Couchsurfing

While I sit in the kitchen, I can hear the Lithuanians talking quietly in the living room, laughing occasionally, arranging the mattresses on the floor and discussing the program for the next day (I assume - though I did study 'languages' at Oxford, of course, Lithuanian was never my strong point).
Exhausted from a long day and full from a big meal, facing my white laptop on our white kitchen table, next to a stack of white flowers in a "Processed Cream Cheese Spread"-glass, I feel a strong desire after a long time of no posts but many "wow-this-should-really-go-on-the-blog" moments, to finally write again. Today I want to introduce you to a wonderful thing that has slightly dominated my life over the past weeks and given me heaps of joy, wonderful encounters, beautiful moments of peace and quiet and many a good meal. It's called couchsurfing.

And who are the Lithuanians? They were sitting on my balcony a few hours ago, when I got home and were waiting for me sitting on their backpacks, wrapped up in jackets and blankets. I had never met any of them before.
"Hey guys, so sorry to keep you waiting - glad you arrived safely - come in - just put your stuff down here and come to the kitchen, I'll make some tea for us!"
There's six of them and they have found a home for a night or two in my house on their two-week trip around the area. More or less the same thing has occurred numerous times over the last month and it so happens that the room they're going to sleep in tonight has been occupied by different strangers every single night since the 2nd of January. First a French girl for a week (while I was in Syria), then two Spanish girls for two nights, then two Germans for a bit more than a week and simultaneously a band of two French and a Bulgarian for two nights, then an Australian brother and sister for three nights, then an Austrian lady for two nights and now the six Lithuanians.
You might wonder whether I've turned my house into a hostel and that might well be how my flatmate thinks about it (and it needs to be said that as the number of strangers who frequented the house has increased, his presence in the house has noticeably decreased... much to my dismay). Well, in fact I have done one simple thing that caused this onslaught of strangers on my house: In early January, when my thesis was done and thus my stress reduced, I changed my 'couch availability status' on couchsurfing.org from 'maybe' to 'yes'.

And that's how simple it is. So if you want people from all directions of the wind flocking to your house/flat/shack and share with them some of your time, food, floor-space, thoughts, love, wine, experience and laughter... then join the club and become a couchsurfer... you will not regret it, I promise!

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[I should've marked this post as 'advertisement', shouldn't I?]