January 23, 2009

İzmir CouchSurfing Meeting
Bornova, Turkey

Onur and his flatmate Selçuk both came out with me to a huge CouchSurfing meeting in downtown İzmir tonight.

Lots of smoking on the part of the participants, but the amount of energy was absolutely amazing. There must have been over 30 people there—both Turks and travelers from all over the place—with maybe eight or so girls in the mix (that were never hurting for conversation, if you catch my drift).

In the neon-blue twilight of the bar I met a frugal 67-year-old backpacker (and an occasional CouchSurfer) named Jim, from Portland, Oregon. (You can take a peek at his intermittently-updated blog here)

Jim's memorable quote for the evening: "The only people that get bored [traveling] are boring people."

Recently in this country...

Submit a Comment:

Note: Comments are open to everyone. To reduce spam and reward regular contributors, only submissions from first-time commenters and/or those containing hyperlinks are moderated, and will appear after approval. Hateful or off-topic remarks are subject to pruning. Hyperlinks are happily "nofollow-free". Your e-mail address will never be publicly disclosed or abused.