I was born in Russia*, grew up in the SF Bay Area, went to the East Coast for college, then lived in France for a year, came back home to California, and ended up staying here (I live in Berkeley now). I'm currently planning my first Europe trip since I came back from France 9 years ago!

*Just in case, because I feel this needs to be said right now: I 100% support Ukraine in the current war, I am horrified by what the Russian army is doing to Ukraine (and tbh also by what the Russian government is doing to Russia, though I realize that's not quite the same scale of horror). Слава Україні.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I first discovered Couchsurfing when I was living in France in 2012-2013, working as a teaching assistant, and traveling around Europe on weekends and holidays. I am pretty introverted, so I was initially quite apprehensive about this, but decided to try it anyway out of curiosity (and because I didn't have much spare money), and it actually turned out to be great! I really enjoyed getting to know people and places this way; some of my favorite memories from that year are from spending time with my couchsurfing hosts.

Right now I'm updating my profile for the first time in years because I'm finally coming back to Europe this summer! I'm planning a multi-city, multi-country trip mostly by train (built around a work trip to London). I just remembered that Couchsurfing exists and thought it would be a great way to build some socializing (and language practice?) into my trip.

Interests

My two primary interests are music and languages.

Music: I play guitar and piano (and a bit of ukulele), and I sing in a choir. I really like being a piano accompanist for others. I sometimes arrange songs for choir, and I've set a couple of poems to music. One of my favorite activities is to sing songs with my friends; at home, I host a monthly singing night where we get together with a bunch of instruments and sing a bunch of songs together. (If you like singing/playing music, I would be really excited about showing each other some music and making some music together!)

Languages: I really enjoy learning languages; I am at all times learning a language (often though not always on Duolingo) and telling my friends "did you know about this cool thing [language I'm currently learning] does???". I tend to bounce around languages somewhat, since I find learning the basics of a language more fun than actually putting in the work to get good at speaking it (but I do speak French pretty well, having learned it as a foreign language). Currently I am learning Ukrainian and Polish, and really excited about both of them.

(My native languages are Russian and English; I speak French pretty well; I also know varying amounts of Spanish, Japanese, ASL, Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Polish.)

I also really enjoy trying to understand languages I don't actually speak that have something in common with languages I do speak. It's super fun to try to puzzle out what's going on in a text based on similarities to languages I know!

Also, at the intersection of these interests, I really love translations of songs. It's really fun to look at someone else's translation and see what choices they made and why, and what constraints they had. I've also translated a couple of songs from Russian to English myself.

Separately from that, I really like going on walks, exploring cities, taking pictures of pretty things I find; most of what I plan to do during my trip is to wander around all the cities I'm visiting.

• cats
• culture
• singing
• cooking
• baking
• board games
• traveling
• music
• guitar
• piano
• hiking
• languages
• linguistics
• french
• choir
• songwriting
• translation
• polish
• ukrainian
• yiddish

Music, Movies, and Books

I have a really wide-ranging and hard-to-summarize taste in music; whenever I put on my "favorite songs" playlist for a friend, they tend to comment on how different everything in it is! Here's an attempt to list *some* things I like:
- Russian bard songs - this is the main genre I grew up in, singing these songs around a campfire with my family. I now want to introduce these songs to all my non-Russian friends.
- classical music - I grew up learning classical piano and violin, so this is a big part of my musical background (especially: Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin)
- song translations - a big category, but this is something I really enjoy. e.g. Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko's song translations between Russian, Yiddish, and English are amazing
- right now I'm listening to a lot of Ukrainian modernized folk music (e.g. DakhaBrakha, Onuka, Krutь)
- musicals are often good
- bunch of other stuff - jazz, Russian rock, various singer-songwriters, etc...

Unfortunately I read much fewer books than I'd like to and also don't watch that many movies, so I don't think I can make a particularly informative list of ones I like.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I don't know if these exactly count, but some experiences whose memories I particularly cherish are:
- a 23-hour-long conversation with a close friend while wandering about New York City
- Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of friends from different countries when I lived in France, with the conversation happening in several languages
- a similarly multilingual conversation at a dinner party at a house I was couchsurfing in in Barcelona
- bottle-feeding a baby goat, when I lived on a farm in southern France
- hearing 200 people sing a song I translated or wrote music for

Teach, Learn, Share

In terms of learning, I'm very interested in language practice - e.g. if you speak French I'd be happy to just talk to you in French!

What I Can Share with Hosts

If you have a piano, guitar, or ukulele I'd be super interested in playing music together or for each other!

Also happy to do language practice if you're learning Russian or English.

Also may be interested in e.g. cooking together if that sounds fun!

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Spain, United Kingdom, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, Japan, Russian Federation, United States