Misha Chinkov's Blog: paranoid android
June 16, 2022
So I wrote a book about Couchsurfing
I wrote the whole book about CouchSurfing being a part of my life during the last 7 years (2015-2022).
A bit of my story here: M26, living in Berlin since 4 years, originally from Russia. Got into CouchSurfing when I was in the States via Work&Travel and kept surfing&hosting thereafter until recently. Got into writing as a hobby 3 years ago, mostly working on short stories. The main idea was to do something serious with my writing, and the idea of recalling all CouchSurfing stories and making a book from them came up naturally. At some point, I tried to envision it as a sort of farewell to CouchSurfing sharing my feelings of gratitude I've had. I guess, CouchSurfing really played a part in the formation of my personality. In other words, CouchSurfing made me who I am
Assuming the CouchSurfing experience is adventurous per se, I didn't even need to make up the plot. I was just writing what happened, one story after another, trying to be honest and sincere with myself at first and with my reader in general. Yeah, there are cool stories where you meet few strangers, party, get drunk, mess things up and have fun from it. "Boring" stay-overs with the "confession talk" in the kitchen that make you more educated. Fucked-up moments where you have to leave your host immediately. Moments where you fuck things up yourself. All of them represent the sense of community and its diversity, and none of them should be forgotten or omitted.
After traveling through Italy last month, I've realized CouchSurfing is way more dead than alive. I mean, even back then in 2015 it was already on the decline, but with all those paywalls and UX shaming it resembles a tumbleweed nowadays. So I've unsubscribed and thus brought my book to its logical conclusion. Hope the original idea will get reincarnated in TrustRoots or Couchers.org.
I wrote this book in Russian, as it's my mother language and I know how to cook it on writing. So I'd appreciate if Russian-speaking CouchSurfers from this sub could take a look and give me feedback how it felt. Also, would be cool if you folks could share this book with your Russian-speaking hosts and surfers, as it contains a quite solid CS vibe. The book is free of charge, but here I failed to post the link to it, since Reddit considers it as "spam" and removes the post from this sub. If this book gets some traction, I would be happy to translate it into English with the help of a skillful translator.
Once again, thanks to CouchSurfing to make me write my first book.
Originally wrote this to r/couchsurfing
https://www.reddit.com/r/couchsurfing...
кауч
A bit of my story here: M26, living in Berlin since 4 years, originally from Russia. Got into CouchSurfing when I was in the States via Work&Travel and kept surfing&hosting thereafter until recently. Got into writing as a hobby 3 years ago, mostly working on short stories. The main idea was to do something serious with my writing, and the idea of recalling all CouchSurfing stories and making a book from them came up naturally. At some point, I tried to envision it as a sort of farewell to CouchSurfing sharing my feelings of gratitude I've had. I guess, CouchSurfing really played a part in the formation of my personality. In other words, CouchSurfing made me who I am
Assuming the CouchSurfing experience is adventurous per se, I didn't even need to make up the plot. I was just writing what happened, one story after another, trying to be honest and sincere with myself at first and with my reader in general. Yeah, there are cool stories where you meet few strangers, party, get drunk, mess things up and have fun from it. "Boring" stay-overs with the "confession talk" in the kitchen that make you more educated. Fucked-up moments where you have to leave your host immediately. Moments where you fuck things up yourself. All of them represent the sense of community and its diversity, and none of them should be forgotten or omitted.
After traveling through Italy last month, I've realized CouchSurfing is way more dead than alive. I mean, even back then in 2015 it was already on the decline, but with all those paywalls and UX shaming it resembles a tumbleweed nowadays. So I've unsubscribed and thus brought my book to its logical conclusion. Hope the original idea will get reincarnated in TrustRoots or Couchers.org.
I wrote this book in Russian, as it's my mother language and I know how to cook it on writing. So I'd appreciate if Russian-speaking CouchSurfers from this sub could take a look and give me feedback how it felt. Also, would be cool if you folks could share this book with your Russian-speaking hosts and surfers, as it contains a quite solid CS vibe. The book is free of charge, but here I failed to post the link to it, since Reddit considers it as "spam" and removes the post from this sub. If this book gets some traction, I would be happy to translate it into English with the help of a skillful translator.
Once again, thanks to CouchSurfing to make me write my first book.
Originally wrote this to r/couchsurfing
https://www.reddit.com/r/couchsurfing...
кауч
paranoid android
still can't afford to translate my books to English and other languages, preserving vibe and quality, but at least I can write a blog about stuff that I'm writing about
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