CURRENT MISSION

To become happy and to fight poverty, hunger, climate change, bankers, racism and Belgian politics when I have time left.

ABOUT ME

Hi, I'm Matthias, a 24 year old philosophy student.
I always like to meet new people and engage in new experiences, but I find it hard to list up a sum of qualities of myself by which you can judge me, because I beleave that people behave much more according to the types of situations in which they happen to find themselves, than according to some sort of innate characteristics. But I will give it a try anyway. At the moment I'm living with 6 other students in a community house in Ghent. It's the fifth year that I'm living with other people and the experience I have with that is that I'm a rather easygoing person who can accord with different types of people. I'm the type of person that go's out a lot, but is trying to diminish that behavior to focus more on my studies and my activism.

PHILOSOPHY

Be the change you want to see in the world (Sounds cliché, I know, but I really try ;) )

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

My first experience was a couple of years ago, when I got hosted in Berlin, and I decited to return the favor to the community and open up my house for interesting travellers.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I got hosted one time in Berlin, and the last two years a lot of couchsurfers stayed at my place.

Interests

Philosophy, discussion, friendship, politics, economics, meeting people, new experiences, music, going out, traveling, transforming the world, Belgian beers, cooking etc.

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
Wilkinson & ¨Picket - The spitit level (the best book ever writen!)
David Harvey - The enigma of capital
Michael Parenti - Democracy for the few
Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine

Movies:
Amadrillo
Jarhead
Syriana
Michael Moore-movies
Schindler's List
La haine

Music:
omnivore

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Organising an anti-racism manifestation which was attended by 2.000 people.
Hiking in COrsica.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm an active militant in the progressive student movement. At the moment we are trying to create a student union which has to be ready to fight for our rights when the austerity measures that are raging trough Europe and the world will hit Belgium. In 1999 it was free to go to college in the UK, now it is inpossible to study without getting in debt there. The Netherlands just raised their fees for master students. Unions on the entire continent are under attack and the historically progressive parties of Europe do no longer dare to propose an alternative society. In the entire world banks are going bankrupt, except if the governments come to save them, after which they have to decrease spending on social security, education, affordable housing etc. This dictarship of bankers, hedge-funds and speculators is not the world I want to live in, but a world I want to fight against whith everything I have in me. In my thinking and acting I am trying as much as possible to focus on how a counter movement can be build. I do not claim that I have all the answers and recepies to how one can do this - the road to succes is full of failure - but if you want to teach something from me, it will most probabely be of this sort.
I try to be open to as much possible knowledge as possible, both practical end theoretical, so if you want to teach me anything you're good at, I'm open for it.

Countries I’ve Visited

Cuba, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium