While traveling satisfies different needs of various types of people, most serious adventurers hope to make some connections while they're experiencing another culture. Discovering another way of life is fascinating, and leads to a deeper understanding of one's own culture as well. However, it can be difficult to get to know people and customs if one's trip is spent at a hotel. A better choice for gaining insight into the culture of a country is couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is free, and guarantees a close encounter of some sort, as it allows you to stay on a local's couch or in a guest room. Travelers can look up couchsurfing opportunities on Couchsurfing.com, where hosts and surfers can connect, create and view profiles, and exchange information. "Meeting their friends, seeing how they function and seeing how people were actually living are so personal. I really like the opportunity to gain a pure knowledge of someone's life," says Meghan Sinnott, who recently couchsurfed in Denmark, Holland, and Sweden. The formal Couchsurfing Project has been around for a while. It was started in 1999 by Casey Fenton, who was on a cheap trip to Iceland from Boston. Finding himself without a place to stay, he e-mailed more than a thousand students at the University of Iceland and got more than 50 responses offering him a free couch. When he returned to his hometown Boston, he decided to turn the experience into a website-based network, which was created in 2004.  While some travelers might be afraid of the idea of sleeping on a previously unseen couch or getting a cup of coffee with a complete stranger halfway across the country, others jump at the chance to walk into the unknown. And that tells us exactly what couchsurfing is all about--learning about the world and a stranger at a time. People choose couchsurfing while traveling mainly to   _  .
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