Coachsurfer from Poland

                                                             Tea on the verandah

Monika Grzlak visited us for 3 days and we had a truly great time.
    Kia took time off her busy schedule to take our guest for a motorbike ride along the coast and a BMX ride from Hobie Pier to Kings Beach. Kia was on her rollerskates!

    She is currently working in South Sudan with a humanitarian group based in Germany. Monika had so much to share with us about her experiences in Africa's youngest country.
     While she was here, I cooked dinner for Eon's 32nd birthday and we enjoyed it outdoors. Inge's mother and sister joined us and they had a ball of a time discussing Poland and all things Polish.
    We took Monika to the movies before she boarded the night bus to Cape Town. (Still Alice)

                                                                        Monika and Eon

Monika's review:

Saying "positive experience" is definitely not enough! Trudie is incredibly warm, caring woman with a lot of enthusiasm, energy and ideas :) Her beaufiful home became my home for few days! She is an extraordinary host who truly look after her guests.
         We had a lot of interesting conversations, afternoon tea on her veranda and lovely evening with her family and friends - celebrating birthday of her son! It was unforgettable time! Thank you Trudie :)

Couchsurfer from Serbia

Towards the end of May I started corresponding with Stefan Savic who requested a bed for two nights in Grahamstown. When I saw that he  would be arriving after sunset / early evening in June, I offered him a bed in PE for one night so that he could wait for his girlfriend who would be arriving the following evening.
    After a couple of internet conversations, Stefan did not feel like a stranger any more. This your man was coming to Rhodes University to start his PhD in Linguistincs on a South African scholarship  His girlfriend, a Polish concert pianist, is to perform at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival during the next few days.
     I fetched Stefan at the airport and met a very positive young man... At home he met Eon and Kia and our friend Lara.  Supper was vegetable soup and venison-filled pancakes served with kiwi jam. His first time to taste "wild" meat at 33 degrees South!

                                                                  Stefan on the Pier

    While waiting for Joanna's flight, Stefan helped us in the garden, "touched" the ocean when I took him to Summerstrand and the Humewood Pier, and visited my friend Gerda Coetzee Offerman's new eco-house.  I took him to Pick 'n Pay to see what a SA supermarket looked like and he bought us a chicken for that night's supper. Then we went to sit on the deck at Something Good for coffee, also paid by him.
    Stefan is a polyglot... Not only did he study in his own county, but also in Norway and Germany and has a command of many Slavic languages.  When Eon's friend Ryan visited, he got an idea of all the click sounds of Xhosa. His sister, an architect, worked in Holland for some thime and when he visited her there, learnt some Dutch so he was able to adapt to Afrikaans with dankie, goeie more etc.
    I taught him one, yes only one, strong word and that was KAK... and a short sentence, Jy praat kak and told him when to use it.  So when Pieter Verwey's Grahamstown shuttle came to fetch them at the airport, Pieter said, "you can be fortunate that you landed with an "old lady" otherwise you would have learnt many swearwords."   Stefan looked him in the eye and answered: "Jy praat kak."
 

Joanna arrived with a very big suitcase!

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Stefan Savić has REQUESTED a friend link to you and has written the

following reference about you on your profile: 

Trudie was an AMAZING host who took care of me the first 24 hours I spent
in South Africa, more precisely in Port Elizabeth. She picked me up from
the airport and was a very generous host who showed me around Port
Elizabeth. I also met her children and their friends who I very much
enjoyed talking to. I really felt like home in Trudie's house - a
beautifully decorated place! I am looking forward to meeting you soon
again!