Hi my name is Heyder, I'm from Birmingham in the United Kingdom. I'm a big music fan, poetry, foodie, boulderer, and also even play Smash Bros. competitively as a side hobby. I did Engineering at Uni and for 4 years I worked as an Aerospace Engineer in the UK. To be completely honest about why I'm travelling, I had a very hard COVID experience that bled into the end of last year. I wanted to travel and see the world as much as possible whilst at work, but COVID robbed that of me, I had plans to go see Florence, Milan, Istanbul, Marrkech etc. And I've found myself thinking last year about what I want in my life going forward, and it's led me to take this journey. I want to go take back what I've missed out on, I want to see the world. Ultimately, I travelled with my friends and on my own last year briefly, and whilst it was fun seeing everything, my favourite thing was just meeting all the new people on my travels. I found that there was a beauty in feeling like, whilst we all come from different walks of life, we are ultimately human and that humanity transcends any language barrier. My goal currently is that I will be travelling from Portugal all the way to Istanbul, where I'll finish after seeing Hagia Sophia - a piece of history that I'm very interested in, and also Istanbul has tons of cats and it will remind me of my own cat that I'm leaving behind :D. I'd love to talk more about this.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I'm going to be travelling on my own, and whilst there are a few friends I'm visiting on the way, I really would like to have stops where I'm able to learn about the places I'm in. I think with places like Paris, Lisbon, Madrid the big capitals it's gonna be quite easy, but I'm from a small town in Birmingham and I know that you always have to talk to people more local to you to actually find some honesty about how it is.

I'm big on food, so honestly it would be nice to learn about the food that people have in different countries, I know that growing up as a British-Pakistani person, it's always quite weird seeing Indian/Pakistani restaurants not serve authentic food. So would be good to learn really from other people on how to cook local dishes.

Ultimately I want to meet real people in a safe environment :)

Interests

• poetry
• coffee
• video games
• bouldering
• music
• guitar
• fencing
• food
• travelling
• football
• museums

Music, Movies, and Books

Music - I love Indie, Rock, Rap. My favourite bands are Arctic Monkeys, Queen, Hippocampus, Mitski, BCNR. In terms of rappers I'm a big fan of Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar and SANTAN Dave.

Movies - I generally like character driven movies, my favourite film is Her (2013), I think every frame of that film can be made into a painting it's beautiful. I also recently have loved Silver Linings Playbook, I felt like it really spoke to me.

Books - My favourite book at the moment is a book called "How to Not be a boy" by Robert Webb. Robert Webb is a famous actor/comedian here in the UK and his book was a touching autobiography that covered his journey with masculinity that was funny, sad, hopeful and comforting all at once for me.

Countries I’ve Visited

Czech Republic, Iceland, Italy, Pakistan, Spain

Countries I’ve Lived In

United Kingdom