This is Gildas and Sophia, they just met through couchsurfing.com, a website where you register your couch as available to strangers traveling through town or else you register as a traveler and request to stay on a couch in a place you want to visit.
Gildas is from Bordeaux France but has been living in Paris until recently when he quit his job reviewing French television shows in order to travel around the world – by boat and train!
Sophia was my room mate a few years ago, she lives in the Mission District of San Francisco now. She discovered couchsurfing.com a year ago when she was looking for a cheap place to stay in Belize. She didn’t stay on anyone’s couch, but quite often people will show strangers around their city and Sophia met someone who did just that.
I asked Gildas if he had stayed on other people’s couches.
“Yes, 8 couches. Here and in Russia. I stayed 5 nights at one person’s house in Moscow, we had agreed on two nights but we kept extending. There have been no bad experiences for me.”
I was curious about French television so then I asked him about that.
“There aren’t many series in France, except American ones. But there are many reality shows. They copy American ones, like Secret Story. That was the last big success in France. It is like the show Big Brother – a group lives in a loft with cameras on 24 hours a day and everyone has a secret they try not to reveal before the end of the show. They tried to make a French version of Grey’s Anatomy, but it failed. The shows aren’t good when they copy an American one unless it is a reality show.”
What is the most popular American series in France today?
“CSI Miami.”
these are not cats.
Comment by girl with the glass eye — January 14, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
The best show I saw in France was ‘Sex House’ (I think that was the name). It was a soft porn show in a So-Cal reality show context, although it was unclear what the ultimate outcome of the show was supposed to be. No one ever got eliminated, they just pretended to fuck each other a couple of times every half hour. I searched for the show online but got nothing so I might be getting the name wrong. High comedy.
Comment by Lyle_s — January 15, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
i remember watching a commercial where a man was naked but for a newspaper and there was a voiceover and then he whizzed like a lawn sprinkler. it was Paris in the 90′s i didn’t know.
Comment by girl with the glass eye — January 15, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
sounds like lyle was remembering a fantasy…
Comment by Rolston — January 15, 2008 @ 6:36 pm