My wife Kristi and I love to travel, meet new people, see interesting places. We have 2 grown sons who we adopted from Russia and moved from Southern California to a small town in Bavaria Germany in 2019. Kristi is the language learner of the two of us and is learning German (though I'm starting to pick up a little here and there as well). We have really enjoyed exploring everything from the big tourist destinations in Europe to the small out of the way places nobody has ever heard of. 2020 was actually a blessing in disguise as we hiked more than we ever have in our lives and saw more of our "back yard" than we ever expected to and absolutely loved it. There is so much here in Germany, and in all of Europe for that matter, to see and experience that we want to be able to share it with other like-minded travelers out there.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We really like to travel on a budget and are especially fond of staying in places other than large hotels frequented by tourists when looking for places to stay because they can be isolating from experiencing the local area. We think that Couchsurfing will be a nice addition to our repertoire when planning our vacations and will definitely provide opportunities to get a feel for the places we are traveling to. Plus, it will, hopefully, give us the opportunity to practice our German too!

Music, Movies, and Books

I like mostly non-fiction books but my wife is a voracious reader of crime fiction novels. As for movies, we'll watch anything good but one of our favorite things to do is watch all of the movies nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. When traveling, we don't listen to music much but at home, I like listening to pop, jazz and country music. My wife primarily likes pop music and has a dizzying array of songs on her iPod.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

It's difficult to choose just one amazing thing because we've been lucky in our lives to have had a number of excellent experiences. For example, my wife and I have skydived, scuba dived, earned our private pilots license and traveled to Bali, Belize, Australia, Italy, Ireland, England, Scotland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, The Netherlands, Portugal and Peru. We've scuba dived in Cozumel, the Blue Hole in Belize, the Socorro Islands off Southern Mexico and Bali. If I had to pick one amazing thing, it would be the time we were in Ollantaytambo, Peru visiting the dirt floor home of a local who shared with us a batch that she had just made of the popular homemade alcoholic drink, chicha, which is individually brewed and sold to locals in batches by many people in southern and central Peru.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm conversational in Spanish.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I love to share stories about my travels and am fairly well informed about things going on in the US. My interest in history and learning new things about places I'm traveling to all give me a lot to talk about with the people I meet.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Belize, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Guam, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Scotland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Mexico