CouchSurfing: Crazy dangerous or a great opportunity?

Hey guys :)

I’m sure you have realized by now that I’m totally into traveling – it’s just great. You can see different cities/countries, meet people and learn about different cultures. But there’s this huuuuuge downside: it costs a lot of money. You need a flight/train/bus ticket, you need food, money for entrances and of course you need a hotel. Or do you?

There’s a pretty easy and absolutely great solution to keep your expenses as low as possible: it’s called CouchSurfing! Most of you probably think “isn’t that this totally crazy and dangerous thing where you stay at a stranger’s apartment?" Well, yes and no. You do stay at a stranger’s apartment. But (if you are careful and choose wisely) it definitely is not dangerous! How do I know? Because I’ve already crashed a couch – but more about that later.

First some details: The idea behind CouchSurfing is that fellow travelers, who live in (more or less) interesting cities, offer a place to stay. You can stay at their houses/apartments for free and if you are lucky they might even show you around the city. There has to be a flaw? Well no, there isn’t! Those people love to travel, and therefore also love to meet people and to learn about their cultures. So in exchange for them letting you stay at their place, they expect you to talk to them – sounds like an awesome deal to me!

How to look for couches

First of all you have to sign up at http://www.couchsurfing.org and create a profile. Fill out your profile truthfully and provide as much information as you’d like your future host to know – but keep in mind that you’ll live in their house/apartment, so they definitely won’t accept your CouchSurfing request if your profile isn’t complete.

Your next step is going to be to upload some pictures – our host told us that he doesn't accept requests from people who have none or only one picture uploaded. Choose pictures which show who you are – if you like horseback riding upload pictures of you and your horse, if you are an adventurous person upload pictures where you are zip lining, bungee jumping or whatever other crazy things you have done – and so on.

Once you are done with your profile you can start looking for potential hosts. Now comes the most important part: start READING! It is really important that you read the profile of a future host carefully. This is essential to make sure that you won’t stay at one of these creepy guys you read about in the newspapers. Make sure he/she uploaded many pictures, writes a lot about him/herself in the profile, explains why she/he participates in CouchSurfing and most important – read the reviews of previous surfers! I would never send a request to someone who has none, only a few, or even worse, only negative reviews! More important: If you are not sure about a profile or have a bad feeling: Don't risk anything and continue looking for other hosts and stick to the motto "no risk, more fun!"


If you can see these symbols next to a person’s name, it means that his/her identity has been verified and that other people have vouched for them – which is also a really good sign.

Once you have chosen your future hosts (since the first request doesn’t always work out you might want to look for more than one possible host) you can start writing your request – which is the second most important part. Make your request personal and tell your future host why you chose her/him and also what you have to offer and why they should pick you. Maybe you have some interests in common, or you would like to hear about her/his year abroad which she/he mentioned in her/his profile, if she/he wrote that she/he knows basic German you could suggest helping her/him to improve it and so on. It is really important that your future host knows that you did some research and really want to stay with him/her – it’s still their home you will be staying at. And to be honest, you wouldn’t accept a request which says “Hi, I’m Julia and would like to stay at your place for free – looking forward to meeting you” either, right?

Personal experience

Now I would like to tell you about my first CouchSurfing experience, which was in NYC. A friend of mine and I wrote a couple of requests and ended up staying at Tim’s place. He lived in Flushing, Queens and was super nice. Since he had more than 60 positive reviews and wrote a whole novel about himself, we were not really concerned that we would end up staying at a mass murderer’s place - and it turned out that we were right ;)

We had some really really nice conversations with him, he told us about his many trips (he just came back from a year in Asia) and also told us where we should go/what we should see in the city. All in all it has been a great experience and I would definitely host him as well if he ever came to Austria.

Conclusion

In my opinion CouchSurfing is a great opportunity to meet many different people, to improve your language skills and to learn a lot about a different culture. Even more, you get the chance to live with a native who can give you tips or (if he/she has time) can even show you the city. But please keep in mind:

The main idea behind Couchsurfing is not to offer free accommodation. It’s aboutcultural exchange, communication and especially being open-minded and interested in other people and cultures. If you don’t want to communicate with your host, don’t want to hang out with him/her and just want to do your sightseeing with the people you travel with: a hostel would probably be a cheap alternative.

♪ ♫ Dancing through life ♬ ♩

“Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ll never be hurt. Dance like no one is watching!”

I’m pretty sure all of you have heard of the club “Kottulinsky”, but just to be on the safe side: It’s a club which is located pretty close to the University of Graz (Beethovenstraße 9), which is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and of course on the weekend.

But what most of you probably don’t know: Its doors also open on Tuesdays! But if you go there on a Tuesday you won’t find techno music or remixes, which are typical for most of the clubs in Graz – Tuesday is Salsa Night!

The doors open at 8pm and “A Taste of Latin Moves” starts at 8:30 and lasts an hour. There you can learn some basic dance steps with the help of a dance instructor. Afterwards the Salsa beats will continue and you can dance till dawn.

It really is a lot of fun and I’ve seen some amazing dancers while being there the last time! But you don’t have to be a professional dancer to go there – I only knew the basic steps and still had a lot of fun!

Great news for those of you who are under 21: On Tuesdays the age limit is 18 and the entrance is free for all guests!

Here is their Facebook page, where you can find out about special events (from time to time they have special themes, like for Halloween, Christmas and so on): http://www.facebook.com/SalsaLatinKottulinsky

Just give it a try, it really is a lot of fun and never forget:

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance!”

Carolina in my mind!

While living in the United States I’ve come around quite a lot – I saw pretty much all the big cities on the West Coast (I’ll write about this trip pretty soon) and have also been to some of the most popular cities on the East Coast, like Boston, NYC, Baltimore and Washington D.C.But since most of you probably know quite a lot about those cities already, I don’t want to write about them today. I’d like to tell you what to do in a “not so popular” State – North Carolina.

When I first read that my future host family lives in Raleigh, I was like ”Raleigh? Where the heck is that?”. Of course I wanted, like all the other Au Pairs, to go to a breathtaking city like NYC, LA or Chicago. But after skyping with my host family I just knew that I’d get along with the kids and my host parents very well and decided that being with a nice family was more important than living in an amazing city.

Afterwards I was and still am more than happy about my decision – I had the best host family ever and North Carolina has actually many interesting places/cities to visit. Some of them are:

Wilmington or “Little Hollywood”

One of the cutest and nicest towns I’ve ever been to – I loved it from the beginning. If you visit Wilmington you can combine it with a trip to the beach: Wrightsville Beach (my favorite), Carolina Beach and Kure Beach are all pretty close. Wilmington has a couple of tourist attractions like the battleship “USS North Carolina (BB-55)", which is open to public tours, a couple of museums and of course you can visit downtown Wilmington with its many shops, restaurants and historical buildings. Wilmington has its own University, UNC Wilmington, and the probably most interesting fact about Wilmington is that it is the home of the “EUE Screen Gems Studios”, which are the largest television and movie production facility outside of California. More than 350 productions come from the studio, like “One Tree Hill”, “Dawson’s Creek”, “Little Britain USA”, “Nights in Rodanthe” (based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks) and “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”. Parts of “Iron Man 3”, which will be released this year, were also filmed there. The Wilmington tourist information offers special tours (or just maps which show you the most important places) of some of the movies/shows – a friend of mine and I followed the “One Tree Hill path” and we saw all the important places like “Tree Hill High School”, the billiard pub where Brooke and Lucas get drunk, River Court, Karen’s Café and so on.

New Bern

New Bern is the second oldest town of North Carolina and also home of “Pepsi Cola”. You can visit the drugstore where it was developed and first sold and you can enjoy an “original” Pepsi for less than a Dollar! You can also see the first Capitol of NC, “Tryon Palace”, which is really beautiful. But that’s not why we went there – we were hoping to meet Nicholas Sparks (I know, we are freaks ;)), because he lives in New Bern, and his novel “The Notebook” is set there. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, but we still had a wonderful day.

 

 

Beaufort & Southport

Beaufort & Southport are also little historical towns/cities in North Carolina. As you can probably guess we went there because of some novels by Nicholas Sparks. Beaufort is small – well, to be honest, it’s tiny – but beautiful, and Southport has the biggest 4th of July parade of NC. Parts of “Dawson’s Creek”, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, "A Walk to Remember”, “Safe Haven” and many other movies were filmed in Southport, and Oak Island, a really beautiful beach, is only 20 minutes away.

    

The Great Smoky Mountains

The border between Tennessee and North Carolina runs through this National Park, so not all its beauty “belongs” to North Carolina, but it’s definitely worth a visit. The Great Smoky Mountains are part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which belong to the Appalachian Mountain chain (and thanks to our last exam we all know where the Appalachian Mountains are ;)). The highest point with 6.643 feet (2.025 meters) is at the summit of “Clingmans Dome”. The park has a number of historical attractions and a beautiful waterfall, there are many possibilities to go hiking and you can go fishing and horseback riding. At the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park you can find a town called Cherokee. There are many museums, where you can learn about the history of the Cherokee Indian Tribe, and you can find some shops where you can buy typical jewelry and crafts.

 

There are many other places in North Carolina which are worth visiting, like Charlotte, Asheville and so on, but the ones I mentioned above are my favorites. So if you ever get the chance to visit and explore North Carolina, just give it a try. Of course it’s gonna be something completely different than visiting NYC or LA, but it can be really nice to enjoy some nature and some beautiful and historical towns for a change :)

(source: Wikipedia & own experiences)

Curtains up - it's movie time!

I have to admit it – I am addicted to (good!) movies, and I just LOVE going to the movie theater. While being in NC some friends (who are as crazy about movies as I am) and I often went to the movies more than once a week – watching a good movie was just so relaxing after taking care of our host kids. There was a movie theater about 20 minutes away from where I lived – where each show only costs 2$ - my host mom used to say that the theater was my 3rd home ;)

Anyway, since I came back I haven’t been to the movies very often – mainly because of the (in my opinion way too) high ticket prices, and because there is no movie theater in Graz which shows English movies - or at least so I thought!

There actually is a little movie theater close to the tram station “Finanzamt” (Conrad von Hötzendorfstraße), which is called “Kiz Royal Kino”. It shows movies in their original language – with and without subtitles, depending on the movie. I’ve been there only once so far, but am definitely gonna go there more often as soon as all the exams are over. It’s rather small, but the seats are really comfy, the popcorn is yummy and best of all – it’s much cheaper than Cineplexx or UCI! My sister and I were there on a Saturday evening and paid 5,90€ each – if you want to watch a movie on a Saturday night at Cineplexx you pay almost double the price!

Although they don't show as many movies as Cineplexx or UCI do, they still offer some movies to choose from and always show at least two or three popular ones. Right now they show "The Hobbit", "Rise of the Guardians", "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and many more. Here is the link to their homepage: http://www.uncut.at/graz/kizroyal/



If anyone wants to see an English movie just let me know, maybe we could go together :)

Love is in the book umm air…

Hey guys,

today I’d like to tell you a little bit about one of my favorite authors: Nicholas Sparks. I love reading and I like pretty much all genres – I love Harry Potter, the Twilight-Saga, The Hunger Games Trilogy, Dan Brown books, Simon Beckett, classics like Pride and Prejudice,... – but the author I’d like to tell you about doesn't write Science-Fiction, Fantasy or Crime Novels – he writes about love. He was born in North Carolina and is an American novelist and screenwriter – and all his books play in and around my “second home” Raleigh – small cities/towns like Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, New Bern, Beaufort or Southport.



You might actually know some of his most famous books, maybe because you read them, or maybe you have already watched a movie based on one of his novels. Since most of you have German as your mother tongue I’m gonna give you the English as well as the German title of the books/movies, because usually if I say “you now, Nicholas Sparks, the author of >The Notebook< or the >Lucky One<", everybody is like “what the heck are you talking about?”, but as soon as I say “well, the German names of the movies are something like >Wie ein einziger Tag< and >Für immer der Deine<" everybody is like "Oh yeah, I know that movie, it's awesome!".

• So here’s the list of some of his books:
• The Notebook (Wie ein einziger Tag)
• A Walk to Remember (Zeit im Wind)
• Dear John (Das Leuchten der Stille)
• The Choice (Bis zum letzten Tag)
• The Lucky One (Für immer der Deine)
• The Last Song (Mit dir an meiner Seite)
• Safe Haven (Wie ein Licht in der Nacht)

I actually HATE the German titles of the books/movies – they make them sound way cheesier than they actually are. I read all of the books listed above, but the ones I liked the most were “The Notebook”, “The Choice”, “The Lucky One” and a few days ago I added “Safe Haven” to my fav list – I just loved it.



It’s about a woman who gets beaten and controlled by her husband, but since he is a cop she can’t go to the police. After trying to escape two times he threatens to kill her – and she tries to escape a last time, knowing that if it doesn’t work out now, she’s gonna be dead pretty soon. She actually manages to escape – but her scrupulous, violent and after she left always drunk husband swears to himself that he’s gonna find and finally kill her (or take her home, because he still loves her - he is a pretty weird and creepy guy). But will he find her? And what will he do to the man she falls in love with? Well, to get those answers you will just have to read the book, sorry guys ;)

But let me tell you – it’s totally worth reading (as are all of Sparks’ books) – I finished it in 2 days, coz I just couldn’t put it down.

Oh and btw – this book was also adapted as a movie – can't wait for February when it will be shown in Austrian movie theaters as well :)
And of course it plays – what a surprise – in North Carolina. Some friends and I were actually in Southport (where most part of the book plays) when it was filmed and we actually got a glimpse of the film crew and might even be somewhere in the background in the movie, because we were watching the 4th of July Parade just opposite of the film crew – if we really are in it I am definitely gonna write about it, I'll keep you posted ;)

Home is where your heart is ♥

 

HOME – the best place on earth. But what does home mean? And is it possible to call more than one place your „home“?

I live in Werndorf, where I also grew up, where my family lives and where everything is familiar to me. Until last year Werndorf has been my „only home“ – but in August 2011 everything changed.

After graduating from High school I decided it was time to explore the world and try something different. I thought about going abroad as an Au Pair – and since I’ve always wanted to go to the USA my dream destination was set. Everything worked out perfectly and Cultural Care (my agency) matched me with a family in Raleigh, NC. On August 14th 2011 I said goodbye to my family and friends and was off to the USA.

From the beginning my host family made me feel welcome and did not treat me like a stranger (which I actually was) at all and soon I felt like a real part of their family. I took care of two adorable boys – Micah was 5 and Nic was 4 when I arrived. They are now already 7 and 5 years old and cheerful, adventurous and absolutely lovely boys, who sometimes have just way too much energy. Even now, almost 5 months after I came back to Austria I still miss them a lot.

But it was not only my host family who made the year I spent in the USA as unforgettable and amazing as it was – I also met many people from all over the world, who became really close friends. Of course there were times when I missed my family and friends from Austria – but I never regretted the decision to go abroad for a year. It has been one of the best years of my life so far and I’m so thankful for everything I experienced, the people I met and the great times we had.

So to answer the questions above: For me “home” is a place where I have family and friends, where I feel happy, secure, welcomed and loved. But I associate all these things not only with my hometown Werndorf, but also with my (how I like to call it) second home – North Carolina. So for me it definitely is possible to have two homes, and a part of my heart will always remain in North Carolina with my family and friends, and I’m SO looking forward to seeing them (hopefully really soon) again.



Thank you guys for the past year, you are the best! ♥

Berlin - the place to be

Not only did I spend this NYE in an amazing city, but also with great friends. While living in Raleigh, NC for a year I met people from all over the world - America, Australia, Sweden, Estonia, Germany, France, South Korea, Mexico, South Africa, Poland - well, I could continue forever. Anyway, one really close friend, her name is Annika, lives in the capital of Germany - Berlin.

Me and Lisa (another friend I met while being in the US) decided to celebrate this NYE with her in Berlin – which turned out to be an awesome decision. We actually were able to meet two other friends we met in NC, since they were celebrating in Berlin as well, and another friend of mine, who lives in Berlin.

Of course we saw the typical landmarks, sights and places of Berlin – “Brandenburger Tor”, “Alexanderplatz”, “Fernsehturm” and so on, but we also went to “Madame Tussauds”, “Sea Life” and, because it was included in a package we bought, we went to “Legoland”. At first we were a little bit skeptical, since we thought it would only be interesting for little kids – but believe me, it was fascinating. We couldn’t believe what people can do with Lego – superheroes, dragons, animals and – which was the most fascinating – they built the city of Berlin. Here are some pictures:

  

We also went to the “Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial”, also known as “Stasi-Museum”, which was super interesting but really shocking as well. The tour guide was great, because he did not only give us facts about the DDR, but also told us about his experiences – he was arrested three times because he had different political beliefs than he was “supposed to have” – in other words, he was arrested for expressing his thoughts. Since he lived through the horror of being imprisoned and told us about it, we could really feel how horrible and unfair “political criminals” were treated back then.

 

Another really cool thing we did was visiting a hotel. Yeah I know, sounds boring and you might think what’s so interesting about a hotel, but let me tell you, it was impressing. I’m pretty sure all of you have heard of the famous Waldorf-Astoria hotel in NYC? Well, since this week you can book rooms (210€ - 12.000€) for the Waldorf-Astoria in Berlin as well. But before the hotel was officially opened, they had an “open weekend”. Annika read about it on the internet, but unfortunately you had to book your ticket (the entrance was free, but otherwise there would have been too many people, so they required you to reserve your spot) in advance, which we didn’t do. Anyway, we thought we’d give it a try – and were lucky – some of the guests who booked a ticket didn’t show up, and we got in. They showed us their lobby, restaurants, spa and one of the rooms – luxury, deluxe and fashionable:

 

We decided that one day, when we are rich and famous (just kidding ;)) we’ll be able to afford the presidential suite – which costs about 12.000€ a night.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we had a great time and I wish y’all a belated Happy New Year J