Euro_Adventure - Day 4

Our fourth night marked our first in rows into the couch surfing community. To be fair it was Igor’s idea and I had more than a few reservations about the whole thing but decided, as usual, to put my faith in Igor’s creative and good judgement. Igor had been sending messages to people for about a week asking if they would “host” us as their guests in both London and Canterbury. Two people had responded to Igor, Kenny a 67 year old Japanese gentleman who was attending university at the University of Kent, and Johnny and musician from London who lived about 30 minutes from Canterbury.

Couch surfing, for those who do not know, is a web based home stay that connects local people and travelers together. It’s a way to make friends across the globe, stay somewhere at basically no cost, and in many cases have a local tour guide to assist travelers in their new city. You are able to read up about your potential hosts, send requests to people that live in the area you would like to travel and they can do the same for you. You can create an event allowing hosts to pick you as well. There is a reference and rating system to allow you to view what other people had to say about travelers and guests alike and a place for you to read about what the home you will be staying in has to offer.

We arrived at Kenny’s home just around the corner from Canterbury Cathedral a littler later than expected due to traffic getting out of London and when we arrived what we found was amazing. Kenny had a room all ready for us and dinner on the stove! We had a wonderful conversation with Kenny and he taught Igor the basics of this board game called “Go.”

Formerly a Doctor in Japan, Kenny had retired at the age of 60 and had spent several years traveling around the world with his wife before deciding that he wanted to go back to school. He enrolled in an undergraduate program at the University of Kent in England to study biological anthropology, so he and I had many things to talk about. Kenny, has hosted over 120 “couch surfers” and their appreciation for his hospitality is evident by the wall of post cards and thank you notes from people around the world.

me and Kenny

After a long evening spent sharing good cheer and great tea, we awoke the next morning to find that Kenny had left us breakfast on the table. Plates laid out with beans, salad, bread, veggies and all sorts of nice things.

We ate and were off to discover the town. We wondered through the streets seeing “what’s what” and taking it all in, finally deciding on visiting the Cathedral (despite the fact that it was severely overpriced). While walking around the crypt area one of the priests invited us to mass, and since Igor loves new experiences and has never been to mass he decided to participate and I went along for the ride.

As Canterbury Cathedral is the home of the Anglican Church the service and communion were done in the Anglican style. Very similar to the Presbyterian and Catholic masses I have attended over my life this was very structured and somewhat unfamiliar, having spent most of my church going time in “new age” Christian church services. The traditions and structure were nice, if not a little boring, but all together a good experience. Plus the wine ta communion was so tasty that Igor and I both wanted to ask the priest where they had gotten it, although we ended up deciding that was probably not a great idea.

We left the church and proceeded on through Canterbury. We made a customary stop at a coffee shop that roasts fresh coffee beans every day. Where theirs is good, I am still partial to Igor’s homemade stuff. We also made a stop into the Roman history museum, which though it didn’t look like much on the outside presented us the opportunity to make these wonderful little pieces of art

After spending most of the day walking, Igor suggested that instead of spending a second night with our host Kenny we go on down to meet another prospective host named Johnny in a little town called Folkestone (pronounced Folkston) closer to Dover. As seems to be the trend I was a bit hesitant, not wanting to offend our host Kenny by leaving early and on short notice, but eventually decided to go with Igor’s suggestion. We went back to Kenny’s packed our things, said our good byes and caught a bus to Folkestone to meet Johnny.

Canterbury Cathedral