poland.
In the morning we have breakfast in the balcony. After my experience in Germany, I get surprised discovering Jakub has no coffee – he drinks only tea. It’s more alike to the Russian lifestyle, where people drink tea more than coffee. Drinking tea with sandwiches, lightened by the summer sun’s rays, I think I’m getting to realize that life is good.
[Wojciech]: “Привет! Если ты есе не нашол хоста, можешь приехать ко мне”29.
Wojciech hosts to get some practice of speaking Russian. He is twenty-seven, IT-specialist, works in a local firm as a sysadmin. His favorite hobby – tinkering with Linux, as it was with me in my twenties. Lives in a two-rooms apartment, where I get a couch in the living room.
Before meeting we have an abundant chat history on couch. He doesn’t use messengers as a matter of principle.
– [Me]: Hey, may I correct your Russian? I mean your mistakes? :)
– [Wojciech]: Да, конечно! Я жду списока30 :)
– [Me]: Application = приложения (prilozhenia). Nobody says “аппликация” (applicacia) in Russia, the word is used rarely. “Есе не нашол” = “еще не нашел” (yeshsho ne nashol)31. If you find letter “ё” [yo] difficult – you can just write “е” [ye], everyone would understand. “Сколко” (skolko) = “Сколько” (‘skoljko)32. Better not miss “ь” [j]. «Списока» (spisoka) = «списка» (spiska). Letter “о” in the words like “список” (‘spisok), “листок” (lis’tok), “щелчок” (sshchel’tchok)33 is omitted on transition to accusative case. So, it works for the words ending in “ok”.
– [Wojciech]: Спосибо. Тепер я помню, что никогда буквы «о» после «ш», правилно?34
– [Me]: Yes, generally. But there are exceptions. Usually, they are not Russian words. “Шов” (shov), “шомпол” (‘shompol). “капюшон” (kapju’shon), “корнишон” (korni’shon)35.
– [Me] … oh, by the way, «спосибо» (sposibo) = «спасибо» (spasibo).
Wojciech pours dark beer into tea cups to celebrate our meeting.
– [Me]: What do you need Russian for?
– [Wojciech]: I learned about Russian through Vysotsky36 – whereas I learned about Vysockiy through our local bard. I liked the poetry, how the language sounds, so I decided to learn it.
His speaking Russian is amazing. We slowly shift gears from linguistics to politics. Then I switch the subject to the direction of travelling – but Wojciech is no nomad. After a long road from Poznań and long strolls I crash on the couch.
Next morning Wojciech is wondering if I comprehend “Let’s Encrypt” certificates: he wants to sign a certificate for his mother, but it doesn’t work out. I am surprised why would she even need an SSL-certificate. He installed Linux on her computer two years ago, that’s all she needs.
After parting, Wojciech leaves me a massage to chat on the couch:
– [Wojciech]: Oh no, you forgot your toothbrush.
– [Me]: Ha-ha, forget about it, it’s like my tradition here in CouchSurfing.
Asia is twenty-eight, German-born, lived in Poland for the most part of her life – mainly in Warsaw. Works in an office, gets to working place by her own car. She doesn’t like Warsaw anymore, she’s on her way moving to Potsdam for her boyfriend. She used to be crazy about hitchhiking.
I arrive to Asia at around 8 p.m. reaching the outskirts of Warsaw by bus. She has a two-room apartment in the Neubau. She rents her bedroom on Airbnb while choosing a mattress in the empty living room. She gives surfers her second mattress in the living room, the mattress is sagged and broken.
We talk while sitting in darkness in the balcony. Asia makes an impression of a positive and lively girl. She is interested in my story with Berlin and whether I can speak German with her. The bedroom is occupied by a tourist from Australia: she seems friendly on face-to-face contact, but we prefer to avoid each other. Getting through the night on the broken mattress, departure at 7 a.m. as Asia has no spare keys.
In the morning I realize there’s no way I would return here, so I make a move to bail out.
– [Me]: Asia, thank you for the night, but my travelling plans have kind of changed, I have to leave this very day.
– [Asia]: Hm, well – good luck.
Asia left me my first negative reference on the couch. It sucks.
Adam has just flown from Korea and agreed to host me for a night after I escaped Asia.
Adam is thirty-five, lives in a two-room apartment in the center of Warsaw, works in LOT as a steward. He spends little time home as he’s always on business trips and somewhere else. The range of food his house can provide is limited to chocolate bars and coffee “3-in-1”, snitched from the aircraft catering.
[Adam]: “You know, being a steward is more than work – it’s a lifestyle. You’re always on the flight in different time zones and climates. On the one hand, it’s exhausting: takes time to get used to such life, not many people can really withstand such conditions. On the other, it’s fun: you always have a place to stay overnight at the company's expense, sometimes it’s possible to go out to see a city or lie on a beach. I love travelling, such lifestyle suits me. On vacation, my colleagues usually go to Egypt to idle away under the sun – such sloppy recreation is not for me, I need adventures”.
Adam openly states in his profile that he’s a nudist. It doesn’t bother me at all in the context of an emergent homestay – a good couch is all what I need. In about an hour of conversation Adam talks me into undressing.
[Adam]: “I promise, in ten minutes it will feel natural for you. There’s nothing abnormal in walking around the apartment naked. Nudism is no different from any lifestyle, take my stewardship for example. I appreciate freedom of body and liberation. I simply have nothing to hide”.
Okay, I’m in the game.
In ten-twenty minutes the brain actually receives the signal that it’s all right. Just in case, I clear up the context to set the record straight.
– [Me]: If we are undressed, does it mean we are going to have sex?
– [Adam]: My God, of course not! Basically, we have our own radar, I can tell it clearly if there’s something between me and a person, or not. Nudism itself has no strings attached – it’s the atmosphere of liberation and erasure of boundaries at best.
– [Me]: Sure, but I’m still going to sleep in my underwear. Pollution, you know that thing.
– [Adam]: No, I don’t
– [Me]: It’s when you haven’t had sex or masturbation for a long time, so the body goes through ejaculation procedure during sleeping. I don’t want to smear your bedsheets.
– [Adam]: Fair enough.
For morning breakfast I have a chocolate bar with a “3-in-1” coffee. On clothing the door, Adam hides his body behind it, so the neighbors don’t have a chance to him naked.
I think, Adam is a solid guy, I shouldn’t have worries at all.
My host is Kraków is Michal: twenty-seven, post graduate in a local university, in parallel teaches something connected to physics at the department. He has a nerdy appearance and cringy accent – he would make a great blogger on YouTube, preferably something about Slavic life. Reckless, funny, lively, easy-going and easily tricked.
I’m running behind the promised time.
– [Me]: Hey, I’ve missed my transit bus, I’ll be late for another fifteen minutes.
– [Michal]: Fifteen minutes of delay – fifteen push-ups! The clock is ticking.
– [Me]: Oh fuck!
We spend very little time together: he’s busy with work all day long. In the evening he rocks the conversation with cursed jokes, which immediately resonates with my soul.
I made my push-ups for every minute of being late.
Benedict lives in Wolkersdorf – a village thirty-minute away from the center of Vienna by train. He was born and raised in Wolkersdorf, he finds everything pleasant and familiar there. He lives alone in a three-room apartment, fifty years old, teaches at school of arts, knows Vienna like the back of his hand.
I meet Benedict at the tram station. Without even having arrived home, I manage to throw in a bunch of unpleasant words which would eventually tangle into a yarn of grudge:
●
thanks, but I don’t need your recommendations – I know where to go;
●
wow, fifty years old – that’s a lot;
●
Vienna looks so old, Berlin is better!
At the weekend Benedict is busy, I have my own self-excursion around Vienna. Usually, we talk in the evening. I try to earn his respect with my speaking German which I’ve learned to a certain degree during four months in Berlin. Impressive, but it would be much more comfortable for him if I stopped speaking like a jerk – the language doesn’t matter.
Tension escalates into a conflict, breaking out on Sunday evening. On the way home Benedict spits out all the barbs I’ve told him throughout the whole weekend. Speaking about me, my inflated sense of self-worth dwells together with low self-esteem. I sink into the earth and even deeper, admit my guilt, speak aloud a thousand apologies.
[Benedict]: “I invite you for Brüderschaft37”.
In his village they prefer wine to beer. We are sipping semi sweet wine of a local production in the wine garden. Benedict knows from experience that you can sort out any kind of tension over a glass of wine. Having switched jerk mode off, I begin to listen to Benedict and get imbued by his feelings and emotions, admiring his breadth of knowledge and experience. Benedict realizes that and expresses sincere gratitude to me. Having arrived home, we hug each other tight and resolve the conflict.
In the morning, a terrible hangover overcomes me. Benedict’s reference somehow makes it smoother.
Great guy! First, I thought that Misha is a bit shallow guy who knows everything and wants to explain the whole scheme of things, but it turned out he was a good listener, an open person and generally has a great (Russian) soul! Someone who can become your friend not only on CouchSurfing … Besides that, he’s excellently prepared for the places he’s going to visit, abides domestic rules and treats well everything he’s offered (except the apartment key, he didn’t want to take it).
Another moment I wish to notice is that after four months of living in Germany he speaks good German! He told me it was a tough work, and let me tell you – just, wow, amazing! I appreciate his staying and recommend him to any host.
Misha, if you need a comfort zone or simply several days of rest from duties, come back! You know, I’ll be glad to see you any time.
It’s kind of strange when even your CouchSurfing host feels you have no comfort zone now.
From Vienna to Salzburg, from Benedict to Vuk.
Vuk is from Serbia, he lived his life there until he got forty-five. Now he’s fifty, which means he moved to Austria five years ago. He’s about two meters high, sporty, with dark skin, bouffant mustache under the nose. Vuk is a retired military, had a cozy village house in Serbia back in the days, but still felt uneasy with Balkan sloppiness, violation of personal boundaries. He went to Austria once and accidentally found his home there. In his fifth decade of life – when nine out of ten people prefer to live their lives without risking – Vuk migrated to Salzburg to start anew.
He learned German to C1 in two years. Now he works in a laboratory and leaves to work at 5 a.m.. In his spare time, he sings in a local choir feeling proud of being the only non-native singer there.
Vuk meets me on a bus stop on his way home. He lives in a horribly tiny apartment about ten-twelve square meters. There’s a mattress for surfers which occupies every inch of an open floor space. He’s obviously an idealistic person.
[Vuk]: “A month ago I hosted the guy who couldn’t even remember the name of the city! He would constantly ask me “Where am I? What’s the name of the city”? The guy is a full-in traveler, journey is his life, his flow! I was surprised”.
He is truly sincere and emotional in communication, his only secret being the war in Yugoslavia. Having left my stuff, I take Vuk’s second bike – we go for a ride around Salzburg. Not in the old town though, thanks to cobblestone and crowds of tourists in summer season. Having ridden along the embankment of the Danube, we get on the territory of an old palace. There are the mountains on the horizon, making a beautiful scenery.
Having sat on a bench, we go on with an open dialogue.
[Vuk]: “I feel so good here in Austria, my soul reveals itself. I like the language, the culture, locals, Salzburg city and the mountains. When I have a spare day, I just go to the mountains without a second thought. Sometimes with a tent”.
Only geopolitics somewhat telltale of his militaristic background.
[Vuk]: “If something happens in the world, Austria will get conquered in a day without raising a finger! As it was in 1938, so it is nowadays. You don’t really feel it because we live in peace – but we need such countries like Russia. Simply because rich small countries can’t defend themselves”.
It’s still early when we get back home – tomorrow Vuk goes to work at 5 a.m.. He dearly allows me to take anything from the kitchen and leave whenever I want.
Just put the key in the mailbox, that’s all.
Luca is forty-five, he’s been living in Zürich for most of his life. Speaks five languages: German, English, French, Italian, and Swiss German. He likes the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland the most: he lived in Locarno for ten years, then moved back to Zürich due to lack of job opportunities. Now he’s a real estate agent, lives not far away from the city center in a two-room apartment and sticks to a nudist lifestyle.
[Luca]: “If you don’t want to undress – go to hostel”.
Not the first time I’m being fucking shocked, never mind the budget nature of my trip – a night in Switzerland can hit your wallet really hard. Very well, I get undressed. The only weird part of this story was the first evening. There’s a TV flickering in the background of our get-to-know conversation: after a news block they broadcast the weather forecast in cantons. In parallel to watching the broadcast, Luca is speaking to me and rubbing his penis. That looks wild, but not outrageous enough to make me panic, scream and run away.
– [Me]: Do you make sex with surfers?
– [Luca]: Yeah, sometimes.
– [Me]: How do you know when a person wants it?
– [Luca]: It’s impossible to explain, it’s chemistry, you feel it instinctively.
I stay at Luca for four nights. I arrived on Thursday, on Friday I go to bed early: fatigue from an intensive three-day travelling catches up to me. Luca spends Friday evening with colleagues in the bar. We appoint a meeting on Saturday with a precise time and place – with Swiss precision, so to say. Luca treats me with a coffee, I treat him with Mövenpick ice-cream. Basically, Switzerland interests me as a standalone patch of a united Europe. I ask him about the army, cantons, languages and rules. There’s a precise answer for my every question, so I have nothing left to say. Only on the way to the station Luca throws in a somber note:
[Luca]: “The whole Switzerland and its wealth are based on banks and their capitals. If these banks are done – Switzerland is done too”.
On Sunday morning Luca leaves me a cup of coffee and a croissant. I see a chocolate on the table and ask whether I can take it. “You’re not in a restaurant!” – he says. So, you’re open-minded about being naked, but you put a borderline when it’s all down to sharing some food. Where’s this borderline? It doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, despite a couple cringe moments, I express my sincere gratitude for the homestay. He thanks be back with a gratitude for my self-sufficiency and the absence of silly questions.
I fly to Hurghada by cheap tickets from Easy Jet. Instead of an all-inclusive hotel with other “Russo turisto” I find myself on a couch with local Ali.
Ali is my coeval – he is twenty-two, tall, curly hair, sporty. Having blown off studying at university, he attempts to launch his business, offering tourist individual diving sessions under the waters of the Red Sea.
Ali meets me in the airport. We take an Uber to the apartment, share the bill, Ali rents a two-room with a view of the graveyard. The house is surrounded by dust and scattered construction materials. There are no tourists in this block, no buffets and pools with jacuzzi.
I spend four nights at Ali’s place. No landmarks around, the embankment is closed by hotels, three kilometers of a roundabout way to the sea only to see a wasteland with fittings. Absence of a sloppy leisure helps focus on people: Ali has many friends here, and they have their own friends. Local Egyptians get on well with languages due to the touristic nature of this location and necessity to earn their bread and hummus. I spend more time with a diver Mustafa than with Ali – he’s all business and meetings. Also, I meet Jacob, who knows Russian, and Mohammed, who knows German. At the one table I speak to them in three languages simultaneously.
Apart from enjoying sun rays, I’m passing the time playing domino and drinking coffee with a hazelnut flavor. The second day I feel totally relaxed – maybe too much as I confuse tap water with a drinkable one and accidentally sipped it. Next day bacterial infection strikes: I feel sharp pain in the throat which would make its way to the ear in a couple of days.
Having made it to Cairo, I realize I have no strength left for it and hastily take a flight back to Berlin on the following morning. Minus €300 and two weeks of a healthy life. Ali gave me some useful medicament: he asked to send them to his girlfriend in Hamburg. Instead of “thank you” I get a concern from her that it should’ve been Hermes instead of Deutsche Post. I get upset – Ali would later confirm that the girl is quite an ungrateful person.
But it’s not his fault at all. Not that I got sick, not that the girl was the way she was. Mustafa is okay too. It’s not about Egypt at all. I think, it’s just life.
In the end of that very March, I dash off to the trip through my CouchSurfing friends. Things played out the way that I’ve got friends in Paris, Brussel and Antwerp during a year in Berlin.
In Paris, I come to Emmy. She is from the South of France, lives and studies in Orsay – suburb of Paris. She studies for ecologist and signs up on eco-related activities, being concerned about the future of our planet. I got to know Emmy last summer in Vienna through Hangouts – a chat where travelers gather in groups and hang out.
I meet Emmy at the activists’ party in a bar near the La Republic metro station. The guys are drunk and happy, inspired by the common idea of saving our planet. Emmy introduces me to her friends. A guy in a cap apologizes for his English. A guy without a cap with a good English gets cheeky:
[The capless guy]: “I was born in a Paris suburb, now I rent a room in the city to be closer to activities, the epicenter of energy. They say all Parisians are jerks, I agree to it and feel proud about it. I see no sense in travelling, it’s just a hedonism of a sort. So, I stay here, work, drink, brainstorm”.
Then I go on meeting the bar’s dwellers. It’s especially nice to meet girls and kiss each other on the cheek, the French way. After Berlin Paris feels esthetically immaculate.
The only con is the food. On the way to the train, I devour falafel with fried chips – comes out disgustingly expensive and horrible. In Orsay, Emmy lives in a student dormitory, but with a separate small space with toilet facilities and a work desk for each person. After a weary trip I crash dead on the mattress.
Having talked with Emmy more, I notice a funny feature of her English. “Boring” is the only adjective with negative connotation in her speech. French accent makes it sound nice and romantic.
Generally, Emmy is busy with preparation to academic practice and meetings in the activists’ club. I’m strolling around Paris alone, astounded by the scale of its beauty. We meet at the end of the day, when we’re both feeling exhausted.
Last evening, I bring a couple beer cans. While drinking, Emmy asks questions about sex, about my girlfriend, tells me about her friends-with-benefits. It would be too late when I realized I should’ve developed this topic till we would’ve come to the action part.
The same summer I meet Archie in Zürich. Being a pure Swiss, Archie now lives in Brussel and works as a network engineer in the European Parliament.
Paris was exhausting, I got ill on a trip once again. It’s rainy and grey in Brussel, you know how it goes. I’m dull, Archie is cheerful. He lives in a two-storied apartment in the center of Brussel – I get a whole floor for myself, there we watch Simpsons in the local TV with Flemish subtitles.
Next day we meet at his home at 5 p.m.. At dinner, he tells me about his trips: Istanbul, Kiev, excursion to Chernobyl. After the part about the trips, I ask around about the work in the European Parliament.
– [Archie]: [Shows job chat history in WhatsApp]
– [Me]: You don’t have a job messenger in the Parliament? Not Slack, not even Microsoft Teams? Are you serious?
– [Archie]: Absolutely! Actually, that’s quite irritating.
After dinner, we go for a drink to the square next to the Parliament building.
[Archie]: “The main party takes place here on Thursday evening, because on Friday people go to their homes for the weekend. Belgium's beer is strong, it’ll knock you down easily. You might see the head of the European Commission here, dancing on a table and waving around his tie, he-he!”.
The bar is sweaty, it’s tough to make it through the crowd to the counter. Archie introduces me to the cherry beer. A girl to the right winks at me: she’s cool, but I have no mood for any affairs. After an hour in the crowd, I asked Archie to come back home, I’m tired and exhausted. Archie doesn’t mind: on the way home, we untangle the topic about silly Brits and their Brexit.
I think if Boris needs to leave, then you folks have to let him do that.
I visit my Belgian friend Arthur in Antwerp. I know him much closer than Archie and Emmy. A couple of weeks ago, he returned home from a hitchhiking tour around France with Ramilya, his girlfriend from Ukraine.
He meets me at the Antwerpen Centraal carrying a bicycle in his hands. We walk around the city, go down a tunnel through the river, synchronize our accumulated experience. Arthur worked as a sales assistant in Decathlon for six months until now. His master thesis is about to over, the nearest future is obscure. He’s looking forward to a tour round the world with his girlfriend.
I meet Ramilya at Archie’s home. They live not in Antwerp itself, but it’s suburb Sint-Mariaburg. It takes an hour on train and around five minutes on bicycle to get to his house. They live on his parents’ plot of land in a small lodging, initially built as a storage. The guys sleep on the mattress in the mezzanine, I got the couch next to the kitchen set.
They are vegans, for lunch we have a soy milk oatmeal. Ramilya speaks with Arthur in French as she knows it better than English. I speak with Arthur in English, with Ramilya – in Russian.
Ramilya is a Tatar girl from Crimea, she went to university in Kiev in 2013, a year before Annexation happened to her home. She went to Grenoble on an exchange program where she fell in love with Arthur. While they’re planning the trip, Ramilya makes a living as a courier in Deliveroo: a tough job with low payment. I see it as well in our conversation: optimistic notes of the two loving doves go hand by hand with ordeals of living, getting money and choosing one’s path in life. When the university is over, nobody tells you what to do next.
In the evening we took bicycles for a ride to Arthur’s friend’s birthday party. Most of the people here are art students, quite a peculiar folk. They all speak English, but among each other use their native Flemish. The whole party-time I’m circulating from one place to another, asking people where they came from, where they study and what are their life plans. There are some who admire Berlin, who wish to visit the city but have no money for it.
I drink cheap wine and force myself to enjoy this beautiful evening in a new company in a new culture. Though noise in the ears and wandering fatigue, accumulated from a year of migration, really bother me. This is it, the dream: the Western civilization, teenage parties, hangouts in English and dances to “Mr, Brightside” song. But deep inside, I feel fucked up.
Returning home at 3 a.m., I manage to get some sleep before tomorrow’s trip back to Berlin. It takes three trains: Sint-Mariaburg–Antwerp–Amsterdam–Berlin. I ride to the station on a bike, Arthur rides a skateboard, holding on my bike. This way Arthur would be able to get back in one go – with the bicycle under his legs and the skateboard in his arm. Arthur is having the best time ever, so do I. We might get too late to catch the train, so we ride quickly and risky.
I think, after our parting, I realize where I’d actually been – I’ve been in studentship.
I have bad luck with hosts in Portugal. The only host I found was in Porto, but I couldn’t make it there – it was storming with tropical downpours those days.
– [Me]: Hey! Sorry, tomorrow evening I only arrive to Lisbon)
– [Marina]: Well, no problem, if you don’t get any plans on the first half of Sunday – write me!)
– [Me]: I lost my throat this weekend, a-hah. But if it comes back on Sunday and I will be able to speak, sure, I’ll send you a message.
– [Marina]: A-hah, see for yourself, you’ll get bored if you fly alone.
– [Me]: Otherwise I’ll get sick))
– [Marina]: Take a scarf and here you go)
Marina is right – it’s sucks to be alone. On Sunday we meet at Cais do Sodre and head to Cascais, Cabo da Roca and Sintra.
Marina is twenty-one, lives in Obninsk, a hundred kilometers from Moscow, in Kaluga Oblast. She has a remote study program in Moscow University as a teacher. Most of her time she works at home as a math tutor, prepares school students for exams. She tries to make enough money for travelling around Europe, loves Italy. In Lisbon, she’s staying at her Austrian friend’s place. He went on a stag party, she was left alone.
We immediately establish a connection. We’re spending the whole trip talking about the present and the all-time, about work and travelling, about Russia and non-Russia. Cabo da Roca, far away from Chinese touristic groups – a place of power, but each one’ve got their own power. Having made it to a deserted part of the cape, we take a sit on the grass and discourse upon sad things.
– [Marina]: Lies. They’re always lying: in newspapers, TV – it’s terrible.
I’m getting sick in Sintra. Marina tries to help me: we sit down, have a rest, get some tap water from the café, take a deep breath and take a train back to Lisbon. There we spend another hour strolling. In the end, we hug and thank each other for the meeting.
Next evening Marina leaves to Porto, but she’s free in the daytime. We meet once again, take a walk around beautiful streets of Lisbon without any particular plan where to go. Before leaving, Marina lets me in her home. The fourth floor, a small elevator. In the elevator I feel my heart pounding and knees shaking. Seems like I have a crush on her, but I’m now throwing myself out of any thoughts on moving forward, because I’m afraid. We come inside the apartment, Marina takes a shower and lies down on the bed. We’re lying without any words. An hour left to the train – so much for idling, so little for a spark. I’m not even sure when we’re going to meet next time. I suppress the feelings boiling inside me.
I see Marina to the train, hug her, and we promise each other another meeting. Whether it’s Berlin or Obninsk – doesn’t matter. because we’re friends now.
“CouchSurfing will never make you pay to host and surf. It’s against our vision to exclude anyone from having inspiring experiences for financial reasons, and that’s not going to change just because our methods of generating revenue do.”
No Couchsurfing 2011
As of May 14, 2020, we are asking for member contributions of $2.39 per month, or $14.29 per year if paid upfront, to keep Couchsurfing alive. This member contribution is required to access the Couchsurfing website and mobile applications. Your member contributions will be used to support Couchsurfing through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, and to continue keeping this community safe. This is a decision of last resort, and not one taken lightly.
No Couchsurfing 2020
I remember that day when we all – those who formed that cozy CouchSurfing community – saw a paywall on the main page, removable only after subscription payment. The Internet was blazing with blog posts, critics on Twitter. It felt like the whole idea about shared economy in trips died, not just CouchSurfing.
Judging by the fuss, CouchSurfing sold itself into the property of wealthy rednecks. These rednecks formed a board of directors and hierarchy of managers out of their jerks-businessmen. These jerks moved on to the idea of unconditional subscription as they couldn’t come up with any other way to monetize the product. CouchSurfing was approaching its clinical death in the course of nine years, starting from the moment when they transformed a non-commercial organization into a venture capital startup. In fact, I started on CouchSurfing when it was already not the same as it used to be: the community was slowly degrading, the premium version offered to remove restrictions of the free one. 2020 became the year when all moral pillars of couch crashed once and for all.
After the next year and a half – when all the willing got vaccinated and mass lockdowns were over – CouchSurfing was still live. People began to send requests to host their summer guest actors throughout the planet Earth crippled by postmodernism. I started my subscription, in parallel signing up for free alternatives: Trustroots, Couchers.org and BeWelcome. Now I’m looking for hosts on four platforms instead of one: CouchSurfing is still the liveliest due to its legacy. Sixteen years of the community’s history won’t be erased by any redneck in the world.
Anyway, I meet new people and write a book about anything I can reach: friends of friends, Nomad List and other channels, which lead you to a homestay one way or another. Even Tinder got into the list somehow.
March 2020. A vacation in Israel has been thoroughly planned: tickets, efforts to find a homestay on CouchSurfing, excitement of seeing Purim – a local analogue of Halloween. Two days before the flight I get the news that Israel closed the border for German residents because of thousands of new COVID-19 cases recorded. I still want a vacation and Greece has only ninety cases of covid plus cheap tickets – so here we go.
Two days after I find myself in Athens. I stay in the hostel, but I managed to find a homestay in Thessaloniki through my girlfriend’s friends.
– [Me, sending the photo]: I guess I’m here. Which button of the intercom should I press?
– [Adelina]: It’s not our house. Where are you? Send your location.
– [Me]: [sending the location]
– [Adelina]: Oh shit, you’re in a different neighborhood.
– [Me]: Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Actually, there were several houses with similar names on the map) Ok, could you send me your location?
– [Adelina]: Take a bus, 27 or 83. Find egnatias street. The buses are there.
– [Me]: I think I got it.
– [Adelina]: Great. You go out at the stop called Stauropoli. We can meet you there. The way home from the stop is kind of difficult.
Nikita from Kiev meets me at the stop. We come home and meet the girls: Adelina from Kiev and Vera from Vinnytsia. Adelina studied in a cinema school, she’s now thinking about her future. Nikita studied for pharmacologist, but he didn’t like the job. Vera teaches English to children, she even likes it. They’re all volunteering in a local NGO that helps Syrian refugees. You don’t have to know Greek there – creativity is much more important, so you could occupy minds of wretched souls: English lessons and guitar sessions, board games.
The news about “amendments” to the Russian Constitution worry me more than covid.
– [Me]: I’ve recently started to learn Ukrainian for love. And you know, the first thing I’ve learned – “Putin khuylo”38.
– [Nikita, with sarcasm]: It must’ve been tough to translate.
This week the guys are staying home and anxiously watching the spread of coronavirus. In daytime, we go out, meet each other closer, sit on the terrace of cafés, enjoy the view of the sea, try out fast-food on a central street. Nikita doesn’t join us, most of the time he spends with his guitar, learns songs, plays on a street parallel to the central street.
– [Me]: Nikita, if you’ve got a soul – please, don’t play “Wonderwall”39.
– [Nikita]: Oh, I’ve just started learning it.
Our planet approaches to the judgement day by leaps and bounds. Next day, I get an alarming signal on the phone from the local rescue service in two languages: Greek and English. My phone sounds like a siren, leaving a feeling like something dangerous exploded nearby. We take a look around, people around us look at their phones with surprise.
On Friday I stay home because I’ve got severe fatigue. The temperature is 35.8, doesn’t look like covid though. Lying on the couch, I try to guess if my tomorrow’s flight to Berlin will be cancelled or not. It wasn’t. I leave the volunteers’ home next morning. The guys are still sleeping, only Vera woke up. I thank her for hospitality and good vibes, Vera invites me to come by in Vinnytsia.
I think, it ended up to be my last day in the normal world.
July 2020. The first wave of the pandemic has died out, the restrictions are removed, cities are back open for travelling. I go for a week to Netherlands, the first stop – Amsterdam.
I met Oleg on Vas3k.Club, he had this badge in the profile “ready to host for a night”. Sounds great, I’ll have a chance to learn about life of tech expats in Netherlands. Having met at the main station, we go down the subway and head to Amsterdam-Noord – the borough where Oleg lives.
– [Oleg]: I’ve been to Berlin a week ago, you’ve got it dirty and creepy over there. You wish to move to Holland, right?
– [Me]: Nor really, why would you think so?
Seems like Oleg took my homestay request as an attempt to do research on moving from “disappointing” Germany to “corny” Netherlands. Oleg takes out imaginary guidelines and tells me about the goodies he got with moving to Amsterdam: salary, housing, insurance, ruling.
Despite that, Oleg is actually a good-hearted guy. Lends me a “fat bike” for riding around the city, shares a joint with a weed from his favorite coffee shop. Oleg is from Odessa, he moved to Netherlands a year ago. During the year he managed to change job and divorce. After divorce, his wife moved to Berlin – that’s why Oleg went there a week ago to work out the details.
Oleg emanates a strong feeling of searching for a new home, attempts to assimilate in a new society. His disappointment in life in Ukraine is obvious.
[Oleg, annoyed]: “In our countries nobody would take care of us. We slave away at work and eventually get dumped”.
His pessimism spreads not only on the Motherland – the work too.
[Oleg]: “I have no idea why the hell we need Docker. Everything was fine: dedicated servers, software is working, you start and shut it down whenever you please. And here we have this marketing bullshit that makes it much more difficult and expensive to solve the same tasks”.
We are riding around Amsterdam till sunset: streets, parks, Rijksmuseum, Eye Filmmuseum, thousands of museums. In the evening Oleg returns home to do his business, I go on riding around his neighborhood. It’s already cold and windy outside, joint’s effect approaches to an end, I feel the first consequences of the fatigue accumulated from the train at 7 a.m. and an intensive day in Amsterdam. After an hour of idleness on a bench I come back home and obediently occupy an empty room with a mattress. I hear Oleg’s loud voice over the wall. It’s about the divorce and another round of a heart-to-heart talk.
It makes me cringe, anxiety comes over me. Booking.com, click-clack, a hotel room for forty euros a day, check-in closes in an hour – excellent, that works.
– [Me]: Oleg, I feel uncomfortable here, that’s why I booked a hotel. I’m going there now – forgive me.
– [Oleg]: No need to apologize, you’re a free man – do what you want to make yourself comfortable.
– [Me]: Thanks for understanding. What about going for a walk tomorrow?
– [Oleg]: I’ll write you on Telegram.
On Telegram Oleg sends me a couple articles on “Karpman Drama Triangle”, the subject of our conversation about relationships. We didn’t go for a walk, as we’re too different for it. Anyway, he would leave Vas3k.Club in a year.
I came up with the idea to write a book in Israel. While trying to find a homestay in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I was considering my trip to be a farewell to CouchSurfing. I would talk with hosts about how good it was before and how painful it is now to see the death of something endearing.
My host Isaac was born in this city, now he lives in a two-room apartment at the new skyscraper with his cat Milky. He also lived in Berlin for half a year, fell in love with the city, but then came back to Tel Aviv since it was good and comfortable for him there. He worked for ten years in the advertising industry, got tired of rat racing, left the job and began to look for his place in the world.
[Isaac]: “I attended courses on Python programming, and you know, it went well at some point. But I can’t sit in front of a laptop for the whole day, I’ve got diagnosed with ADHD. It’s important for me to have contact with people, talk and agree on something”.
After the chit-chat, we ride on electric scooters to Benedict restaurant for a lunch. The restaurant looks “rich’n’costly”, its decorations remind me of Moscow. We order brioche and scones with jam at the cost of three döners in Berlin. While eating, we’re sharing our pain: Isaac tells me about “beauties” of military service in Israel, I tell him about “beauties” of living in “democratic” Russia. Having finished with lunch, we part our ways: Isaac goes to play poker with friends, I go to my friend, she came to Israel for a month. She has a rough time – she is in a conflict with the colleague who hosts her – and needs a new homestay ASAP. She needs me more than my host does.
That was our last face-to-face meeting with Isaac: I wake up early and leave the apartment at 9 a.m., Isaac returns home from poker in the middle of the night and wakes up close to noon.
Anyway, Isaac asked me not to speak about it much.
David is twenty-nine, works in a tech, studies as a psychologist in parallel. After three years in army David spent three years travelling around the globe, lived in Australia for a while and realized that his native Jerusalem is the best city on the planet. David is an official CouchSurfing ambassador, harnesses himself into various volunteering activities, helps Palestinian refugees. David is one of the guys who’re trying to make the world a little better.
David lives in Rehavia neighborhood, which considered to be a habitat of professors and intellectuals. He sends me an instruction in WhatsApp on how to find the apartment key.
[David]: Make yourself at home: mi casa, tu casa”.
Here comes another story about a host who provides a stranger surfer with complete access to their den. I may open the apartment, unfold a couch in the living room, find bedsheets in the cabinet. David sends me all sorts of respect – he likes self-consistent surfers. Apart from the couch, David’s work desk and kitchen are also in the living room. The kitchen has a fridge, the fridge shines with postcards from couchsurfers. Kitchen panel includes two sockets. The first is occupied by an electric kettle, it’s constantly heating the water, so you avoid messing with it on Shabbat. The second socket goes for a light bulb, so you have light during Shabbat.
I meet David personally only a couple of times. The first one – at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, when he was preparing for his friend’s wedding back home in the north of Israel. The second one – on Saturday morning on Shabbat, when he was preparing for a morning ceremony in Synagogue.
– [Me]: Hey, may I speak with you on Shabbat?
– [David]: Of course, why not?
– [Me]: I’m not entirely sure about the rules here.
– [David]: Listen, Shabbat isn’t such a scary thing. Essentially, Shabbat is about finding time for yourself, so every week you feel the joy of life and take a pause from routine. That’s why we don’t use any devices, don’t answer the phone, don’t drive cars.
– [Me]: May I turn on the boiler in the bathroom?
– [David]: Of course! I can’t, you can.
On that note I say goodbye to David and his girlfriend who stayed here overnight – they hurry to the Synagogue.
After returning to Berlin, I send David a postcard with a picture of ruins of the Berlin Wall as a token of gratitude for a homestay. Now he has a wall both in the fridge and outside the window.
The whole week of travelling in Israel makes me feel ecstatic from emotions, constant bus transfers and sun rays. I’m accumulating serotonin reserves for the upcoming Berlin winter with corona-restrictions.
Tel Aviv is a kind of sweet nectar of Berlin, Barcelona, Moscow and Dubai. Jerusalem attracts with its culture and spirituality, like Istanbul without its metropolitan tension. Nazareth – a nice city of Arabia. An accidentally found Kibbutz on the Golan heights resembles a communist fairy-tale which has it all wealthy and fair. The icing on the cake was when fate gave me a deserted coast of the Dead Sea, where you find yourself completely alone – not a soul around but for a blue sunset, merging with crystal clear water.
Then, I stepped beyond the wall with barbed wires.
As soon as my foot hits Palestinian ground, the sky breaks out in heavy rain. So heavy you see nothing in three meters away with mud being the only thing you feel under your feet. I make my way to a guesthouse on the refugee camp territory. When I’m roaming around the city trying to find a place to eat, a nuclear mix of horror, shame, despair and panic overcomes my mind. Logic tells me it’s all right: you’re safe, it’s not your fault, I was just passing by. My memory attempts to reassure me that I’ve seen worse pictures – for example, Dharavi in Mumbai. My soul is wrapping my body with a veil of despair which is unbearable: no use is wine, indica, or a Venlafaxine capsule to my head.
From initially planned three days in Bethlehem I hardly bear two hours. Having listened to the self-preservation instinct’s voice of reason, I call my buddy from Jerusalem and ask to host me for another night. The timing is lucky: five more minutes and the buddy goes into Shabbat with a nuclear war being the only thing that might pull you out.
In a minute I meet a taxi driver Mohammed. First, we observe a road argument between local pals: one of them hit the other from behind, instead of calling cops they called their cronies – classic. Next thing, Mohammed drives me to guesthouse, I take my clothes and apologize for the fuss. On the way to checkpoint, we stop at the most “famous” part of the wall with graffiti. The only difference from East Side Gallery is that, apart from the street art, this wall still isolates one cohort of people from another.
Despair overcomes me for the second time. Instead of souvenirs, I bring home myriads of questions which would make me lose faith in humanity if I don’t find the answers. Why would Arabs from Nazareth stay free while Arabs from Palestine are locked in a concrete prison? Why would the diplomatic settlement of the conflict actually compromise fundamental human rights and set up an economic blockade? Why would children still fear tomorrow and mothers still fear about the future of their children in 2021?
Still being on the way and shocked simultaneously, I ask Mohammed if he believes in God. He says he still believes, but not in the context of any religion. The situation gives this quite a blatant phrase of worldly wisdom. Next question I ask is whether he believes he would live up to the day of peace and freedom. He says he doesn’t. The context shoots a long Kalashnikov burst in the target of hopes for a bright future. We drive by a couple of Banksy’s graffities. To alleviate the bitterness of the moment, Mohammed suggests making a stop and taking a memorable photo. This idea screws me even more.
After paying for the excursion around an urbanistic prison I leave the car, trying hard to subdue the trembling getting to the bones. Mohammed feels it and also gets out of the car. I hug him tight and wish him to take care of himself and his children. I don’t succumb to time and weakness for tears.
I think, the tears at that moment weren’t necessary – the rain would cry for me.
On the New Year’s Eve, Cyprus reminds of a boarding house for millennials from Eastern Europe: the sea, cafés, hookah lounges, Russian language everywhere. On the first day I meet two girls from Kiev on Tinder. Together we go on Mount Olympus, changing three seasons on our way: from summer to spring, from autumn to winter and vice versa.
– [Anya]: Oh, shit, I thought you’re in Paphos.
– [Me]: Pathos has never been my sort of thing.
– [Anya]: Dammit, I meant the city Paphos.
– [Anya]: … what if we come today and stay at you up to the New Year. We don’t really care where to cook Russian salad and watch Putin’s congratulation, moreover, we like Limassol, a-ha-hah.
– [Me]: Yeah! Let’s do it)
– [Anya]: Not so fast, let’s take a seat and eat first..
Anya and Nastya are both twenty-five – my coevals. Anya has a bachelor degree, Nastya is a dropout, they both have a vague idea of what to do next. Anya still lives in Sakhalin, Nastya moved to Kazan. They came to Cyprus for a three-month job in a hotel. There’s a lot of work: from checking in the guests to cleaning poops after the local cat.
– [Anya]: Ask something easier.
I’m not a reliable driver which makes girls very anxious. In the lounge we manage to relax a bit a talk about unrelated to daily routine matters: podcasts, astrology and Cyprus. We spend the night at my place, in the morning I give them a lift to the bus stop to Paphos.
We decide to meet the New Year in their hotel room. On the first of January I have a flight from Paphos to Berlin and have to drop off a fucked up Kia Rio I’ve rented from Sixt. I don’t drink at all, thanks to discipline and a course of antidepressants. On the way I pop by a supermarket: one coke for me, martini for the girls, tangerines for us. There are no tangerines on the shelf – the local expat community must have already scooped it out. I pick some tangerines from a tree on the parking lot: not really tasty, but enough for the New Year ritual.
People in the hotel are different. One character was dressed as a biker with a crash-helmet on, though he had no bike at all. We watch Little Blue Lights on Nastya’s laptop till midnight. The girls are drinking zealously, I melt into the couch and smoke Nastya’s vape with a strawberry flavor. We celebrate the New Year multiple times through the several timezones: Berlin, Cyprus, Moscow. On the third time I’m getting sick of Putin. Nastya feels the same, Anya emotionally repeats Putin’s words.
– [Anya]: I’m well aware he has ghostwriters, but I can’t withstand his charm. It’s all so emotional, so convincing!”
Around 1 a.m. the situation gets out of control: Nastya reaches the bitter state of intoxication, mourning for her love to Vitalya – the hotel’s director. Anya reaches the highest level of excitement asking to take her to a club. I feel sleepy, trying to reflect on the past year.
Eventually, I put Nastya to sleep on the couch and order a taxi for Anya. I think, we all should reach our natural state, so nobody holds a grudge in the morning. Anya takes the worst end of the deal: she wants to hang out, but not alone.
Anya comes back at 5 a.m. drunk as fuck, falling asleep after cuddling with me. I get dressed and go out on the pier. It’s amazing to meet the New Year at sunrise near the sea, as it doesn’t happen to you all the time.
Nastya comes to pier in an hour. At the sunrise we talk about the eternal: love, feelings, social constructs. Take turns to play music. We go on exchanging music up to 10 a.m., when Anya wakes up. The girls switch back to alcohol while I’m packing my stuff. I have to go to the airport in an hour.
My job has lost any sense: any innovative ideas have been frozen before IPO, tasks got boring, there are feelings of stagnation, isolation, and chaotic management. A week of covid sick leave felt like a blessing vacation from that kind of corporate slavery.
It feels like a good time to “leave everything and go nowhere”. In the language of startups and tech companies is can be characterized as pivot – abrupt change of a course intended to boost future development and keep preserving one’s viability. I’ve already got a permanent residency in Germany, so I’m not tied to the employment. Time to live my own life, for fuck’s sake.
A travelling plan has formed naturally: here’s Italy, there’s Georgia and Armenia, then I might go to Russia to friends and parents. Maybe I would even manage to come by Kiev to see my friends.
And here comes the war.
I’ve already signed a contract to sublet my apartment and terminated the contract with my employer due to medical reasons. I can stay in Berlin, but then what? Suffer out of solidarity with people who don’t give a fuss about your suffering?
Man Proposes, God Disposes.
During the first week of travelling around Italy I’m wandering from one hostel to another, stumbling upon interesting people: a sommelier from Switzerland, a twenty years old TV program editor from Brazil, a travel enthusiast who owns a hostel in Catania. At the same time, during the week of travelling, I’ve been accumulating a need of a closer contact with locals I used to get from CouchSurfing.
Visiting Messina wasn’t in my plan, but I found a homestay there. Lena is from Poland, she got to Sicily during her Erasmus and decided to stay here afterwards. She works part-time in designing logistics of container management system for seaport.
Lena lives with her boyfriend Enrico – a native Sicilian who works as a general practitioner, sometimes stays on night calls in a municipal hospital. For the past two years the pandemic has been giving him a hard time: his phone turned into a hotline for patients bothering him with trivial things which could be googled in a minute. Their dog Passionata helps them stay sane.
Three weeks ago, Lena broke her leg on a ski slope of Mount Etna and couldn’t train the dog for contests, but she still hosted surfers. Yet again I’m touched by the good nature of CouchSurfing. Lena gives me a separate room with a wide bed, wooden table and a window with a view of the sea.
– [Me]: You and Enrico are looking for a neighbor for this room, right?
– [Lena]: Right.
– [Me]: And how much it costs?
– [Lena]: 250 per month + bills, around 300 in winter, summer is cheaper.
– [Me]: Damn, that sounds really cheap, maybe I should move here?
– [Lena]: Would be great.
– [Me]: Well, expect me as soon as I get EU citizen passport.
– [Lena]: Oh, true, you don’t have one.
We take the dog for a walk to Piazza Duomo, Messina’s main square. It’s sunny but still feels cold in the middle of march due to humid climate. It’s empty on Friday evening, they let Passionata off the leash to train her obedience to commands. While Lena is hobbling around on crutches, dog training falls on Enrico’s shoulders. It was the first time this week when Passionata went outside. Her joy knew no bounds: she managed shit three times during an hour walking, I’m joking: “Today she’s productive more than ever!”
Having got back home, Enrico immediately leaves to clinic for a night shift. Half an hour later, Patricia – Lena’s friend from Poland – comes by. The three of us engage in cooking a vegetable ragout for dinner. In the process we find out that freezing compartment doesn’t close because of ice, so the next half an hour we break the ice as if we’re not in Sicilia, but in a middle of the North Pole expedition. I break the ice of the unpleasant work by imitating a cocaine sniffing, spilling crumbs of ice on a cutting board. The girls enjoy the joke.
For dinner, we have two more guests from Lena and Enrico’s company – Ilano and Dimitri. At a glass of wine Dimitri loads me with questions about Russia and the war with Ukraine. In attempts to answer the questions about nuclear war and ideas of “Lord Voldemort” my mental state returns to the atmosphere of sadness and despair of the first three days of the war. Dimitri politely apologizes for the inconvenience.
– [Dimitri]: I’m sorry, but I have to ask you more, since I don’t know Russian, so I can’t read the news and learn your point of view.
– [Me]: Whose point of view? We have two of them – propagandic and ultraliberal, I’m in the second team. Generally, NATO’s policy pisses me off, why wouldn’t they establish a no-fly zone above Ukraine when it’s already the second week of war? This decision would help finish the war in a day.
– [Dimitri]: Well, perhaps, they’re afraid of one old man would press the red button.
– [Me]: I’d be better off dead than afraid.
The rest of the evening I feel frustration. The guys switch to English for me, but it’s clear they want to speak Italian. I thank Lena for the dinner, say goodbye to the guys and go to bed. Thanks to antipsychotics, thoughts about war have no impact on my sleep.
In the morning, we load the dishwasher with a pile of dishes from yesterday’s dinner, make espresso in a moka pot, eat biscuits presented by Enrico’s patients. We make an interesting conversation about life, but, unfortunately, I have to leave to catch the train to Naples. Such a shame I didn’t even have time to see Enrico after his night shift.
Enzo offers me a couch in Bari. Twenty-nine years old, spent a lot of time studying for engineer, made it to PhD, realized it wasn’t his thing. Now he takes online courses for “energetic medicine”, learns the connection between energetic, physical and mental health.
[Enzo]: “It’s difficult for me to sit in front of a computer the whole day, focus on one thing – I want to socialize, I want to move”.
He lives with two more guys: Antonio and Pier. Antonio came from Sevilla right before my departure from Bari, I had no time at all to meet him and ask about his job and age. Pier is thirty-three, originally from Colombia, adopted by a family from Bari, been living here most of his life. He’s in the middle of finishing a secondary school, complaining about lack of work in Italy in broken English gained from five years of life in London.
[Pier]: “Italy is beautiful, but job opportunities here are dogshit”.
While Enzo and Pier treat me with the most delicious vegetable ragout, Valeria and Flaminia – neighbors from upstairs – come by. Valeria cut her finger in the kitchen – she needs help. Pier treats her injury with some sort of saline, then carefully wraps the finger with a kitchen towel. The problem is solved, in the evening we go upstairs to the girls to celebrate the victory with a tasty pie. The guys are drinking wine, I stick to water.
– [Pier]: You don’t drink anything but vodka?
– [Me]: Not that I’m a fan of vodka.
At the table they all speak Italian, showing interest in my presence every five minutes or so. Flaminia has poor English, but she compensates her gaps in knowledge with hospitality and friendliness. At parting, she gifts me a postcard of her hometown twenty kilometers away from Bari.
It’s Sunday and 8 p.m.. In the beginning of spring season southern Italy lulls you to sleep so much that you sleep twelve hours a day and steel feel drowsy. Even locals don’t know the reason: they say, it might be reaction of a body to a climate change and increase of sunlight. The guys are going out for foods and drinks. Sorry, guys, maybe next time.
Next day I meet Enzo at the sports corner in the park. Enzo asks me lots of interesting questions: about the book, the decision to leave the job into nowhere, couch.
– [Enzo]: So, you just got undressed, simply as that? Was it something your host asked you?
– [Me]: Sort of.
– [Enzo]: But why?
– [Me]: I dunno, it just happened that way.
– [Enzo]: Something happened between you?
– [Me]: No, I didn’t want anything but to stay overnight in Zürich.
In the end of the day, we heat up a tasty dinner, finish it like hungry wolves and I crash out. Enzo and I have different daily regimens: he wakes up at noon when I’m already tired.
In the end, we brought up the topic of war. Johnny pumped me up with so much heresy that I couldn’t find strength to oppose.
[Enzo]: “It’s a matter of fact that Ukrainians have biological weapon, so the old man defends against it. They don’t even bomb Mariupol, they just capture military objects and force authorities to surrender, that’s it”. Putin a king, and NATO – cheeky bastards who look in his saucer.”
Not a flying one, I hope.
This conversation crossed all the positive moments of the homestay – feels like I bathed in mud.
Trustroots positions itself as an open-source platform for finding a free place to stay. The platform code is open-source, which means anybody can see how it works and also add a couple features.
My first host from Trustroots – Francesco. We agreed for a three-night homestay in Venice. I write him at 6 p.m., at this time he must’ve already finished working.
– [Me]: Where do we meet?
– [Francesco]: How far are you from the station?
– [Me]: Around half an hour by foot.
– [Francesco]: Okay, I’ll buy you a ticket.
– [Me]: A ticket where?
– [Francesco]: To Vicenza. Forty-five minutes from Venice by train.
– [Me]: Wow, okay.
Not that I was dreaming about an apartment in front of St. Mark's Square with a view of canals and gondolas, but Vicenza is actually far away from Venice.
Francesco meets me in quite an odd way:
– [Francesco]: You must be tired and willing to take a shower?
– [Me]: Yeah, I’m tired, but usually I take a shower in the morning.
– [Francesco]: Can you take it now?
– [Me]: Eh… okay.
Francesco is thirty-six years old, he owns a small factory producing marble sculptures. He is responsible for sales: contacts with clients, brings products to new markets, makes profits of these beauties. Francesco sent me a link to the factory’s Instagram, he has twenty thousand subscribers, content in English and one beauty after another. He doesn’t look like a stereotypical Italian: introverted, even-tempered, pragmatic, pedantic, serious.
Francesco lives in a luxurious two-storied apartment: unbelievably beautiful interior, pictures, supreme aesthetics. There’s even a terrace on the roof. Having gone upstairs to the terrace, Francesco shows me Vincenzo at a glance: station to the left, center to the right, you can Alps at sunrise.
While I’m taking a shower, Francesco is cooking a salad. At the table he offers me to drink whiskey.
– [Me]: Dude, thank you, but I don’t drink alcohol.
– [Francesco]: Why? How?
– [Me]: Ehm, I have problems with nervous system.
– [Francesco]: Why? How?
– [Me]: Tough childhood.
– [Francesco]: Did something bad happen?
– [Me]: You know, it’s just every day of my childhood was filled with stress, tension, aggression, bullying: at school, at home, in a football club.
– [Francesco]: Oh, I understand.
Francesco googles definition of the “Chronic fatigue syndrome” and why it occurs. I’ve never seen a person so interested in my health problems – and I didn’t even complain, just refused the alcohol. He proceeds with hugging me tight, which makes the situation even more awkward.
After dinner, I thank Francesco for the salad and crash on the nearest couch with a spotted blanket. To my greatest surprise, the next morning I wake up in a bed with Francesco. In the room of Francesco. Next floor.
– [Me]: How did I get here?
– [Francesco]: When you fell asleep, I went to a bar with a friend, when I returned – I saw you here.
– [Me]: I don’t remember it.
Next to the bed I see my phone charging – I don’t remember putting it on charge. I don’t remember anything at all. I distinctly remember how I was kicking off from any touch in my dream, how I tried to defend my territory, my borders.
In the morning we have a cup of espresso, orange juice and doughnuts with lemon jam for breakfast. He constantly pats me on the shoulder.
– [Francesco]: Too bad you leave so soon.
– [Me]: Yeah, too bad.
– [Francesco]: If you stayed, I would take you for a trip to Milan by car.
– [Me, inwardly]: Did he really not ask me if I want to go somewhere with him? Feels like it’s time to get the fuck out of here.
Anyway, I curl into a ball rolling in the direction of a hostel in the center of Venice.
Otto hosts me in Trieste. A little info in his profile, he preferred not to read mine at all, which he awkwardly confessed at the meeting. Consider it a blind couch.
I draw his portrait in mind precisely after an hour of conversation. Born in Bavaria, thirty-five years old, fifteen of which he spent in science all around ecology, environment, meteorology. He’s a postdoc at a local university. I catch him at the end of the working day: today he wrote a whooping two scientific articles. Apart from science, Otto can’t live without mountains and skis, he even posts articles in a small ski-blog every week.
– [Me]: How did you end up living in Trieste?
– [Otto]: I was working on PhD in Hamburg, I actually wanted to stay there. Great city, but no mountains. I was born and raised among mountains, it’s my air. Moreover, I have to find a job in my area. Trieste got it both the view of the mountains and the job. So, it just sort of happened.
– [Me]: Sounds great.
– [Otto]: And how did you end up in Berlin?
– [Me]: First, I lived in the States and there I realized the world goes much further beyond Penza’s borders. I graduated as a bachelor, nothing was keeping me there anymore. In Penza, I felt somewhat dull and hopeless, so migration was a matter of time. One day I got a message on LinkedIn from Switzerland – I came to realize that I can go to Europe right now. A couple intensive months with job interviews and technical tasks – and I got an offer. It also sort of happened.
– [Otto]: Anyway, where it this Penza located?
– [Me]: Around the same parallel with Moscow, it’s just around seven hundred kilometers eastwards. But it’s still Europe.
It’s raining like hell in Trieste. I was lucky to pick up a forgotten umbrella on the train from Venice – helps me to get to the apartment. Otto lives in a two-room apartment of fifty square meters in total. Works in the kitchen, sleeps in the mezzanine. Under the mezzanine, he’s built a cozy corner for a guest mattress. I see a dozen of bags with tea herbs – he orders them in bulk, saving on delivery. There’s a tobacco and a mug with cold tea alongside the screen on the table.
We spend the evening having a high-intelligent kitchen conversation. With a combination of knowledge, curiosity and ability to listen, our conversation gains on new horizons. It feels like we can discuss anything: Germany and alcohol, depression and fatalism, religion and science, Ukraine and Russia, war and peace, the past and the future, noise-rock and post-punk, urbanization and basic income.
An old CD player plays in the background. I Shazam the first song I like: the artist has only 17 listeners on Spotify. I get sleepy at 10 p.m.. Here comes Anna, Otto’s girlfriend. We change intellectual guards: I go to bed, Otto goes on to talk with Anna.
The guys wake up earlier than me. Anna cooked me an oatmeal with fruits and chocolate, Otto made a herbal tea and a coffee in moka pot. We drink the coffee and smoke at the same time: Otto’s got a roller with American Spirit, I’ve got a Camel pack making a promise to smoke only two per day. I take a selfie with Otto for memory and promise to keep him posted on Data Science vacancies. In his turn, Otto promises me to send a couple of papers about environmental problems.
I think, as long there are as such people like Otto, CouchSurfing will stay alive.
Jacob hosts me in Genoa: ethnic Moroccan, born in Casablanca, when he was five, his family moved to Sardinia. After school, he moved to Genoa for studying and lived there henceforth. He is thirty, still undergraduate: he expects the times when life would get easier, so he could readmit in the university and finish his exams.
Jacob works for JustEat – the biggest delivery service in Europe. It’s the one with a fork and the orange background on the logo. Actually, he has almost nothing to do with the delivery, he works on the “field”, monitors compliance with safety regulations on trips. When he sees a rule breaker on Plaza di Ferrara – the main square of Genoa – Jacob tries to call him out.
[Jacob]: “Hey you, over there! – … damn, he doesn’t hear it. If only I was on shift, I would bump him and send home. He must’ve been in headphones, that’s why he didn’t hear me. Here we go again, why nobody follows the rules?!”
In the square we meet Jacob’s friends, they haven’t seen each other for the whole three months. They want to go out for dinner together, I feel drowsy. He doesn’t have a spare bunch of keys. Holding no offense, Jacob bids farewell to his friends.
Jacob and I ride back home on his scooter. I have a white helmet with the JustEat logo, on the back – an empty orange backpack for delivery. Italy is a land of scooters: after the Second World War, two-wheelers by Vespa flooded Italian cities, symbolizing the triumph of freedom and imagination. On Sunday evening, Genoa’s roads are empty and crooked. We go uphill, it feels breathtaking. Genoa is a hilly city, roads here are either uphill or downhill.
Jacob lives in his friend’s old apartment, inherited from his friend's recently deceased grandmother. A lot of free space, but it’s all obscure to the host. Sleeping over a roaming spirit of the dead, we wake up with a prey to the god of coffee from moka pot. Yesterday’s footage from Bucha wear me out. The whole two days we’re talking about the war. In between, we watch Italian news – the war is there too.
– [Jacob]: It’s 50/50 in Italy: one half supports Ukraine, another – Russia. Take a look here, I recorded a pro-Russian demonstration here, in Genoa. Look what’s written on the flag: “Denazify Italy”.
– [Me]: I remember reading Bukowski, in the beginning of the Second World War some part of the American population supported Nazi Germany as well. The further away you are from a hot zone, the less you understand.
– [Jacob]: I also don’t understand, brother, that’s why I ask you questions. You are Russian, you should know better.
– [Me]: I know that, according to the books of your fellow countryman Umberto Eco, the Russia of 2022 is a fascist state.
– [Jacob]: Agree.
Jacob is hospitable and friendly, shows Genoa through his own eyes, talks about Italy and its problems.
– [Jacob]: “Now, I don’t have possibility to travel, that’s why I try to learn about the world through couch. Sometimes I get a feeling as I if I had been to a country of my surfer”.
I think, I also go the feeling that Jacob and his apartment represent Italy: old, chaotic, twisty, two-wheeled, trying to stay sane in such troubled times.
In 2022, CouchSufring is rather dead than alive.
On the one hand, some people are still using it. During the six weeks of my travelling around Italy I’ve managed to get four homestays, not including the “marble” night in Trustroots. On the other – couch is not the same as it was seven years ago. And far from how it was twelve years ago.
In terms of looking for a host, couch reminds of a scorched field with a bunch of miraculously survived plants. There are also all sorts of weeds: nasty fellas who host for sex, noobs who send copy-pasted requests. The same carrion in Hangouts, user-groups have died out, event schedule went empty. The promised features were left unimplemented: the app is overflooded with the same bugs it had years ago. Feels like a total rip-off.
After a couple of nights reading r/couchsurfing, I’ve felt sad. The ones who formed the community backbone are gone. After reading opinions of real people, it’s tough to stay on CouchSurfing and pretend you don’t pay a subscription. The paywall and the “obligation” from founders to preserve the community evoked disgust even among the most loyal members who stayed on CouchSurfing since the times it transformed from a non-commercial product into a “venture capital pie”. It wasn’t really the obligation to subscribe that disturbed some users, it was these nasty nuances like blackmailing on subscription canceling.
[Subscription cancelling window]
Before you go:
Due to the impact of Covid-19, we need your immediate help to keep Couchsurfing alive. All of us who are members of Couchsurfing believe in something greater than money, possessions, and status. It took over 14 years for the Couchsurfing community to come together. Without your immediate help, this community will be lost forever.
> Yes, I want to make my contribution and save Couchsurfing.
> No, thanks. I don’t find our global travelling community important. Unsubscribe me from important notifications.
In our turbulent times it’s kind of tough to figure out whether this message is more toxic or abusive.
Some people have preserved their enthusiasm and launched projects like Trustroots and Couchers.org. Some people found themselves in Nomad List community for a one-time payment of one hundred euros. Some people just blew it off and left the idea in the past. I’m hanging somewhere in between of these directions. Behind me – seven years of travelling through the eyes of locals, lots of fun and cringe. There are ninety-nine references in my profile from these people – I lacked one for a hundred. The main lesson I’ve got from these seven years – the world is all about the people. Different people, most of them are smart, friendly and hospitable.
Anyway, I canceled my subscription.
I’m Misha. I’m the author of this book, and at the same time its main character.
I’m a self-publishing author: originally from Russia, currently living and working in Berlin. I’m a bilingual author, writing in Russian and English. I published “couch” – my debut book in 2022, and writing has been a big part of my life ever since. From non-fiction essays to novels about life in modern society, from art performances to charity events.
If you liked this book – please, check out my website mishachinkov.com. At the end of the webpage, you’ll see an Invitation to subscribe to the mailing list. If you sign up, I can keep you up to date on my new books and send you periodic essays about my writing life.
Примечания
1
A servant in a Military commissariat whose duties, amongst others, include issue of draft cards to men who reach draft age.
2
Baltimore (yes, like the city in Maryland) is a brand initially famous for its ketchup. As many other Russians, I first learned about this brand because it sponsored a popular comedy show “Gorodо́k” (“Small Town”), which ran from the 90s through the 2010s.
3
An aid agency that sends volunteers to help poor countries
4
In Russian language, nasrat’ translates as “shitting”
5
The bar from Nirvana song called “Heart-shaped Box”
7
Hi, Mika, I hope you’re doing well
8
YMCA is for “Young Men's Christian Association“. YMCA branches around the world are engaged in strengthening the moral and physical health of people, uniting them for socially useful activities, as well as fostering respect for universal values.
9
Russian chanson is a neologism for a musical genre covering a range of Russian songs, including city romance songs, author song performed by singer-songwriters, and criminals' songs that are based on the themes of the urban underclass and the criminal underworld.
10
The Russian route M5 (also known as the Ural Highway) is a major trunk road running from Moscow to the Ural Mountains. It is part of the European route E30 and the Trans-Siberian Highway.
11
An inhabitant or native of Moscow
12
“Русский быдло” (Russian rabble) – a derogatory way to refer to uncultured or stupid people.
13
A quote from a Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog”
14
The problem is not only in the minds of leaders, COMMON PEOPLE have it. That’s the point which, let’s say, readers like you very “conveniently” miss when they quote Bulgakov. They believe that only the leaders should be blamed, who are OBVIOUSLY responsible in a high degree. BUT it’s difficult to consider your own actions… As if Russian people are “little angels”, really. Given how lazy and slothful they are…
15
The Russian word propiska is difficult to translate into any foreign language because the practice of requiring residence permits of its own citizens is a strictly Russian invention. The need for these permits is one of Russia's most enduring phenomena, required that citizens carry passports and be registered at their place of residence.
16
VK is a social media network launched by Russians after Facebook to mimic its features
17
a Latin phrase that translates literally as "Oh the times! Oh the customs!
18
Yuri Shevchuk is a Soviet and Russian rock musician and singer/songwriter who leads the rock band DDT, which he founded in 1980. He is best known for his distinctive gravelly voice. His lyrics detail aspects of Russian life with a wry, humanistic sense of humor.
19
literally meaning Pole's Card, it is a document confirming belonging to the Polish nation, which may be given to individuals who cannot obtain dual citizenship in their own countries while belonging to the Polish nation according to conditions defined by law
20
Lukashenko prefers to be styled as “Batka” – “Father” or “Dad” —a stern but wise patriarch leading a country out of infancy
21
a Ukrainian political satire comedy television series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy
22
“Natasha, I feel fucking amazing!”
23
also called the Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale, the scale is used in research to describe a person's sexual orientation based on one’s experience or response at a given time.
24
Pyaterochka is a Russian chain of convenience stores (ca. 16000 stores across the whole country by 2022)
25
one of the most famous Moscow’s nightclubs
26
The Bielefeld conspiracy is a satirical conspiracy theory that claims that the city of Bielefeld, Germany, does not exist, but is an illusion propagated by various forces.
27
Boris Borisovich Grebenshchikov is a prominent member of the generation that is widely considered to be the "founding fathers" of Russian rock music. Due to as much to his contribution and the lasting success of his main effort, the band Aquarium, he is a household name in Russia and much of the former Soviet Union.
28
Plattenbau is a building constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. Such buildings are often found in housing development areas.
29
“Hi! If you haven't found a host, you can come to my place.”
30
“Of course! I’m waiting the list”
34
“Thenk you. Naw I remember, never “o” after “ш” [sh], raight?”
35
Stitch, ramrod, hood, cornichon
36
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky, was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon.
37
(German: brotherhood) Brüderschaft is a drinking ritual to consolidate friendship
38
a slogan deriding Russian President Vladimir Putin. The phrase has become a protest song amongst supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and more generally those who oppose Vladimir Putin in both Russia and Ukraine.
39
Because maybeeeee you're gonna be the one that saves meeeeee and after aaaaaaallll You're my wondeeerwaaaaalll
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