Berlin

It was in the winter of 2007 that I first heard about couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com). The gist of it is that one spends the night with strangers, free of charge. The site brings together people looking for a bed and people offering one.
I like going to people's homes, I take pleasure in standing under their showers. But I prefer to be gone again with forty-eight hours. A bed with perspective is a coffin.
That's why I started couchsurfing.
What I do, I do in order to learn how to live. Learning is watching how others do it. Learning is poking around in other people's things.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I decided to undertake this journey in the company of my friend Sander. People can become aggressive. And he who fears the beast in the other must also fear it in himself.
Free lodgings, as it turns out, is only a minor aspect of couchsurfing. The attractive thing about it is the contacts. To which I must add that, for most people, contact is not by definition erotic.
The first bed is located in Berlin, in the house of Guy and Marianne, on Manfred von Richthofenstrasse.
Guy is a French-speaking Canadian who likes dark beer, the site says. Who Marianne is remains as yet unclear.
When we get there we discover that Marianne is a sensibly dressed 21-year-old, also from French-speaking Canada. She's in Berlin studying German.
But Guy is nowhere in sight. In the kitchen, however, are at least fifty empty beer bottles.
When asked when Guy will be coming home, Marianne replies: "Oh, it could be kind of late." She says there is another Marianne staying at the apartment as well, she calls her "Marianne deux".
I say: "I'll be right back. I need to buy a towel."
A bed is the only thing a couchsurfer may count on.
At seven o'clock, Marianne deux shows up. Also from French-speaking Canada. Marianne deux says she's happy.
There is still no trace of Guy.
Around midnight Sander and I offer to sleep on mats on the living room floor, so Marianne deux can have the bed.
Hanging on the walls are photos of the blonde nurse whose apartment this really is. First she took off to India, now she's gone to Switzerland.
The three of us lie side-by-side, like peas in a pod.
We speak French together, but I'm too tired to focus on declining my verbs.
Lesson one of couchsurfing: People make use of whatever comes their way. Ask no questions. Questions don't contribute to happiness.

Prague

The next bed is in the home of Martina, in Prague 7. She lives on the third floor. We are welcome from eight p.m. on.
Together with my friend and I carry my cabin trunk up the stairs. I may be geared from head to toe to modern-day hippiedom, but my baggage is behind the times.
On the living room floor are two mattresses with three couchsurfers on them. The house smells of ashtrays, sweaty feet and bananas.
Martina has red hair and is quite sturdy. She's twenty-five, but looks older.
On the site she had announced that she was a heavy smoker. What she didn't say was that she subsists on banana-juice-and-rum cocktails.
I strike up a conversation with a young Australian who spent five days at Prague Airport before coming to stay with Martina. Halfway through his trip around the world, the money ran out. The modern wanderer is a decadent wanderer.
Lying beside him is a couple. He's French, she's Spanish. The difference between the seated and the supine has faded around here. In the same way that it is no longer clear where the pajamas start and the blue jeans end. That is to say: the blue jeans have become the pajamas.
"What made you get involved in couchsurfing?" I ask Martina.
"I used to have to go to bars to meet people," she says. "Now they come to me. And I was always late for appointments. Now I never come too late."
"Would you like to eat something?" I ask. "Could I invite all of you to join me at a good restaurant?"
This mattress-grave is fine, but I wouldn't mind a good dinner before lying down in it.
"I'm not leaving the house," Martina says. "I want to get drunk and high, and besides: I already ate."
Despite what her comments might lead one to believe, Martina has a job. She works in advertising. She calls herself a "slave of capitalism". She wishes the 1989 revolution had taken place in 1990 instead, because then she would have received a medal from the communist young people's association.
"And what about you?" she asks. "Are you a secret agent or something?"
I nod.
"So I guess if you tell me exactly what it is you do, you'll have to kill me afterwards?"
"When do you want me to kill you?" I enquire. The combination of banana juice and rum has not missed its effect on me either.
Martina laughs, a curt, rather grisly little laugh. "Why don't you surprise me?" she says.
I have a sad suspicion that she means it.

Another day at Martina's in Prague

Sometimes there is very little difference indeed between faith in mankind and nihilism. Martina has given us the keys to her flat. We have to move to another room, and we can spend another night there. Apparently we had been sleeping in the bedroom of Martina's housemate. Upon waking I discover that I've spent the night lying on top of a pair of pajamas. I can smell the stale sweat.
The fear of disease is death's playmate. Forget all fear of disease. Life is a dirty thing. But a housemate can always come home. And whether he will be as benevolent towards us as we have been towards his old pajamas remains to be seen.
Before Martina gets home from work we start in on the dishes. Most of our efforts concern ashtrays and glasses.
The other couchsurfers left that morning.
Martina arrives at eight. She tosses her bag in a corner, yanks open the fridge and begins weeping quietly.
"You're short of a steak," I say.
"I want to go to China," Martina sobs. "I'm in my Asian phase."
We take her out to the bar at Hotel Josef.
Martina knocks back a glass of rum every seven minutes. Her objective is to get drunk, but she only grows more sober. She says: "I drink only Czech rum. Czech rum is the worker's rum."
This is what remains of class solidarity. At least it's something.
After nine shots of rum, Martina switches to pina coladas.
I note in myself a certain amazement, and even a degree of awe. An ethical dilemma presents itself. Martina is giving us a place to spend the night, shouldn't we try to save her from dissolution? If only in our own best interests? Who's going to carry her home?
At a restaurant called Chez Marcel, a friend joins us. She has a child from an earlier relationship, and now lives with a man with a moustache who is twenty years her senior. She says: "I'm not in my Asian phase, I'm in my conservative phase. My husband is my hero."
She shows us her wedding pictures.
Her conservative phase takes on a new guise with every glass of wine. She murmurs: "I love you all unconditionally."
How many people can one love unconditionally? Dozens. At least. Martina, as it turns out, is a couchsurfer as well. In her own home. In her own life. Couchsurfing to the death. Call it practical idealism.
The friend walks back with us to Martina's house. Her child and her husband with the moustache are off traveling.
She will become our fourth couchsurfer of the evening.

Stainach-Irdning

Maria is a speech therapist and Wili, whose real name is Wilhelm, is a general practitioner. They have offered to pick us up from the station at Stainach-Irdning in the Austrian Steiermark.
Wili looks a bit like an aging ski instructor.
In the hallway of their villa in Stainach, they hand us both a pair of slippers. Five minutes later we're drinking Kir Royale. "The cassis syrup is homemade," Maria says.
"You mean you make your own cassis syrup, ma'am?" I ask. My profile on the site described me, and for good reason, as: "Clean, safe and polite."
"No, our neighbor made the cassis," Maria says. "And, by the way, couchsurfers don't call each other sir and ma'am."
I take a sip of Kir Royale. "And why, may I ask, do the two of you welcome complete strangers into your home?"
Maria laughs sweetly. "Our son Simon was couchsurfing in Mexico," she says. "And I'm what they call a 'concerned mother'. So I made my own profile on couchsurfing.com. That way I could see where he was, because he posted comments all over the place. After a while I thought: why don't we start taking in couchsurfers too? Our Simon thinks it's weird, but of course he doesn't say we can't do it. And we've had such lovely couchsurfers. An American who was traveling around the world, two Hungarians with a cello. The only thing I can't stand are people who smoke."
I tell her that we just came from the house of a chain-smoker.
"Well," Maria says, "the thing I noticed about your profile was that you said you're a clean person. I don't like odors."
No speeches at my funeral. Just four simple words: he had no odors.
"Do you fellows eat beef?"
"We do indeed," I say.
We sit down at the table. "This dish is called Tafelspitz," Wili explains. "I like to drink beer with it."
Sander, my traveling companion, tucks in. His efforts are appreciated.
"Our Simon is studying in Graz," Maria says. "He's a doctor. Our oldest boy is a doctor too, but right now he's couchsurfing in Laos with his girlfriend."
It's clear enough: a family of couchsurfers.
Maria and Wili have also baked a chocolate cake. All equally tasteful and tasty.
The bedroom I'm sleeping in was once Simon's. Sander has the guestroom.
The bed looks lovely. The pillows are fluffy, like in the best of hotels. The slippers go under the bed.
"Do you need anything else?" Maria calls out.
"No," I call back.
I am the traveling son of parents in the autumn of their lives who want to take care of someone again without all too many formalities.
Call me Simon. Call me our Simon.

Strobl

In Strobl am Wolfgangsee, there are no couchsurfers to be found. The phenomenon has not yet penetrated to all corners of Austria.
In Strobl I'm going to give a free reading for young booksellers, in exchange for which I hope to stay with one of them.
The young booksellers have retreated to Strobl to mull over their profession.
My traveling companion is optimistic. "They'll fight to have you," he says. I'm more skeptical. No one has fought to have me since 1998, and I don't see why they should suddenly start doing so in Strobl.
My proposal, after the reading is over, produces a confusion barely distinguishable from suspicion. "Don't you have enough money for a hotel?" a young man asks.
"That's not the point," I say. "The point is that I have to spend one week staying with strangers."
I have drafted rules for my life which I have no desire to violate.
"We're going to have to get pushy," Sander says.
We sit down at a table with booksellers and order a bottle of eau de vie. Two booksellers disappear in a hurry, but the rest let curiosity get the better of their suspicion.
"When you've met an author in person, does that help you to sell his work?" I ask.
"Yes," the booksellers say.
"And if an author has slept on the floor beside your bed, would that help you to sell his work even better?"
Sales figures, as they often do, prove the clincher.
"You can stay in my room," says Judith. "I have five brothers, I'm used to it."
Judith not only sells books, she's also a fervent gymnast.
While I'm brushing my teeth, she changes quickly. Now she's wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of cycling shorts.
She starts talking. Her mother is an impassioned gymnast as well. During the next European Championship soccer tournament, Judith will perform tricks on the field in Vienna that unfortunately will not be televised. She and her boyfriend plan to get married next year; her parents aren't particularly pleased with him, though, because he doesn't like gymnastics.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks suddenly.
"To paraphrase one of McEwan's titles," I say, "the comfort of strangers is outstanding comfort indeed."
"And now it's time to get some sleep," I add quickly. Gymnastics is not something to talk about into the wee hours of the night.

Budapest

"I'm waiting under the big clock at Budapest Keleti station," Violka texts us. "I'm wearing sunglasses and a red coat, and I'm tall." The coat isn't red, but the rest is spot on.
Violka lives with two roommates, and for reasons unclear we can't go into the house just yet. Instead we travel by public transport to a café across from the city's biggest synagogue.
"This is the Jewish neighborhood," Violka says, giving me a friendly but meaningful look.
She majored in German at school, but teaching was hell. Now she works at a travel agency.
We're waiting for Orsolya. She's the one whose idea it was to receive strangers: life as one big sleep-in. The euphoria of 1989 has made way for the great retreat from reality. "I never read the papers," Judith told me back in Strobl. "Only books. I want to stay in my own, perfect world."
Which says a lot about books. And about the way those books are read.
Those who turn their backs on the world in disappointment are willing to open the door only for a pajama party.
Orsolya is late, and meanwhile my traveling companion and I make the same jokes we've been making all week. But Violka laughs heartily.
Orsolya, when she turns up, lets us know that she calls herself Orsi. She works for a Japanese company that makes car parts.
The apartment in a neighborhood at the edge of Buda radiates the amiable melancholy of Eastern Europe. Hanging on the bathroom wall is a list of fifty things that make life worth living.
Orsi says: "If you two have anything to add to the list, feel free."
The third roommate's name is Marta. She has a toothache.
Viola and Orsi take us to a traditional restaurant where they serve Hungarian schnapps. Couchsurfing is, in fact, alcoholism on wheels.
During the main dish Orsi becomes serious. "What is you guys' fondest wish?"
What am I supposed to say? In an attempt to be friendly and funny at the same time, I say: "To father seven different children by seven different women in seven different cities." My distrust of mankind hasn't diminished any, but I'm willing to put it on hold for a while.
Along with the weeks that I worked as a chamberboy in Bavaria and my trips to Afghanistan, these have been the happiest days of my life.
Perhaps that is my fondest wish: to couchsurf to the death.
Couchsurfers can be found in Baghdad as well. Adnan Salih, for example, who describes himself on the site as follows: "I wish to explore the westren world I love to meet the good and funny people and I wish to make a real friendship with the people that I enjoy."
Orsi sleeps in Violka's room, so my traveling companion and I can crawl into her bed.
"Come back alive from Iraq," Orsi says.
In the bathroom, I add number 51 to the list: "Smelling the sweaty feet of a stranger."