CURRENT MISSION

My current mission is to visit the National Parks in the USA with my traveling partner, Sanjaya Prasad.

ABOUT ME

Interested in exploring the world, and for now focusing on North America.
While living in Kosovo I hosted over 300 surfers and had the best time of my life!
Then in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, while living in a very small house, I have hosted 200.
I hope to host many more of the world's most interesting and flexible couch surfers.

PHILOSOPHY

Thoughts become things, so choose only the good ones! You create the world you want!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

While living in Europe, the Pristina media crowned me the Couch Surfing King...

This is a June, 2012, article from the PRISTINA INSIGHT, a bi-weekly news magazine in Kosovo.

The Kosovo Couchsurfers’ King

You’re travelling somewhere new this summer, right? You’re wondering about the accommodation you can find – cheap, environmentally-friendly, not too touristy?

Couchsurfing is your solution. Better than cheap, it’s free, and it saves you not just money, but all the wasted resources of hotel rooms with their teeny plastic-packaged toiletries, their televisions for every guest, the towels relaundered every day. Moreover, couchsurfing is the way to get under the skin of a city, to understand it from a local’s point of view, and maybe have a chance to contribute something while you’re there. Visit www.couchsurfing.org (‘the world’s largest travel community’) for the full definition, but in essence it’s a way of travelling that enables you to be put in touch with contacts who can host you (on a couch or with a spare bed, or with space to put up a tent, or without offering accommodation at all, but meeting you for a drink to give you advice about places to see) for your stay in a foreign city.

David Cozart is an American teacher at a private school in Prishtina. He’s also a couchsurfing king. He’s hosted TWO HUNDRED people in the last 6 months. They’ve been from all over the globe – a little United Nations of travelers from across Europe and the English-speaking world, but also Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Israel, Russia, Brazil and Somalia. ‘I just wish I’d got to meet the guy from Iran they turned back at the airport,’ David says. ‘He had one digit wrong in my phone number and the people in Kosovan immigration didn’t believe that he had a host here, and he wasn’t able to contact me. They tried the same thing with an Egyptian couchsurfer but luckily he had my number saved and so was able to contact me to come and vouch for him at the airport’.

It’s a nice story, and you think David must be a nice guy. And then you think what that story really means. David has spent a day teaching. He’s got back to his flat, to find a number of couchsurfers hanging out there (he tells me that last week he had 12 people staying). He sits down to dinner, starts to settle into his evening – and then a stranger from Egypt calls from the airport, and so David gets in a car and drives the 30 minutes to Sllatina to negotiate with the immigration authorities and bring the traveler home to a safe bed.

It’s madness, and it’s marvellous hospitality, in the extreme Albanian version, where your home, as the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini says, ‘belongs to God and the guest’.

It’s clear from the comments on the couchsurfing website that David is an inspiration to the people who stay with him. He’s a gentle, thoughtful man and his guests talk about leaving his home as better people. While they’re staying, David shares his knowledge of Prishtina, and he encourages guests to take part in volunteering activities – the ‘Let’s Do It Kosova’ clean-up campaign, or events for World Environment Day (or, yes, helping with sorting clothes and teaching kids at The Ideas Partnership’s activities in the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian neighbourhood of Fushë Kosovë).

David is typically modest about his generosity in sharing his home with others, ‘everyone that has surfed at my place has enriched my days and given me reason to smile,’ he says. ‘I never turn on my TV because talking to real people about their real lives is much more interesting.’

David’s record of visitor numbers is unrivalled, but if he is the king of couchsurfers, he is not alone in the couchsurfing court. There are 140 couchsurfers registered as hosts in Prishtina, Most, of course, are Kosovars, though there is a handful of expats like David. They’ve all signed up to the couchsurfing code which includes the basic principles about tolerance, the community’s self-moderation, that the service is free (no asking for money or labour in exchange for your couch) and has the aim of friendship (one rule is ‘don’t go looking for a date… we will consider this harassment’). But there’s always room for one more… Why not join them?

And even if you don’t want to offer accommodation to others in Prishtina, you can always use the service as a guest on your travels this summer. There is no requirement for direct reciprocity so you can couchsurf with someone else before hosting travelers at your home. But as David says, ‘what’s stopping you? These are life-affirming relationships you’re making’.

Elizabeth Gowing is a founder of The Ideas Partnership, a Kosovan NGO working on educational, cultural and environmental projects. She is also the author of the recently-published, Travels in Blood and Honey; becoming a beekeeper in Kosovo. She can be reached on theideaspartnership@gmail.com

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Only really cool people send me couch requests!
(So, you decide if you are cool, if you are nice and leave my house clean and tidy that is enough for me.)

Everyone that has surfed at my place has enriched
my days and given me reason to smile!

I have surfed in Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Scandinavia, Central America, the USA, Canada, and Cuba. I have accepted couch requests from over 500 people/couples/groups from over 70 countries.

Interests

Interested in hosting people from exotic places, little out of the way places... and the land of the midnight sun.

Studebakers, history, art, architecture, religion, politics, trains, culture, food...

How we live and care for our planet, alternative ways of living, sustainability, urban planing, transportation and designing the future.

Meeting new people and seeing the world from a new perspective!

• arts
• culture
• writing
• architecture
• environment
• dining
• politics
• news
• traveling
• socializing
• surfing
• communications
• teaching
• history
• religion
• volunteering
• studebaker

Music, Movies, and Books

Pop music, independent film, and Atlas Shrugged...

I had a great time making a short film for the Fischgaard Film Festival, and enjoy hanging out with creative, imaginative people from all walks of life.

I read mostly biography, the lives of people, great and unknown, who have positive life philosophies and ideas that matter. I like to visit amazing buildings that have formed who we are as humans and express our deepest longings.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I always meet the most amazing people and have incredible experiences! Sometimes I think I live more in a week then than the average person does in a life time! Watching lava flow into the Pacific Ocean while sitting on the edge of the big island of Hawaii, climbing through the night to see the sunrise from Sri Lanka's holy Sri Pada mountain, watching a F1 race in Abu Dhabi, and looking out my friends livingroom window and seeing the Alps are amazing experiences I cherish. Most recently I had a most wonderful time in Cuba. Couch surfing in Havana was a most amazing experience with generous and insightful hosts!

Teach, Learn, Share

I love to meet people who love where they live and want to share their insights with me.

What I Can Share with Hosts

http://www.traveltip.org/visited.php?dcozart

Through couch surfing I have shared my life with hundreds of couch surfers from over 70 countries, 6 continents, I even hosted two deaf lesbians! People from age 18 to 82 years young, all major religions and life philosophies. I have learned something from every guest and changed my views and view of the world.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guam, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Macao, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Oman, Palestine, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Bahrain, China, Guam, Honduras, Israel, Kosovo, Northern Mariana Islands, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States

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