Last summer I posted my profile on Couchsurfing.com, a site that is dedicated to bringing cultures together by linking travelers looking for a place to stay with empty couches. At the time I enlisted, my home was in Brevard, NC on the campus of Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute and so I set my status on Couchsurfing.com to “traveling”. At that point I forgot about the site and forgot that my status was set in a way that discouraged people from contacting me. When I registered on the site, I did so because I knew that I was fortunate to have the space back in Charlotte to host people and I wanted to offer that to people coming through the area. Additionally, I love talking about Charlotte, its good parts and bad parts.

Over the previous week as I was planning my trip out to Vancouver to visit the campus of UBC I thought that couchsurfing might be an option so I looked up my old Couchsurfing.com profile and noticed that I was listed as “traveling”. After I changed my status, I showed up in searches for people looking to couchsurf in Charlotte.

Jörg and Karoline were flying into Charlotte on Lufthansa’s connection from Munich and were catching a flight the next day to Costa Rica. So when Jörg sent me a message about staying in my house on Friday night, between the two flights I knew I had to find a way to do it. I purchased some miracle berries a few months ago and was waiting for the right moment to throw a party. Coincidentally, I planned the miracle berry tasting party for Friday night. Miracle berries transform the sour and bitter tastes into delicious and sweet for about an hour. If I was couchsurfing, this was the type of thing I’d like to stumble on to. We had a full house as John and Marcus were sleeping over here too.

As I drove out to the Trader Joe’s on Friday evening to pick up the last few lemons and limes, Jörg called me from the CLT airport and I told him to swing by. He had read about Concord Mills and wanted to check it out first, since it was in the same area as my house. I warned that, “it was an excellent example of gaudy Americanism”. I kicked off the tasting party around 9:00 and was surprised that the little berries worked so well. Lemons tasted like honey and tonic water tasted like sprite!

Jörg and Karoline showed up around 10 and after I introduced myself and my friends I got them some berries too. I explained what the berries did to the taste buds and handed over two of the red little fruits.It was rather brave of them to walk into a random house in another country and to eat weird berries. But we all had a great time and all my friends loved talking to our new friends from Hamburg. In the morning I cooked up some bacon, eggs and grits before they had to drive down to the airport for the flight out to Costa Rica. I only wish we would have had more time to talk and a few spare hours to drive around the city pointing out the sights.

Jörg gave me an awesome shirt from the Hamburg soccer club, St. Pauli. I wore it happily to the Double Door Inn for some music on the following evening and had a great time with it all.

I’m looking forward to a new opportunity to host couchsurfers from across the world. I can only hope my next couchsurfers will be as charming as the first pair.