耐性有限

Travelers Now Surf the World Wide Couch

By PENELOPE GREEN

旅行新趨勢，利用沙發遊覽世界

譯者  康鈴
 

  Neil Medel’s Manhattan apartment is certainly homey, but it is by no means spacious. Just 2 meters by 3 meters with one window, it is a living room in miniature. Mr. Medel, who is 33 and works for an importing company, sleeps on a loft platform that he shares with 40 pairs of blue jeans that rise in untidy stacks, and blue plastic tubs stuffed with other belongings.

  尼爾‧梅德在曼哈頓的公寓的確很舒適，但絕對稱不上寬敞；二乘三公尺的面積加上一個窗戶，只能說是一間客廳的縮影。在一間出口公司工作的梅德先生三十三歲，睡在一個堆滿四十件牛仔褲的平台上，藍色的塑膠盆中則充斥著其他家當。

  Nonetheless, the Philippine-born Mr. Medel is an eager and generous host at least three days out of seven to like-minded visitors from Los Angeles, Texas, Sweden, Germany and points beyond. Mr. Medel is a couch surfer, as are his guests; he and they find one another through the Couch Surfing Project, at couchsurfing.com, a three-year-old global community built on a MySpace/Facebook model of personal profiles connected through a network of “friends.” According to statistics on the site, it has well over 300,000 members from more than 31,000 towns and cities around the world.

  即使如此，菲律賓出生的梅德先生是個熱心又大方的東道主，常常每個星期有三天以上拿來招待從洛杉磯、德州、瑞典、德國，甚至更遠的地方來的志趣相同的旅人。梅德先生和他的客人們都是沙發旅人；他們在couchsurfing.com的沙發旅遊計畫找到彼此，這個網絡已成立三年，利用MySpace跟Facebook的人際網絡發展而成。根據網站的統計，全球已有來自三萬多個城鎮的三十多萬個使用者參與。

  The group’s philosophy is also its method, which might be summed up this way: I will offer you my couch free, along with the company of my friends and a tour of my favorite spots in my city. In return, you will give of yourself, and not just slink into my home at 3 a.m. after you’ve done your own tour of my city. In this way, we will be friends, if only for a day or two.

  沙發旅遊計畫的哲學同時是它的規則，或許可以如此簡單說明：我提供你免費的沙發，還有我跟朋友的陪伴，並帶你在我的城市裡遊覽我最喜歡的地點；相對地，你也要有基本的禮節，而不是在自己遊覽完我的城市之後的凌晨三點偷偷摸摸進入我家。以上都能做到的話，我們將能成為朋友──如果只是一、兩天的話。

  Or, as its mission statement proclaims: “Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time.”

  又或者像計畫的宗旨所說的：「一次一個沙發，一起創造一個更好的世界。」

  Couch surfing takes an ancient notion of hospitality and tucks it into a thoroughly modern paradigm, the social networking Web site. But, as its members say sternly, it is not a site for dating, or for freeloaders.

  沙發旅遊計畫承續了好客的概念，並利用一個徹底現代的機制，網路網站，來實現這個想法。然而，就像使用者堅決表示的，這不是個交友網站，也不是讓人拿來找白吃白喝旅遊的。

  “It’s a lifestyle and a commitment,” Mr. Medel said.

  梅德先生說：「這代表一種生活方式及一種信仰。」

  Inevitably, there have been couch surfing romances, marriages and even babies. Sherry Huckabee, 41, a couch surfer from Charlotte, North Carolina, is now living in Romania since falling in love with her host, Hans Hedrich, last summer, ending a two-year surf of Europe. Now Ms. Huckabee and Mr. Hedrich, 36, are hosts to 20 young surfers at a time: Mr. Hedrich, Ms. Huckabee said proudly, has an open-couch policy.

  無可避免地，當然有也一些因為沙發旅遊計畫而產生的戀情、婚姻，甚至是小孩。四十一歲的雪莉‧哈咖比是來自北卡羅來納州夏洛特的沙發旅人，現在住在羅馬尼亞，因為去年夏天時她和出借沙發給她的漢斯‧海德力墜入愛河，也因而結束了她長達兩年的歐洲之旅。現在哈咖比小姐和三十六歲的海德力先生一次招待二十個年輕的沙發旅人；他們驕傲地說，他們家的沙發為旅人敞開。

  In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where nearly every corner of the earth, from Bulgaria to Bhutan, is open for tourism, the home is the final frontier, the last authentic experience. Instead of being in some sanitized hotel in Hanoi, said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine, “if I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa.” He added: “I’ve already leap-frogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

  在這個機票便宜、出國不再困難的時代，地球上幾乎每個角落，從保加利亞到不丹，都在推動旅遊業，家便成了最後一個還沒開發的地區，飽含當地真實的生活經驗。旅遊雜誌Budget Travel的編輯艾瑞克‧托可斯說：「如果我選擇沙發旅遊，我可能會躺在某個移居國外者或當地人的沙發上，而非河內的某間消毒過的旅館中。」他又說：「我已經跨過障礙，往前邁了一大步，在平常的狀況下通常得花好幾週的時間才能進入其他人的家。」

  Then Mr. Torkells, 38, asked plaintively: “This is for the young, right? I don’t even want to sleep on my sister’s couch.”

  接著，三十八歲的托克斯先生哀怨地問：「不過，這是年輕人的把戲吧！我甚至不想睡在我妹妹的沙發上。」

  Just before noon one day in mid-September, Marisol Montoya, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Los Angeles, was rolling up her red silk pajamas and tucking them next to the red fuzzy slippers in her suitcase. She had spent two nights on Mr. Medel’s tiny couch, which was no trial, she said, because she had been dancing hard most nights and liked to elevate her feet by hanging them over the arms.

  就在九月中的某天中午之前，從洛杉磯來的二十五歲電影製作人瑪莉索‧蒙托亞正將她的紅色絲質睡衣捲好、放在行李箱中的紅色絨毛拖鞋旁邊。她在梅德先生的小沙發上睡了兩夜，她說雖然沙發很小，但睡起來一點問題也沒有，因為她好幾個晚上都瘋狂跳舞，所以沙發的扶手正好讓她拿來翹腳。

  Mr. Medel was her second host; she had arranged for three different couches, she said, because she wanted to see three different New York neighborhoods. “It’s like a cultural study,” she said.

  梅德先生是瑪莉索的第二個沙發主人，瑪莉索為這趟旅行找了三個不同的沙發，因為她想看看紐約裡三個不同的地區，她說：「這就像在做文化研究一樣。」

  Like Servas, the so-called hospitality network that has promoted peace through home stays since World War II, the Couch Surfing Project aims “to bring people together and create intercultural understanding,” said Daniel Hoffer, one of its founders.

  如同Servas，二次大戰後利用接待家推行和平的好客組織，沙發旅行計畫的目標在「讓不同文化的人們透過跟彼此相處的機會了解他人的文化。」創建者之一的丹尼爾‧侯弗說。

  Or, as Mark Credland, an electrical engineer living in Toronto whose job requires extensive travel in the United States, explained: “I used to try to meet people in bars and would always end up getting stuck talking to the drunk in the corner.” Couch surfing yields better conversations, he said.

  或者像住在多倫多，但因工作而須時常旅居美國的電機工程師馬克‧克雷蘭說的：「過去我試著在酒吧裡認識人，但最後總是陷入跟角落裡的醉漢交談的窘境。沙發旅遊產生的對話實在好多了。」

  Mr. Hoffer, 29, started his first dot-com when he was 15 and now develops new business for Symantec, the software security company. His main couch surfing co-founder, Casey Larkin Fenton, 29, is also a dot-com veteran. Couch surfing was Mr. Fenton’s idea.

  二十九歲的侯弗在十五歲時架設了他的第一個網站，現在則為防毒軟體公司賽門鐵客發展新計畫。另一個跟他一起建立沙發旅遊的要角，是二十九歲的凱西‧拉金‧芬頓，也是個網路公司老手，沙發旅遊原是芬頓先生的主意。

  “I knew it was how I wanted to travel,” Mr. Fenton said. “But I didn’t know if other people would. I thought, I’ll take a chance and see if there are other people like me. And, wow, do they exist.”

  芬頓說：「我知道這就是我想要的旅遊，但不知道別人是怎麼想的，我只是想著要先試試看沙發旅遊，看是否有跟我一樣想法的人，結果，哇，這些人真的存在耶！」

  A state of near ceaseless traveling puts the couch surfer in a transnational zone, an idea dear to Pico Iyer, the British-born author of Indian parents who has been writing about home and nomadism for 25 years. “Home for folks like the couch surfers has less and less to do with a piece of soil and more to do with the friends and values they carry,” Mr. Iyer said. “I think the beauty of the present century is that more and more folks are defining their home inwardly.”

  雙親是印度人、在英國出生的作家皮可‧伊爾，以家和游牧主義為題，已經寫了二十五年。由於近乎不停歇的旅行，使他產生把沙發旅遊計畫推展到跨國際規模的想法。伊爾先生說：「對沙發旅人之類的人而言，家的意義漸漸從一片土地變成了他們認同的朋友和價值觀。我認為二十一世紀的美麗就在於越來越多的人把家定義成一種內在的精神。」

  Mark Ellingham, the founder of the Rough Guide travel guides, noted, too, that what couch surfing seems to diminish is the idea of the foreign country as a commodity to be sampled and purchased.

  旅遊指南Rough Guide的創辦者馬克‧艾靈翰也注意到，沙發旅人似乎不再視異國為可體驗及可購買的商品。

  “It sounds more empathetic than the old hippie-backpacker thing of seeing what you can get out of a place and moving on,” he said. “It reminds me of when everyone was hitchhiking, a practice that stopped in the 1990s either because of fear or a new affluence, or both. Hitchhikers were very committed, too. It’s a new idea but an old ethos.”

  馬克‧艾靈翰說：「跟以前嬉皮背包客主張的遊覽一個地方然後前往下一個目的地相比，沙發旅遊聽起來更吸引人。我想起過去有段時間，大家都習慣在路邊舉起大拇指要搭便車，但一九九零年後就漸漸消失了，或是因為對陌生人的恐懼，或是因為人們越來越有錢，或是因為兩者。搭便車的旅人也非常忠誠，沙發旅遊是一個新概念，但來自於一個舊價值。」

  Jim Stone, 30, has been surfing nonstop for three and a half years. He was the 99^th person to join the Couch Surfing Project. He had been working in the tax appraiser’s office in Denton, Texas, he said, “and I was alarmed that two years went by so quickly and I hadn’t done anything significant.”

  三十歲的吉姆‧史東已經不間斷地沙發旅遊了三年半，他是第九十九個加入沙發旅遊計畫的使用者。吉姆‧史東曾在德州丹頓的稅評估署工作，他說：「然後我突然驚覺到，兩年的光陰飛逝，而我卻一事無成。」

  Mr. Stone’s traveling companions are a red blow-up couch, a Winnie the Pooh costume he likes to hitchhike in, two pairs of stretch leopard pants, and dress-work clothes pressed and stored in a Ziploc bag in his pack.

  史東先生的旅行夥伴有一個紅色的吹氣沙發、一套他愛穿著搭便車的維尼熊服裝、兩條伸縮的豹紋長褲，和折好放在鏈夾袋裡的衣服。

  He worked odd jobs around the globe for the last four years to finance his travels. Since July, however, he has been working full-time for the Couch Surfing Project, as one of its three paid employees, operating from his laptop, wherever he may be. Does that mean he is settling down?

  為了籌旅費，史東先生在世界各地打了四年零工。然而，六月起他成為沙發旅遊計畫的三位有薪全職員工之一，不管他身處何地，只要透過筆記型電腦就可以工作。這表示他終於安頓下來了嗎？

  “I like this traveling road show of my friends,” he said, describing what are known in couch surfing circles as collectives, in which 100 or so volunteers, mostly experts in programming, surf a city for a few months while tinkering with the Web site. A collective for Thailand is planned for next year. “My mom is real happy,” he did admit, “especially now that I have a real job.”

  「我喜歡這條由朋友們打造的旅途秀，」他說的是沙發旅遊圈中的集合體，每個集合體中有一百個左右自願者，大多是程式高手，他們一面花幾個月旅遊一個城市，一面進行網站的修補。一個以泰國為主題的集合體將在明年誕生。使東西先承認：「我媽真的很開心，尤其是現在我有了一份實在的工作。」