ABOUT ME

I’m working as a lawyer and studied psychology and journalism as well (and worked as a journalist for a while).

Absolutely love travelling and am glad it’s possible again after these Covid years :). I’ve been to 72 countries to date and did a lot of couchsurfing during my past trips and made a lot of new friends :). I’ve not been so active the past time on CS, but now I’m living and working (remotely) in Asia for 5 months I’m picking it up again.

PHILOSOPHY

An old Latin phrase: carpe diem.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

If someone is looking for a couch: I have one! I could also show you around if I have time). Weekends work best for me.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I am a member of couchsurfing since 2011. I met some amazing people and always had very positive experiences all around the world.

Interests

-Traveling (of course);

-Psychology;

-Writing: I have written some stories as freelance journalist. The article that I like most is the one about a family that was travelling the world in a car from 1929 for 13 years, non stop. The family consists of a couple form Argentina and 4 children: all of them were born on the road and each one of them in a different country (see their website www.sparkyourdream.net, their story was very inspiring).

I usually only write in Dutch, but two of my articles were translated into English. If you are curious you can read them here: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/stopping-latvias-former-kgb-torture-chambers-now-that-theyre-open-again-716
and here http://www.vice.com/read/shark-diving-teaches-people-sharks-are-just-big-beautiful-fish-701.

-Reading.

-Photogaphy: portraits of interesting people I meet traveling (see: fotografie.joostknaap.nl for some of my work, or follow me on IG: joostknaap).

-Meeting new people.

• writing
• reading
• traveling
• journalism
• psychology
• foodie

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Memento, the Prestige, Incendies, mr. Nobody, Submarino, Jagten, La vita e bella. A lot of movies I watch are art-house productions (Indy movies), but I watch almost everything from horror to animation movies. I bought a projector, created my own 'home cinema' and collected a huge library of movies on DVD.

Music: practically everything except for hardcore and hardrock. I like EDM especially (Armin van Buuren is my favourite DJ).

Books: Game of Thrones, Dutch literature, books about history.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Diving with great white sharks in South-Africa;
Hitchhiking from the Netherlands to Sofia, Bulgaria, along the coast of Croatia (which was really beautiful), over 2.000 km in one week.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you some Dutch if you are interested.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Italy, Netherlands