For a few hours on a Tuesday night, Molly's Speakeasy in Canberra city becomes the most multicultural place in the ACT.
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Canberra's small but vibrant couchsurfing community meet most weeks in a city bar, made up of young people from France, Serbia, Japan, Italy and South Africa, to name just a few.
Organiser Daniel Teo said it had been a regular event in the ACT for a number of years, about a year of which he'd been running.
"The thing about couchsurfing in general is it allows you an opportunity to have more than just a tourist experience of a city... it's like having a friend right away," he said.
"That's what you need to have a good experience sometimes [and] for people who come to Canberra for all the different reasons this serves as that function for them.
"It's an opportunity to make that first friend, meet that first group of people, start to know the city and not be alone."
Mr Teo said he had been couchsurfing since 2009 when he travelled across the US and Canada. "I like meeting new people and making friends with interesting people," he said.
"It's a global network of at least 2,000,000 [couchsurfers] now and I've made some really good friends at the meetups. I even met my girlfriend here."
Macgregor-resident Noni Ivkovic said he has met more than 300 people through couch surfing since 2005, both through staying at other people's places and letting them stay with him.
In May, Mr Ivkovic had two guests from Melbourne staying with him who he'd previously met through couchsurfing.
"I'm still in contact with some of them, whereas others have just been my guest and we've lost contact," he said.
"Although about 80 people I'd still be friends with."
Mr Ivkovic said visitors who came to Canberra from overseas and even other parts of the country found it useful to have a place to stay and some friendly faces to grab a drink with.
"We had one girl, she came here from Argentina with her boyfriend," he said. "She barely spoke English, and she was coming to these events to improve her language skills.
"She was going to English school, she took lessons, but she was coming to these meetings and just practising with us."
Mr Ivkovic said it wasn't even just a social event - couchsurfing could lead to all sorts of opportunities. "A guy from France came here... and he asked where can I find a job," he said.
"Another French person who was hanging out in the group was about to leave his job and recommended him."
