Surfing Couches

It's the Sunday before my trip, and I'm beginning to solidify my itinerary. I recently rediscovered a website called Couch Surfers.com where cheap travelers from around the world come together to offer their "couches" and hospitality to one another. Almost everyone in the network seems to be very outgoing and extremely generous and and strike me as very "hippyish". When you create a profile, you select whether you have an "open couch" on which someone can stay or if you are merely willing to share a coffee and/or drink with a fellow Surfer. So I signed up looking to meet some locals from the area, and in return I've offered to get a coffee/ drink with the people in the network who pass through Chicago, and help out where I can. Everyone gets feedback and builds a list of "friends" whom they have met, and right now I'm the creepy guy in the network with no friends, and no one to vouche for me to say I'm not a Peeping Tom. In any case, I've created a profile on the site, and a have tentatively set up two "dates" with some local peeps. The first is with Mathias, a 25 year old student who studies music, and the second is Anna who is a 24 year old medical student in Cologne. They both seem very eager to meet up for a coffee, so I'm all for it! I wasn't 100% sold on the idea at first, but now I'm thinking it is the coolest way to meet people. How can you be willing to share your abode with a total stranger and not be completely welcoming and amiable? My kind of people. I can't think of a better way to visit a foreign city. -- Although I can probably stack my schedule with rendezvous with Couch Surfers, I also want to leave some things to chance. The unknown and unpredictable is just as exciting. So two Couch Surfers in Cologne is good.. (I'm also going to try to meet Gudula -- a girl I've been talking to on Yahoo/Skype for almost a year and whom I met through Language Exchange. com. That makes three.)