CS Magazine What is a couch

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Definition of a couch

Otherwise known as a sofa, for an interior designer like me, linguistically a couch is a piece of furniture to decorate our homes or an object to fill our spaces with. The number and the type of couches one may possess could be from none to... far too many! No guidelines there. Same goes for its use: to sit,to chill, to relax, to jump on, to lie on, to nap, to watch the telly, to eat, to feast, to read, to study, to have a conversation, to argue, to surf, to make out, to socialize and so many more.... Depending on the use, a couch can have other synonyms.... ie, if your couch is for sitting on it becomes an armchair, if you it is for sleeping on it becomes a bed, and so on. From a pragmatic and scientific point of view. THIS is what a couch IS.

In the house i grew up in, the couch was in a separate living room. This was out of reach for me and my brother, as it was always the official reception and entertaining area of the household. i do however remotely remember guests sleeping there when we'd run out of beds in the house. Not a frequent phenomenon, admittedly, as there was always some folding divan somewhere in the store room and a mattress or just enough bedding to make up one, but it did occasionally happen. And it was the time when all public schools in the city were trying to outdo each other by organizing student exchange programs, in a constant battle for superiority and prestige against one another. Unfortunately my school was not one them 'cool' schools to do that, thinking about it, probably because the teachers could not be bothered with the hassle of organizing everything. I must say though, how envious i was of those lucky ones who would get to go to another country and stay with this host family for a while in exchange of hosting their child back home. I also do remember, many years ago back in my childhood, my father coming across two Polish families who were traveling with their caravans through Northern Greece. I don't know how the story went exactly, i was too young to trouble myself with adult complications and too excited to meet new kids in my age, whose language i spoke alongside with my native one, but i can still remember my father coming to the house, with this Polish army behind him to announce that they'd be staying with us for . Well, that was never specified! I think my mother wasn't sure how to react. Be happy to see and speak to fellow country men in a foreign land or angry at my father for bringing in some random people without even asking her. Two families, with 2 children each. Now, my father's house where he grew up in is a nice summer house, with plenty rooms and beds. At the time i think they were taken as my father's sisters and their families were holidaying with us. Our Polish guests 'camped' on the first floor veranda and stayed with us for a week or so. What a fun summer that was. How wonderful people they were, who we did visit a few years later while in Poland.

Apart from being merely a piece of furniture though, a couch is the object translation of hospitality. It is the very expression of the human quality of compassion and trust that separates us from the animals. It is the act of taking somebody in and offering something with no expectations of a reward, the act of opening your life to a stranger hoping to only receive mutual respect to their culture and background. Of course not everyone lives alone in a spacious house with lots of free bedrooms and even though people may have all the good will to put somebody up they may not necessarily have the means. Then again, anything can be 'a couch= a place to sleep' depending what one can offer; a spare bedroom, some floorspace, a bench or the couch itself with whatever 'baggage' is may come with. There can be house mates, parents, brothers, sisters, pets or just lots of cushions coming with the couch, in which case a couch is no longer merely a surface to crash on. It becomes its own entity, a cultural exchange in itself. People interact with one another. A couch experience is not a hotel experience. Sure, you may not have the fancy dinner, or the gym on the ground floor or the swimming pool, but you have the person who is hosting you. You have the human interaction which is the one that makes a journey worthy; it is not the empty buildings and monuments we admire when we travel, these are worth nothing without the human element attached to it whether this is a companion one may travel with or people they meet during their journey. This is what makes the journey colorful with experience and cultural exchange. It is a reference that connects people. A traveler may surf different peoples' couches who, otherwise have no connection to each other but to have hosted that very person. And then all those people, hosts and guests who have brought out the best in one another create the circle of trust, a new community that is deprived of all its anachronisms and is open to human contact rather than human isolation. It becomes the milestone of a better world to be in. From a humanitarian point of view. THIS is what a couch CAN be.

by Kalliope Tsouroupidou