Meet the host: Franziska

From a green couch in Zurich to Toggenburg

Long before the old schoolhouse became home, Franziska was hosting Couchsurfing guests in a Zurich apartment. They slept on a well-used green sofa, there was usually coffee before they headed into the city, and sometimes conversations lasted much longer than anyone had expected. Hosting itself doesn't seem to have changed much. Only the address has changed. The tram lines were replaced by the mountains.

When she talks about hosting, she rarely begins with rooms or amenities. Instead, she talks about the pears growing beside the house, paintings that have belonged to her family for generations, or secret places in Toggenburg that only locals know. She tells you who she is through the things she chooses to talk about.

One of the paintings hanging on the wall was painted by her great-grandfather. The sofa in the living room once stood in her own home. Some of the books on the shelves belonged to her two sons, while other objects have been collected over many years simply because she liked living with them herself. None of these things arrived because a checklist said they should.

I don't want people to feel like they're staying in a rental. I want them to feel like they're staying in my house.

Franziska hasn't created an apartment that could belong to anyone. She has created one that's clearly hers, then opened the door for other people to enjoy it too.

Knowing when to be there

There is one thing Franziska says has changed over the years.

When she first started hosting, she was worried when she hardly saw her guests. If they checked in, disappeared behind the apartment door and quietly left a few days later, she wondered whether she had done enough. It took time to realise that silence is not always a sign that something is missing.

Today she knows that guests arrive for very different reasons. Some enjoy long conversations, ask endless questions about the valley and happily end up sharing a glass of wine with Franziska and her family in the garden. Others spend most of their time walking, reading or simply resting. They close the shutters, enjoy the quiet and come out only when it is time to leave again.

At the beginning, that difference felt difficult to understand. Now it's one of the parts of hosting she likes best.

Sometimes people just need to close the shutters for a few days. And that's perfectly fine.

Seeing the garden again

One of Franziska's favourite stories begins with a single piece of paper.

At the end of one stay, a guest handed her a handwritten list of every bird they had spotted in the garden. Franziska still smiles when she remembers it – she had never thought of doing such a thing herself. She had lived there for years, walked through the same garden every day, and had almost stopped looking at it.

Since then, she notices things again: butterflies she might once have missed, herbs growing near the house she now cuts for dinner, the pear tree so close that its fruit can be picked through the window.

The things people remember

After more than a hundred guest reviews, Franziska has noticed something that still surprises her. People rarely remember what she expects them to remember. Instead of writing about the views or the old schoolhouse, they mention the fresh bread in the morning, the children's books left on the shelves, a glass of wine enjoyed in the hammock or a few sprigs of peppermint picked from the garden on a hot afternoon so they could make their own iced tea. None of those moments had been planned. They happened because they felt right at the time.

That same way of thinking shapes how she deals with the less perfect moments too. Once, preparing one of the apartments took much longer than expected after previous guests had left it far dirtier than usual. When the next guests arrived, Franziska explained what had happened, invited them into the garden and brought them a watermelon cooler while she finished getting everything ready. Later that afternoon she looked out of the window and saw them sitting together, talking and laughing as though they had decided to spend the afternoon there from the beginning.

A place to arrive as you are

By the end of our conversation, Franziska had talked mostly about a favourite sofa, old family paintings, the tiled stove, books that once belonged to her sons – not about herself.

Her apartments feel personal without trying to be. Nothing suggests that every object was chosen to match a particular style. The rooms feel as though they have grown over time, filled with things Franziska genuinely enjoys living with herself and is happy to pass on, at least for a few days, to somebody else. Some guests will leave remembering a conversation in the garden, others the silence behind closed shutters.

A few days after our conversation, I noticed a bird outside my own window.
And I looked at it for longer than I normally would.

Franziska hosts two stays in Toggenburg. Discover the one currently available on Alpnest: