CURRENT MISSION

To let go and float above. To be a living embodiment of what I know and believe.

ABOUT ME

Living without context. And wanting to keep it that way. Searching for a narrative, but preferring that it not define who I am.
More interested in those I don't know than those I do, in randomness than a neatly defined world. So perfectly at home with couchsurfing.

We always look at things as if in a frame, secure in our connections to friends and family and institutions. I want to take away that frame, let there be no distinction between what is my outside and what I consider my world.

I love that which is foreign. And I love foreigners. Because having to speak in a second language makes one irrefutably kinder. Ever noticed?

Its that urge to be part of a collective that I cannot resist and which I sometimes rue when I follow through with it.

Love cities. Want to love mountains and lakes and rivers, too, but trees are enough.

Love culture: people culture as well as bookish arty culture.

Love Nordic-ness, and by that I mean the female form. No, I joke. I only like.

Love tea and cricket. Because I'm quintessentially English.

Like wit...if it is spontaneous and natural and not every second sentence steeped in irony.

There are a few things I hate:

People who say they don't have time. If you really want to do something, you can always make the time.
If I write to you asking to meet up and you reply you don't have any time at all, it means I am not worth your time. Therefore it's better we don't meet :)

Non-references. If I make the time and effort to write you a detailed reference, I expect at least an attempt to do the same instead of writing nothing.

Prejudices. In any form. Those who look at another person and instead of seeing a human being, they see a colour; and with that colour they associate values and beliefs they believe are inferior than theirs. I have no time for these people. In fact, I pity them.

Finally...people who are reluctant to share what they have. Because they view the world as one full of ever finite things. A world that is a zero sum game. As in, if they offer something, they feel the lack of that something, intensely. I'd rather not be the guest of said person, if I have a choice.

PHILOSOPHY

"€œAn impractical man--which he not only seems to be, but really is--will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea." - Robert Musil.

"The humanising effect of experiencing different patterns of thought" - Martha Nussbaum

This is what I live for.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Attending events, surfing a little, that kind of thing.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

A little...

Interests

Books, travel, philosophy, music, art, literature, architecture, history...and books about all of these.
Most of all, people.

Walking around and feeling a place - psychogeography.

Flea markets; blackriding trams/buses; hitchhiking long distances; reading random CS profiles.

• arts
• culture
• writing
• books
• literature
• architecture
• walking
• reading
• traveling
• blogging
• dumpster diving
• music
• surfing
• cricket
• history
• hitchhiking
• volunteering
• lakes
• rivers
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: The Shawshank Redemption; Fight Club; anything by Fellini - but I seldom watch movies.

Books: Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities; Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; Camus' The Outsider; Le Grande Maulnes; The French Lieutenant's Woman; Forster's A Passage to India; Calvino's Invisible Cities; Flaubert's A Sentimental Education; Le Clezio's Desert; A Room with a View; Pamuk's The Black Book; Dostoyevsky - White Nights; Notes from the Underground; Short Stories of Chekhov; Coetzee's Disgrace and Summertime; Galgut's In A Strange Room and The Impostor; Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge; Knut Hamsun's Hunger and Mysteries; Arthur Phillip's Prague ...it's books I love. Ideas, I live for.

Music - House, soul and NuJazz. Urban, classical, bla, bla... I feel mostly I can do without music.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Doing this. Being prepared to trust someone by being their guest, knowing nothing of them but just a profile like the one you're reading now, but going on that alone and meeting them, getting to know them, and having a damn good time as well.

A distant second: hitchhiking all over Denmark whilst volunteering; hitchhiking from London to Podgorica (Montenegro) in seven weeks of mad couchsurfing fun. Hitchhiking around Morocco for three months; hitchhiking and surviving for four months in South East Asia on a hundred and fifty pounds alone.

Teach, Learn, Share

English, and I really mean English: I teach it.
Writing: fiction, sketches, vignittes, musings.
My blog: http://fiction10.wordpress.com/

How to Hitchhike around Europe.
How to write a successful couch request :)

Arcane knowledge about everything and nothing.

What I Can Share with Hosts

My time and company (or neither if prefered: just a roof over the head will do :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden

Countries I’ve Lived In

Denmark, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, United Kingdom

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