I lived in a house where one of my housemates was also into couchsurfing and for a few month in summer and early autumn 2008, we were very active hosts. One weekend while there was a CS event on in my city, we hosted 12 people at once.

In 2009, I was living somewhere I couldn’t host, but my primary social group for that year was other local couchsurfers — we used to meet up twice a week. One of them got married to one of my friends. Others I kept in touch with for many years.

I haven’t been part of it in a long time, but I haven’t many fond memories of the couchsurfing community. Like you, I didn’t have any bad experiences.

I was hosting around this time too (and surfing a bit, but less so), it was a great experience. Never got up to 12 but we always had someone with us, someone crossing over ... and probably someone we were doing a favour for. At one point had two Italian climbers in a tent in our living room for multiple weeks, who ended up moving to our city and becoming good friends.

I tended to go out my way to try and accept people to stay who were either very new the the platform (which usually made it hard to find a place as karma was low) or were very different to my normal group of friends. Which definitely made for some interesting experiences and conversations. Price of entry was usually a list of their favourite albums. I discovered so much great music out of it.

Finally gave it all up when I moved back to Australia and wasn't in a position to host anymore. So many fond memories tho. I miss it.