Surfing

This post is about surfing..no..not that one. This one is about Couchsurfing. Some of you might have heard about it...other not...but there's a community out there called Couchsurfing. Its a group of people united by their love to travel and meeting travelers from all over the world. The underlying tenet is simple - you create a profile similar to Facebook and have friends, likes/dislikes, pictures etc. You also let others know what your current status is in terms of being able to host, meet up for a drink, or currently traveling. When you visit a new city, you search for 'couches' in that city and depending on whether you like what you see or not, send out a couple of requests. If the folks you send request out to like what they see and are able and willing to host you, they reply back in the affirmative, and voila - you have a place to stay. Obviously this works the other way around too, and you are expected to host too. There's no exchange of money involved and you primarily do it for the sheer joy of meeting new people and some interesting experiences.

About a month before we headed out on our trip, Awanti and I thought it'd be something we should give a shot. The reasons were two-fold. One, it would save a lot of money as against staying in hostels and hotels. The other, and more important reason for us, is that it would allow us to meet the locals, hang out with them, and get the low down on what to see and what not. Both of us approached this with a bit of hesitancy at first. The concept of staying with complete strangers was a bit foreign - though if you think about it, the trepidation from the other side should be greater given that they are letting total strangers into their house. Anyhow, we setup our account, sent out a couple of request for Austria, received positive replies, and headed over to our hosts' places. Well I must say, we've blown away by what we've encountered so far. We've couchsurfed with 5 hosts over the past 3 weeks, and in each case have been blown away by their trust, kindness, and friendliness. Just a few instances of what we've experienced:

- in each of the cases, within 5 minutes of meeting for the first time and being introduced, we were handed over the house keys and told to come and go at our leisure.
- late-night trip to the airport to pick up our delayed baggage as against waiting for the next morning when they were to be delivered - just so that we could wear some fresh clothes and be more comfortable.
- being cooked local specialties that you can't get in restaurants.

All in all, we've had some fabulous experiences and have spent time with people who are sure to remain friends for a long time to come. We have a few more stays coming up, and I can only hope they are as good as the ones so far.

- Ashish

Bags, Bikes, and Fortresses..

Onto NYC or the Big Apple as it seems to be better known. Spent a couple of days in NYC being a propah tourist by eating road-side food, visiting the Wall Street Bull, and walking around Central Park. We stayed at Sahili (Awanti's sister) in West Village and then at Rekha Atya (her Aunt) in Chatham, NJ. The first day there, a live deer (emphasis on the live as I couldn't believe my eyes) walked into the backyard and proceeded to mow (or eat) the lawn. And so passed 2 more bucolic days interspersed with barbecues and visiting more relatives...

Time to head to the airport and after safely navigating Samit's (Awanti's brother) 'exceptional' directions, we got to LGA. Well, no trip begins without a delayed flight, and so did ours. We promptly hot-footed over to the Red Carpet Club, courtesy Awanti and her high-flying status, and hung out amid a miserable selection of food and drinks. The plane arrived in due course (due course being 2 hrs late) and we made our way to Toronto. The 2 hrs 15 mins layover was reduced to 15 mins and I ran my personal best 400m in making it to the flight. Unfortunately, someone forgot to remind the bags to do the same, so after an uneventful flight we landed in Zurich and stared at the empty conveyor belt for quite some time before resigning ourselves to the obvious. We already had non-refundable train tickets to Salzburg for that afternoon, so us and our two small day-packs headed over the Swiss-Austrian border. The looks we got when we told people we were headed on a year long backpacking trip with only 2 small daypacks was priceless.

On to Salzburg(Picasa link) the first taste of Europe. The first thing that came to attention was the number of bikes! Bikes bikes bikes..and some more bikes!

That's right..bring your bikes onboard

In Denver, when you see other bikes on the road, its mostly hipsters riding single speeds and oozing attitude. In Salzburg, everyone rides - the old, the pretty, the kids, the employed, the unemployed - I really do mean everyone! There are bike racks everywhere and finding bike parking is just as hard as finding street parking in NYC on a Friday evening. The next thing you notice is Sound of Music. Everyone except the Austrians seem to have seen the movie and there are bus tours in 14 different languages making sure you see every place the movie was shot at. I hear you can even sing the title song on the bus. Being the seasoned and snobbish travelers that we are, we thumbed our noses at it, and promptly headed over to the second most popular tourist destination - the Festung Hohensalzburg - which I must admit is simply wonderful. The Salzburgers (not sure if that's right, but I like the sound of it) have done a good job restoring and up keeping the fort and a thoroughly informative afternoon ensued. The entire city of Salzburg is set between 2 hills - both topped with forts - and a river running in the valley in between. Quite the ideal setting. The next day, at the recommendation of our host, we set out on a fairly long ride out of town to the Salzburg version of a beach (more of a sand bar) on the river. The day was beautiful and most of the trail passed through woods along the river, so all in all, a thoroughly enjoyable ride. I'll spare you the beach details which included more gravel than sand and in true European fashion, a lot of skin. Being the Mozart's birthplace and all, we also felt it necessary to take in a concert, and enjoyed a fabulous string quartet at the highly ornate Mirabell Palace.

On our last day in Salzburg, I decided that I needed to get some sort of exercise in. Eating pastries for breakfast, followed by some even more rich food for dinner meant that the pants were already a tad more snug than the day we headed out from Denver. However, this plan only came to me at around 11.30 the night before we skipped town. Not to be deterred by the lateness of the hour, I still headed out for a run along the river in a full sleeve shirt (trying to reuse clothes you see and thus reduce laundry), running shorts and shoes. Not sure if it was the fact that I was running at 11.30 at night, or I was running in my shirt, or I was an Indian running in a shirt in Salzburg at 11.30 pm - either ways, it caused a few heads to turn. Ran up to the fortress and enjoyed a spectacular view of Salzburg before heading back down and to bed.

Vienna's next and from what we hear its going to be full of castles, museums, and more tourists. Can't wait for it!

- Ashish