I was born in Croatia, but have been living and working in Brno (CZ) for four great years. I changed different jobs over the course of time, but my main interest are women's rights and feminism. I'm talkative, open, have patience with shy people and like to listen. :) While traveling, I like to observe, walk around at a slowest possible pace and tap into the zeitgeist rather than visit museum. Nothing against them, though.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

My experience taught me that nothing can inspire and motivate you more for doing great stuff than traveling and meeting new people. (No matter how cliche that sounds to you right now:)
I see Couchsurfing as a precious opportunity for meeting locals and getting to know the place you travel to through their prism. This is the kind of unique experience I appreciate very much.

Interests

My interests include: intersectional feminism, languages, music, reading, active engagement in local communities, human rights, etc. Other than that, I'm able to get excited about literally anything and learn about new stuff all the time. We'll find some mutual topic, for sure.

• music
• languages
• intersectionality
• feminism
• veganism
• arabic music
• spanish dialects

Music, Movies, and Books

MUSIC:
As a young Croatian child, I started digging through my dad’s collection of mainly old rock records and Yugoslav new wave bands, only to later decide I will stick strictly to punk music. Later, when I grew up a little bit, I expanded my musical taste to almost all genres in various parts of the Earth. Nowadays, my favorite genres include many eclectic things from Persian disco, Turkish psych, literally any music from Arab world with emphasis on electro chaabi and Algerian rai; through Colombian cumbia, Dominican bachata, all the way to rap en español, autotune trap ‘wonders’, new female reggaeton and, of course, if we talk about Asia - old school j-pop, k-pop and c-pop, Khmer pop and Thai funk. I’m not exactly a sophisticated crate digger, alas I don’t even own a gramophone anymore. My realm consists of a YouTube and radio shows on NTS, respectively courtesy of my favorite DJs/DJanes/record labels: Habibi Funk, Radio Discostand, Paloma Colombe, Cheb Gero, Sahel Sound, Cabin Pressure, Radio Martiko, Ernesto Chahoud and others.

BOOKS:
In October 2018, I set a goal for myself to read 50 books by women of colour in one year. We will see how it will go, but my main motivation is to give advantage to those authors who are most likely not to be published, due to their marginalized status in society. My non-fiction reading list mainly contains topics concerning gender (most of it), race, post-colonialism and civil rights movements: If we’re talking fiction - I enjoy speculative fiction, ie magical realism, dystopian novels, etc. I particularly enjoy reading memoirs and diaries.
I would single out Roxane Gay as my favorite author of all times and my lifelong inspiration.

PODCASTS:
I guess this is also place where I could squeeze my love for podcasts as well, right? My favorite shows are Bitch Media’s ‘Back Talk’, ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’, ‘Call Your Girlfriend’, ‘Kerning Cultures’, ‘Read’ and BBC’s ‘Global News Podcast I listen to daily.

MOVIES:
Against my own will, I think I’m indeed a Netflix junkie. Some of my favorites include smart comedies/satires with strong female leads: Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, BoJack Horseman and Insecure. In the old days, when I was more focused on watching movies, and that was 5 years ago, I enjoyed old Czech cinema.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Moving to Brno turned out to be a good choice. Traveling Asia by myself for a month was an experience I would single out as one of the most important and life-changing for me.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you how to express your inner radicalness with cross stitching. While traveling, I’m always taking aida, needles and rainbow palette of threads with me. I would happily pass on this liberating skill to you. If you would like to check out some of my work, you can do so on my Instagram profile @iammajavusi. I am genuinely interested in learning bits from you first language/dialect.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Cooking (VEGAN)

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Croatia, Czech Republic