Covoitur(voy)age

It all started with the German rideshare system, which got us – my travel buddy Rick and I – over the border to Strasbourg and gave us an immediate introduction to a major downside of carpooling with strangers: the stench. Our French Driver was not doing much to help the stereotype of “Europeans lacking deodorant”, but was otherwise perfectly nice, spoke excellent English, and kept us both engaged in conversation while his son dozed in the backseat.

Strasbourg: a co-CouchSurfer means a new friend

We met Gabriel, our first CouchSurfing host, on the outskirts of Strasbourg that night, where he welcomed us with kisses, exclaiming, “Okay, now we make party!?” and swept us off to the city center.

By night, Strasbourg was as quaintly beautiful as during the day, as we discovered the next morning while exploring la petite France with a CouchSurfer who also happened to be surfing at Gab’s; a francophone herself, our Canadian co-surfer was both helpful in getting our brains back into French and also great company. 

After an hour-long boat tour through the canals, Gab gave us a personal city tour and taught us how to make a classic Alsatian Flammekueche (tarte flambée) for dinner. The beautiful result of the mélange of French and German language and architecture along with Gab’s introduction to the regional cuisine had us wishing we could stay longer, but the culinary capital of France awaited us…

Tartiflette

Lyon: sensory delights

After Strasbourg, Rick and I hopped a ride with another French driver to Lyon, where we stayed with our second CouchSurfing host, Fred. Lyon struck us with a pleasant attack on our senses. After visiting the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, we felt we hadn’t gotten enough of Catholicism for the day and took a walk up to the visually stunning Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière. That afternoon, we wandered through le vieux Lyon, the ‘old’ part of the city, explored a bit more of the ‘main’ part of Lyon including the large (free!) zoo in the Parc de la Tête d’Or, and sampled all of the smells the various roses in the Roseraie had to offer.

Stomachs growling, we headed back to Fred’s where he taught us to make tartiflette, a specialty from his home region of Savoy. Extremely heavy, tartiflette is simply baked potatoes, a mixture of onions and fried pieces of ham (lardons), and reblochon cheese baked on top. The ultimate comfort food, it left our mouths happy and quickly induced a food coma.

Toulouse

Toulouse: spontaneity lends a helping hand

On the way to our next stop with another French driver and a fellow covoiturage traveler named Julien, things got a little adventurous as Rick and I had no plans for where we were going to stay that night. We relayed this issue to Julien and he contacted his friend Eléonore who, as luck would have it, was also a CouchSurfer. We met her in Toulouse and curled up on a couple of mattresses in her quirkily decorated living room.

After a breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolat, we explored Toulouse with our spontaneous CouchSurfing hosts the following day. Continuing with the culinary pursuits, we tried foie gras for the first time and once again, learned to make a new dish with the help of our CouchSurfing hosts (this time it was magret de canard, duck breast with a homemade honey-onion sauce). The beautiful weather, high concentration of students, artsy nature of its citizens and the surprising number of dashingly good-looking people made me want to return for a second taste as soon as we left Toulouse.

Metz

Metz: judgment day for our American home cookin’

After a few stops in the smaller cities of Rodez, Clermont-Ferrand and Saint-Etienne, we continued north to Metz. We whizzed past l’opération escargot happening in the lane opposite the direction we were traveling; truck drivers were deliberately stopping traffic, doing their part to protest the government’s increase of the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. Luckily, our side of the road was clear, and after five hours we had escaped the dreary weather and were in Metz, the last stop on our way back to Germany.

After a comfortable night on a very orange couch provided by Julien, our last CouchSurfing host, we frolicked around the quaint, picturesque streets of Metz. We hadn’t originally planned on going there, and were pleasantly surprised by how beautiful it turned out to be. The Temple Neuf and the Porte des Allemands, along with a lunch of quiche lorraine preceded a sort of treasure hunt in a French supermarket, as we searched for chicken andouille, okra, and other specialty ingredients for dinner.

We had promised to make our CouchSurfing host a pot of gumbo, a regional dish from the southern United States. Thank goodness our cuisine stood the test of Julien’s cultivated palate; we left Metz feeling as though we had slightly remedied some negative stereotypes about American food.

Grateful for the CouchSurfing hosts and covoiturage drivers who shared their life stories, jokes, food, travel tips, and good vibes with us, we traveled back to Germany with our concept of “home” having morphed into a more flexible notion. The trip wouldn’t have been as rich of an experience without the spontaneity of how we traveled combined with the diverse set of wonderful people and their homes we shared along the way.