Hmmm ... I wonder which door to knock on.
So Australia is a big testing ground for me using a number of social sites that help hook me up with either ‘couchsurfing’ hosts or people looking for house sitters to take care of their house and pets while they are away. This is a huge benefit to someone like me, both given my age and my personality, although I don’t mind hostels, I prefer some more refined accommodation but don’t want to have to cut my travels short due to not having enough money to accommodate myself on such a level. So through various conversations and my own research, I have come across a number of sites that help in this regard.
St. Paul's Catholic Cathedral in Melbourne
Couch surfing states quite clearly on the front, that it is not a dating site. Now you do get to meet all people of all ages and all genders as you choose potentially. How those encounters unfold is up to the individuals. It is a trusted site where being verified and vouched for is part of the experience and in turn travelers meet hosts and hosts meet travelers.
Fairy tree in Fitzroy Park, Melbourne
On the other front, house sitting provides a great opportunity to settle in a place for a more extended period of time, with all the comforts of home and a sliding scale of responsibility depending on the house sitting assignment, of taking care of animals, house and home. This will be the final leg of my Australian journey. All of this helps me extend the value of my savings as I continue to journey. It also gives me a place of respite as I write and try to develop a proposal for my book.
I have never seen black swans - I had always thought they were a tale.
House sitting and other sorts of temporary traveling jobs will be the focus of my Europe leg of my journey. One of the things I can say that I am most grateful for is my age. Throughout most of my life I have hated my age because I was considered too young and inexperienced. More recently I have started to feel old based on whatever reference group I was immersing myself. But now, under these circumstances, my maturity, age and experience are to my benefit since who would you rather have come into your home? A young 20-something who hasn’t quite developed the understanding and respect for another person’s space, or someone like myself who has built a home, been a landlord and understands the value of a home being a haven?
Bottoms Up
how does the couch surfing thing work?
You join couchsurfing.org, put in a profile and then do a search in the area you need a host. You can pick and choose and you send a request and e-mail back and forth to make sure it makes sense – and then – there you go – a place to stay and you get to enter right on in to someone’s life and often they show you around etc… It’s been great so far. Only one hiccup, but otherwise great.