When the train showed no sign of stopping, Benjamin Thompson and his two friends had no choice but to jump. They were in a small town in Croatia thousands of miles from home with only a backpack full of essentials to sustain them for the next three weeks.As the economy worsens and college costs continue to augment, students like Thompson are finding methods to travel cheaply. Some methods, such as hostels and hitchhiking, have been used for years but with the advent of the Internet, couch surfing is gaining popularity worldwide.
So when Thompson’s friends Anthony and Adria Trgovich invited him on this trip to Croatia, he knew hotels weren’t an option. Instead they relied on the hospitality of strangers.
“It looked like something out of the Cold War or Soviet Union. So we all looked at each other: Anthony, Adria and me like ‘where the hell are we?” said the Cal Poly psychology senior.
Waiting for them at the dilapidated train station was a young stocky man with a baby in a stroller and two small black and brown dogs grinning from ear to ear.
The man was Arbo Galant, husband of Klara and father of baby Maya. For the following week, this family would host them thanks to a Web site called the Couch Surfing Project.
“They served us spaghetti and we drank wine while we discussed politics,” said Thompson. “They hated Bush, but were crazy about Obama so I gave them this Obama pin I had and they went crazy,” he added.
For three college students on a budget, couch surfing was a cheap way to learn another culture and have a place to eat and sleep for free.
The Web site serves as a place where couch surfers can congregate and accommodate each other with housing for a set number of nights while they travel.
As of February 2009, Thompson was one of 943,790 couch surfers and hosts worldwide, according the Couch Surfing Project Web site.
With their host family, the Galants, they toured towns and ruins on the Istriran peninsula. Sometimes the hosts even served as personal guides of their native land, Thompson said.
Guests can give back to their host in many ways including giving them U.S. currency, or as Thompson did, prized memorabilia.
“I had these California state quarters that I would give away to the people I thought were cool. So that they would have something to remember me by,” he said.
When it came time to leave the Galants, the group went online to find another host in Croatia. But the system isn’t fail-proof, Thompson said. In some cases, the host never answered their phones or replied to e-mails.
“You have to have a back-up plan in this situation,” Thomson cautioned. “We ended up staying at a hotel.”
After he left Croatia, Thompson reflected on what he could have done and brought to make his trip better.
“Couch surfing doesn’t require you to bring a lot of things with you, but whatever you bring to liven things up a little helps. If you have a guitar, bring that. One of the people I hosted had a surfboard with him, so I took him surfing.”
He suggests packing three pairs of underwear, a couple of shirts and pants, jackets, socks, sleeping pad and a good book. “I made the bad choice to bring my laptop with me. It was dumb because everyone there had Internet access.”
He also had safety tips for people new to couch surfing. Surf in small groups like he did and stay with hosts who have a good reputation and use common sense.
“I was a little sketched out; you just have smart about things and be alert,” Thompson added.
Like Thompson, journalism senior Scott Silvey and his cousin also were smart and alert about traveling when they voyaged to the Europe.
With a budget of $2,000 for a 30-day backpacking trip, Silvey was bound to hit roadblocks.
His initial plan to stay at cheaper hostels and Armed Forces Vacation Club (AFVC) locations was ruined when he was stranded for a few days on an island off the coast of Southeastern Spain. Hotels ran $400 a night there while the AFVC vacation was $230 for one week.
A non-traditional way to travel cheaply, AFVC accommodations are only for people in the armed forces and relatives. Silvey’s stepfather is an Army retiree, so he had a gift certificate with him to stay in Ibiza on the island off the coast of Southeastern Spain.
Silvey was as concerned about keeping away prying hands as he was saving money on his trip.
“After my trip to Europe, I definitely was more cautious of where I keep my money,” Silvey said. “We got scammed the last day we were there.”
Silvey didn’t have as much luck with strangers as Thompson did. A man presenting himself as a Good Samaritan offered to exchange euros when there was no official location to swap currency and “he pretty much kept like, 18 out of the 20 euros that I gave him,” Silvey said.
Throughout their trips to France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany and France, they rode the Eurail with a $250 10-day pass. They mostly stayed at hostels with other college students.
At one of the hostels, Silvey’s cousin was awakened to the dangers of traveling in unfamiliar nations when she was sexually harassed by a man in France.
“It’s best that people travel in pairs because it’s safer that way,” Silvey said, echoing Thompson’s advice.
By trip’s end, Silvey had gone a few hundred dollars over budget, with food his biggest expense.
“We would eat out a lot, and food (in Europe) is expensive. They even charge for a glass of water,” Silvey said. He said people wanting to save money on food while traveling can eat the cheap meals hostel cafeterias offer their guest.
Both Thompson and Silvey relied on the train and Eurail to travel through Europe, but back in the U.S., another Cal Poly student traveled with just a gesture of his hand.
Journalism senior Dave Meyers hitchhiked his way to visit friends working at Denali National Park in Alaska and also down to Peru.
Hitchhiking while free or the cheapest way to commute, is also the most time consuming, unreliable and dangerous. But for the adventurous Dave Meyers, hitchhiking was right up his alley.
So he packed his bag for the long trip with clothes and camping fundamentals along with a mini foot-long skateboard and a digital camera.
Initially he was going to hitchhike to and from Alaska. Instead he ended up riding with a friend up to Canada to meet his then-girlfriend.
Along the way they stopped at different locations in Northern California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming to rock climb and see the sights.
He started hitchhiking once in Canada with his girlfriend and found her presence made hitchhiking easier.
The wait to get picked up can take as long as a day and a half or just 30 seconds.
“If you have a pretty girl with you, people just trust you so much more,” he said. “It’s definitely harder without (the) girl, but you just smile and try to look clean. sometimes I would wear a collared-shirt.”
That formula worked well and even families picked him up. “I would have kids on my lap and sometimes have these old guys that tried to father me, and moms that tried to mother me.”
As a journalist, Meyers used the people he met hitchhiking as material for stories he wrote.
“The type of people that pick you up are hilarious. I’ve met some of the most interesting people that I met in my life hitchhiking,” he said.
From semi-truck drivers that didn’t speak a word of English to a man zooming past him on a motorcycle, he was willing to get a ride.
“I’d never been on a motorcycle before, and here I was trusting this stranger, riding with him for about 45 minutes, averaging 80 mph until his tire went flat,” he continued.
Eventually he arrived in Alaska and met up with his friend. The visit was short lived however and he, now with his friend in tow, were soon back on the road.
Tents were their homes and oatmeal and tortillas were their meals for the majority of the trip. Meyers even recalls fishing for food and the best sushi in his life was Alaskan salmon he caught. Money was not abundant but every now and then though, kind strangers gave them a treat. Several times people offered their homes for the two to stay and eat.
When Meyers and his friend arrived at the Canada/Alaskan border, they only had a dollar between the two, an insufficient amount that caused problems with Canadian border patrol.
“Here we were two California kids denied entry to Canada because we didn’t have the $500 needed to cross the border,” Meyers said. Just minutes from being turned away, Meyers called his father to wire him the money so that he could cross the border.
But Meyers didn’t only save money from the trip, he made money. The photos from the trip continue to foot that $500 bill every time he sells them.