I grew up in communist Poland and left the country for West Germany in the late 1980s. After 16 years, I returned to Poland. Currently, I live in Wrocław, southwest Poland, but I am spending a lot of time out of the country, traveling, photographing, and meeting people.

I work as a professional photographer, I do mainly documentary photography, but I do a lot of travel photography and portraits as well. More about my profession you will find under: www.litynski.com.
I traveled around the world and visited 70+ countries.

By the way: my hometown - Wroclaw - is offically the World Capital of Dwarfs :-), check on the web if you do not believe. But if you come to visit the city, you need to take this information seriously. :-)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

More and more I am interested in getting in touch with various people, both while traveling and hosting the visitors in my hometown. My experience is that we understand each other better if we talk, exchange ideas or follow the same / similar passions.

Interests

• photography
• movies
• history
• documentary
• germany
• polish literature
• wwii history
• history surgery

Music, Movies, and Books

My favourite music: Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, and Loreena McKennit.

My favorite movies are "GodFather," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Apocalypse Now," "The Lives of Others," "The Bridges of Madison County" by Clint Eastwood. I always cry while watching "Out of Africa". But I love even more the movies of the Polish directors: Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Wajda ("Kanal"), Roman Polański ("The Pianist"), and the German director Wim Wenders ("Paris, Texas").

My favorite books? Well, I have many of them. I love poems of Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. I read John Steinbeck's "Grape of Wrath" probably ten times, I also read many times the book "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad or Józef Korzeniowski. And of course I am lover of Ryszard Kapuściński's books - the hidden gem of Polish literature.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Worked for more than a decade at the US pharmaceutical company (UnitedHealth Group) in Europe. I was General Manager and Country Manager for Poland, Slovak Rep., Czech Rep., Hungary, Romania, I supervised the huge budgets, big medical teams, and the whole clinical operations of my company in half of Europe .... and one day I terminated the contract without any reason, went around the world for a year and started my dream: I became the professional photographer. That's where I am now.

Teach, Learn, Share

we are so different and our strength as humans is being different but at the same time being unique.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Photography. I used to teach photography at the Technical University in Katowice, Poland so I have many presentations ready. I can offer to my host PP shows from my trip incl. Bhutan, Laos, Sri Lanka, Spitsbergen, Galapagos, Burma, Marocco, Kyrgistan, and of course from my native Poland. And I can talk for a while about my trips .... All we need is to connect my laptop with TV (or watch on the laptop screen).

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, England, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Viet Nam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, Poland, United States