It’s travelling on a shoestring budget, or even less. It’s seeing places through a local’s eyes and experiencing the country’s culture first-hand. It’s the type of trip that could make or break you and your travel buddy…
It’s couch-surfing… and these two girls had the experience of a lifetime.
Bláithnaid Treacy and camerawoman Laura O’Connell packed their necessities into a backpack and set off into the unknown.
The two girls backpacked across Europe as part of the couch-surfing trend and documented their adventures for TG4’s pioneering travel show, Ó Tholg Go Tolg.
Committing themselves to the couch-surfing phenomenon, Bláithnaid and Laura found themselves staying with over 20 hosts in 12 different countries during their 10-week trip. The two girls experienced the culture, people and places of each country first-hand as they slept on the couches, beds and floors of Europe.
“We wanted to show the most modern way of travelling,” Blaithnaid told Her.ie.
“We were on a shoestring budget, the only money we actually spent was travelling from place to place. It was living out of our rucksack for ten weeks and making plenty of new friends. Equally, there were people we didn’t make friends with! But we had the opportunity to share stories and share our culture with so many people we met along the way.”
The two girls clown about in Stuttgart...
Laura was on camera-duty for the whole trip and recorded even the most bizarre of events.
“And there were plenty of bizarre events,” she laughed, “The most bizarre could have been sleeping on the floor of a living room with four Mexican street performers in Stuttgart, it was at the beginning of the trip and we were just getting to grips.
“Another night we found ourselves homeless after we got kicked out of a squat in Budapest, our host was staying there in protest but the police asked us to leave. We had to move to another squat about a block down… It was surreal.
“Possibly the most bizarre, but nicest, moment was meeting a girl in Kosovo, she was Russian and quite young, maybe a student, but she was fluent in Irish! She even had a Donegal accent when she spoke it…
“The whole trip was a completely different world, our own beds at home seemed a million miles away, a completely different world.”
And would you invite your fellow couch-surfers back?
“Absolutely,” Laura said, “All the hosts were so warm and welcoming. There were definitely a few families you would make friends with, yes, I hope they visit Ireland. I can’t wait to show them around…”
Bláithnaid said having such a strong insight into other countries’ cultures was an education in itself.
“We stayed in a lot of ex-Yugoslavia countries and they all had their own opinions of each other. I’m happy we visited Serbia first because we avoided a lot of other people’s negative view of the country and we were able to make an informed decision on their history and politics ourselves.
“We spoke to people who had witnessed bloodshed. I was almost annoyed at myself that I didn’t know more about their history and conflict, they knew everything about Ireland.”
Bláithnaid, Laura and their 10-week-long best friend, the camera...
The girls were met with smiles and a warm welcome in every country, but Bláithnaid thinks it was the Croats that reminded her most of the Irish at home.
“They don’t take themselves too seriously,” she said, “I think their attitude is quite like that of the Irish. As we travelled west we realised how diverse Europe really is and the food did start to get better too… well, let’s just say our palettes weren’t diverse enough to enjoy some of the meals.”
“When we arrived in Paris we just thought, ‘Wow, we’ve done it, we’ve survived…’. When we started the trip Paris had seemed like years away and we couldn’t believe we had made it back. It was amazing, definitely, most definitely, the most amazing experience of my life.”
And if you could go back to any country?
“Oooh,” Bláithnaid thinks for a second, “Croatia for holidays, it’s so chilled out, it’s amazing…”
“Montenegro,” Laura decides after much debating, “It’s a very, very beautiful country. In fact, I will be going back…”
Tonight the girls stay with a photographer, Ivan, and discover the beauty of Montenegro, before moving on to Sarajevo where they hear poignant eyewitness accounts of life in a city under siege.
Tune in to Bláithnaid and Laura’s adventures tonight on TG4 at 9:30pm on Ó Tholg Go Tolg...
