Katharina is originally from Salzburg, Austria and Ryan is from Adelaide, Australia. We've both been travelling for many many years and have lived away from home for long periods of time.

We met each other travelling in Africa back in 2011. After spending the summer of 2012 living in Austria we then decided that we wanted to go and start a new life together in Canada (Vancouver) where we lived until 2014.

We continued to travel all of North America from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Mexico and then moved to Australia to live from 2015 to 2016. In the summer of 2016 we moved back to Vancouver again as permanent residents where we plan to make our home after a decade of constantly moving around!!!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We have both stayed with many hosts all around the world, but many times not officially through the Couch Surfing website.

When we moved to Vancouver we met one of our best friends Rob through couch surfing and moved in with him. During the 18 months we lived together we hosted 1-2 people per week and it was great getting to know so many other travellers. When your sitting still and planning your next trip, couch surfing is a great way to still stay in touch with the travel community. We've made many life long friends from what started out as a few nights stay and hope to continue to make many more.

Since we host a lot it's important to us that you read through this profile and want to stay with us because you are genuinely interested, not just looking for a free couch. So we ask you to include in your couch request which band Ryan likes the most. This works like a filter for us and if you don't answer this question then we will know not to accept (we get a lot of requests). This community can only exist if people give and take. So we give priority to people who host themselves and not just surf. If your new to couchsurfing try hosting BEFORE you set off on any trip your planning.

Interests

Travel is our biggest interest, it's how we met each other and also why we are here on Couch Surfing!

We both love the outdoors and enjoy hiking, camping, snowboarding and more recently surfing. Kathi really likes to downhill bike too.

Art and music are two of our favourite things that when combined can make for an amazing experience. Living in BC we are lucky to have access to many great music festivals and we've made the trip down to the USA a couple times for Burning Man.

• music festivals
• traveling
• hiking
• camping
• surfing
• snowboarding
• downhill biking
• overlanding

Music, Movies, and Books

Ryan has been a big fan of Pearl Jam all his life and has travelled to see them play all over the world in Adelaide, London, New York, Berlin, Prague, Vancouver, Seattle, Spokane, Portland and Austin.

In 2017 we are going to see Radiohead, City and Colour, The XX, U2, Mumford and Sons, Bonobo, Jack Johnson, Guns n Roses, Roger Waters, Midnight Oil, Metallica, Vallis Alps and our favourite Vancouver band The Dreadnoughts!!!!

Some great books to read - The Alchemist, Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Marching Powder.

We like watching comedy, life is serious enough that entertainment doesn't need to be: South Park, American Dad, Family Guy, Archer, Home Movies, Rick and Morty, Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Kathi once took the train across Siberia from Vladivostok to Moscow. This was definitely one of her most interesting experiences, since her and her friend were the only tourists and the only girls on board;)

Ryan did the Mongol Rally in 2011 driving a very unsuitable 1.2L Fiat Siecento from London to Mongolia all across Europe and Central Asia. The car barely made it and the same could be said about the driver.

Teach, Learn, Share

Life should be viewed through your own eyes, it's not meant to be viewed through a screen. If you come and stay with us you will find we don't own a television and we make our best effort to put our phones away when we are hanging out with people. We believe in the concept of immediacy and that you should enjoy where you are, what you are doing and who you are with at the present, not be concerned with what is happening somewhere else.

What I Can Share with Hosts

We like to share our stories with people and if we're ever going out we try to do fun things that people we meet through couch surfing will enjoy doing with us too.

If there are any lessons we have learnt from our travel experiences we are happy to share them and to give any recommendations we can for places here in Vancouver or wherever it is you might be thinking of going in the future.

We try to find fun activities to do with the people we host/surf with. This might be cooking dinner together at home, going for a hike, doing some sports (surfing, snowboarding etc) or just walking around a local neighbourhood (ours is a lot of fun) to get a true feel for a place.

Taking the time to get to know people is important to us and we try to make everyone's couch surfing experience memorable.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vatican City State, Viet Nam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, United Kingdom, United States

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