Couch surfing

If you go to the website Couchsurfing.org, you will find many Iranian couch surfers in every city. I did not expect so. We wrote to some of them on some occasions, but we did it too late (usually the day before our arrival), so we never managed to be hosted. Anyway, we know from other travellers that it works very well, if you plan it in advance.

Only once we had a partial experience. It was in Isfahan. We arrived from Yazd very early in the morning and from the bus station we took a taxy to the house of a couch surfer who had accepted our request to be hosted. The guy was friendly (he liked Pasolini) and lived in a nice detached house. We entered, went down a stair and ended up in a huge room with no furniture except from some carpets on the floor. And a lot of people sleeping on them! We asked who they were. Other couch surfers I am hosting, he said: some French, some Turkish, some from Asia, etcetera. The cellar looked like an international gathering point for low budget travellers. We joined the others and slept a bit. Afterwards, we decided that the accomodation was too basic and went looking for a hotel for the night. :)