Hi there,

My name's Maxime and I come from a very small French city called Le Puy-En-Velay, but spent most of my +18yo life living in Clermont-Ferrand, and moved recently to Marseille.

I discovered Couchsurfing while in 2017 while traveling around Europe, and it made me meet so many lovely people that I instantly fell in love with it, and started using it in all subsquent travel.

I currently live in the beautiful city of Marseille in the South of France. It has a unique place in my heart, as it IS a unique place. Having grown up in the mountains, being able to access the sea so easily is definitely a nice pace of change in my everyday life. Marseille has an anarchist, i'll-do-whatever-the-fuck-i-want kind of vibe that I love even though it's not for everybody. But I think everyone should at least try to see if it fits them.

About me :

I spend a good chunk of my time with my friends or my roommates, as I'm a pretty social person. Solitude can be a need sometimes but I tend to prefer going out for a drink or a hike than cosying up on the couch with a book.

On a regular weekend, I'll probably wake up on saturday kinda late (10/11am) because I was out the day before. I'll go to the local farmer's market to buy fresh and locally produced food, then cook myself something. Head out around 1/2pm, either to the beach, to a cultural event, or to a nice and cosy outdoor place where I can read a lil bit. At the end of the afternoon I'll join some friends to a bar so we can grab a beer, eat a slice of pizza and then go to a concert or, if we wanna dance all night long, a techno/house festival. Sunday will be chill day, waking up late in the morning, doing some cleaning around the house, playing some board games with friends in the afternoon or going on a hike if I'm feeling lively, and then back home to watch a movie with the roommates.

I'm pretty political. I'm part of a semi-radical political/ecological activist group, and would consider myself either communist or anarchist depending on my mood. I like reading and talking about feminism, neo-colonialism, CRT, gender ideology, every -ism possible, and I guess most right-wingers in the US would make fun of me for being woke (not that I'd actually care).

I love meeting new people and hanging out with them. I think it's important to hear a wide and diverse range of experiences from all over the world and from all type of people, as to not fall in an echo chamber. I'll be interested in listening to you talk about your life, your trips, your ideas, even if we're not on the same page. I try to not be judgemental (but sometimes it's hard).

Sports wasn't really my thing for most of my life (used to be a huge nerd) but I realised the importance of it a few years ago so now I'm getting into it. I do bouldering on a weekly basis, sometimes I go to the gym (sometimes), I walk a lot and I'd like to buy/build a bike so I could move around the city with it. Always been a huge fan of nature as well, I like swimming, hiking, camping, canyoning, climbing, all that shit.

Lover of animals, I'm vegetarian/almost vegan, got a dog tattooed on me, I'm looking into getting a cat tattooed as well. If I see a dog in the street I'm probably going to gasp and point at it.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

traveling's expensive yo

Music, Movies, and Books

Pretty diverse taste when it comes to music, so I'm just going to drop some names because classifying artists is starting to become a nightmare : Kendrick, Tyler the Creator, Frank Ocean, Brockhampton, SZA, Pink Floyd, King Gizzard, King Krule, Kevin Morby, Angel Olsen, Alvvays, Arctic Monkeys, Philip Glass, Badbadnotgood, Daft Punk, Kamasi Washington, The Avalanches, Slowthai, Little Simz, The Strokes, James Blake, Jorge Ben, Nina Simone, Milton Nascimento, Ryuichi Sakamoto, MF Doom, Radiohead, Tame Impala ..... I'll stop there because that's already a lot.

I like movies, even though I don't watch as many as I should (or would like to, or used to). I'm particularly excited about indie-ish artsy movies (my roommate and I looooooove A24 movies), but I also crave non-western ones. Think South-East Asian movies (mostly Hong Kong/South Korean/Japanese), South American and sometimes a bit of African or Middle-East as well ... I used to live in a city called Clermont-Ferrand that has one of the biggest short film festival in the world, so I'm really into that as well. The weirdier the better.

I used to read tons of sci-fi and fantasy but my taste kinda changed over the time, so now I mostly read non-fictional stuff, political/social/philosophical essays, history books, everything ranging from feminist to neo-communist stuff. And a bit of classic/modern litterature. Also, huge huge fan of magic-realism, everything from Borges to Kafka, Marquez, Murakami or Kundera.
(also, some mangas and manhwas).

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Lots. I'd rather talk about them face to face though, kinda boring by writing.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm full of fun and/or useless anecdotes about a wide variety of topics.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Laughter, beers, memories.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

France