I am in Lucerne, Switzerland, and it is raining.

I’ve taken a pause in my walk to let my coat dry out, and I thought I’d use the time to answer a few questions. I’ve gotten quite a few letters asking me what I’ve actually been doing, apart from foiling airport security.

I’ve been couchsurfing.

While attending a house party in Norwich, the host, Karl, found out that I’d be traveling Europe for a few months. Over the sounds of underage drinking (and the resulting vomiting) he managed to explain the Couchsurfing Project.

So I went to couchsurfing.com and made a profile. Now, whenever I’m going somewhere new, I use the site to contact fellow couchsurfers and request a couch. The system encourages guests and hosts to leave references for each other, and the resulting community is amazing.

I’ve only had to stay in a hostel for one night, and that’s because I missed my flight out of the Frankfurt-Hahn airport. Other than that, I’ve spent every night with amazing people in all sorts of places.

Here are a few of those stories.

Edinburgh, Scotland: I stayed with Peter and Thibault, an American and Frenchman who make amazing documentary films. Peter dabbles in experimental ice cream making, and Thibault makes lovely lemon pie. Their friend and fellow filmmaker (and rickshaw driver), Leo, had time to show me around a bit. At complete random, he took me to meet his family. They were wonderful, including his father, who tends to quote great literature at random in a vain (and drunken) attempt to win arguments. The result is hilarious. Leo and I wound up playing Guitar Hero at three AM with his fellow rickshaw drivers.

Dublin, Ireland: Elvrie has a name I still can’t pronounce. She says its French. She made an awesome breakfast, and then we ran around the Temple Bar area of Dublin. She was very patient with my Quest for the Perfect Hat. I still don’t have one four months later. She just sent me a letter telling me she’ll be meeting me at Burningman!

Venice, Italy: I stayed with Tom and Azurra. Azurra is a fashion designer from Kazakhstan, and her boyfriend Tom is an Italian photographer. They were in the throes of getting ready for Azurra’s first runway show, and were extremely busy.

Side note: I managed to lock myself in the back room while they were in the middle of a photo shoot. Again, claustrophobia reared its head, and by the time Tom unlocked the door, I was chiseling away at the lock with a screwdriver.

Moral: Never leave Andrea alone with tools.

There was another couchsurfer there at the same time, Glyniss, and we wound up traveling together for about a week. One evening as we were walking home, we asked a guy for directions. Bernardo is a couchsurfer as well, and happened to live a couple of hours away, in

Padova, Italy: Glyniss and I decided to visit Verona, and stopped in Padova to visit Bernardo on the way. We were supposed to just stay for the day, but had such a good time we wound up crashing on the floor, where I discovered I am officially to old for hard surfaces. His roommates were amazing, and we drank a lot of local wine and tried to teach each other our languages. One of Bernardo’s roommates was in the process of learning English. I didn’t know this until, after much prodding, she looked at me with an incredibly sincere expression and said,

“There is a frog? With two heads. On the Internet!”

There was a long, long pause.

I carefully set down my fourth glass of wine.

“Okay,” I said.

“How do  you say that in Italian?”

Thus the cultural exchange began…