CURRENT MISSION

Saving the world - one beatnik at a time!

ABOUT ME

Actually not from Seattle, but lived there longer than anywhere else so usually call it my home town. I was born in Switzerland and grew up in the U.S. Foreign Service. My family was American, so I'm an American -- with a decidedly global perspective. I was married once to a Bulgarian! Now I'm married to a Russian. Something about those Slavs ...

PHILOSOPHY

Personal philosophy!? Mensch! As a doctor of philosophy, I suppose I should have one, right? So let's go with the "economy of niceness" thing below.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Not hosting at the moment, but may host again. And maybe go surfing myself. Who knows? These days I really only couch-surf with old friends -- but making new friends is the whole point, right?!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

My heyday was the late 80s-early 90s. Drove all over America in a white Buick Skylark. Once spent the most amazing weekend playing bongo drums with poet friends in Missoula, Montana. Hitchhiked the UK/Ireland in 1988 and Russia/Finland in 1990. Back then I had that 20-something magic, and strangers just adopted me. Today they'd take one look at me and say: "Dude, get a job!" Still, what comes around, goes around -- it's all part of the economy of niceness.

Interests

Oh ... loads of stuff. How about I save it till you're here?

• partying
• shopping
• magic
• drums
• surfing
• medicine

Music, Movies, and Books

Name it. I've read it.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Once when I was 14 years old -- that's mid-1970s, I was living in Leningrad -- and I was babysitting for some American schoolteachers who lived on the Vyborg Side. It was during the White Nights. The parents came home late from a party, after midnight, and the father bundled me into his car -- a rattling Zhiguli -- and rushed me back to my parents' apartment on the Petersburg Side before the bridges went up. I was in this dream-like state, half-awake, half-asleep: I had been listening to Joni Mitchell and John Denver LPs on headphones all night. We raced down this completely empty avenue through that impossible, midsummer midnight-daylight, and suddenly hit the Kirov Bridge. I looked out over the Neva, downriver toward the Strelka-- and all of the bridges were going up in a long line out to the vanishing point -- and the most spectacular, transparent, mystical-magical moon was rising over Vasilevsky Ostrov. My body went cold. Really, absolutely cold. Maybe I've had one or two visions as amazing as that one since then. But that one set the bar.

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach, learn, share? See? Just when I start enjoying myself, they get me talking shop! :P

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States