Couchsurfing v Saúdské Arábii - Moje cesta zemí mezi středověkem a budoucností – Orth Stephan (2021)

As soon as Saudi Arabia allowed the first tourists to arrive, bestselling author on couchsurfing – Stephan Orth – immediately packed his backpack. He set off from couch to couch to explore the entire kingdom and looked into the closed society in a way that no traveler from the West had experienced before. He became a firsthand witness to a radical transformation, saw women driving, and danced with a crowd of ten thousand at a desert party. But on the flip side of this glittering world, one must also remember the threat of harsh punishments, and at the borders with Yemen, the sound of exploding bombs cannot be ignored. Veils, Sharia, and terrible rulers: Saudi Arabia is certainly not a country you would eagerly travel to for fun. Nevertheless, tourist visas are now being issued there as well. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, simply known as MbS, hopes for millions of visitors and is extensively modernizing the desert country – at least that’s how it appears. The most famous German couchsurfer, Stephan Orth, is not satisfied with a superficial picture: he travels for nine weeks across the kingdom and spends a lot of time with the locals – in their Bedouin tents, luxury villas, and off-road vehicles. In his search for the soul of the nation, he enters an ultra-conservative society where women live...