CURRENT MISSION

The challenge of my slightly belated transitioning into adulthood.

ABOUT ME

I grew up in a small medieval town in Western Bohemia, Czech Republic, attended boarding schools in Prague and Singapore, volunteered in India, went to college in Upstate New York, and spent a year working in NYC. In May 2018 I moved to Nuremberg, Germany and now I’m working on building a life here.

PHILOSOPHY

Humanism, rule-based multilateralism and diplomacy, real (as opposed to surface-level) multiculturalism, the non-ritualistic part of Buddhism, 92% of Nietzsche’s writings, transformative (preferably experiential) education.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I’m starting to attend events in Nuremberg. I would like to start hosting, but I am still working on convincing my housemate of the benefits of this.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Surfed in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Germany, the Czech Republic, the U.S., Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, and Japan;
participated in events in Argentina, Chile, the U.S., Russia, South Korea, Japan, Austria, and Germany;
hosted in the U.S., South Korea, and Germany.

Interests

Literature, rockclimbing, current events, good conversations, art and museums, international cinema, Asian visual culture, buildings, colors, activities traditionally performed at 16:20, critical theory, etymology and languages, pastries and bread, railway and subway systems, mountains, Wikipedia, autumn sceneries, clothes, cafés, jokes with a subtle message in them, trees, interior design, adventures, technology, nights, aviation, photography, alternative education, stationery shops (and fountain pens!), drums, good tea.

• arts
• culture
• literature
• design
• interior design
• photography
• beauty
• festivals
• education
• environment
• cooking
• vegetarian
• vegan
• running
• walking
• clothing
• technology
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• knitting
• guitar
• drums
• animation
• teaching
• etymology
• languages
• beaches
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

MUSIC
These days: The Blockhead, Amanda Palmer, Debussy, Sufjan Stevens, Gogol Bordello, Philip Glass, Modest Mouse, the Lumineers, German electronic music, Czech ska, Bollywood soundtracks ...

MOVIES
One of my greatest passions in life. Attend film festivals whenever I can. Appreciate the classics (such as the slow ones from the 60s’ New Waves) just as much as contemporary international cinema (Anurag Kasyap, Kim Ki-Duk, Wes Anderson, Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar). Recently, however, I have been awakening to the fact that there is some great stuff on Netflix, too (Chef’s Table, No Reservations, Easy, Master of None, High Maintenance).

BOOKS
Where would I be today if it weren’t for books? And libraries, those appropriately grand shrines of humanity’s greatest pride, literature? For me, it started with Astrid Lindgren and culminated in scientific literature written mostly by US professors. There are way too many books that profoundly affected me. Random examples include Orhan Pamuk, Arundhati Roy, Milan Kundera, John Dewey, Khaled Hosseini, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Haruki Murakami, Ray Bradbury, Socrates, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, or James Joyce.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Random assortment of memories I treasure, even though calling them "amazing" might be a bit of a stretch:
- Reading Orwell’s Burmese Days on the roofs of the pagodas of Bagan, Myanmar — indescribable beauty
- A week of endless bus rides through the desert on my way from La Paz, Bolivia to Santiago de Chile — as it turns out, Chile really is a long snake of a country
- Lonely nights in Singapore National Library, reading about high density housing developments while overlooking a city state composed of nothing but high density housing developments — surreal
- Riding motorbikes around the mountainous countryside of Maharashtra, India — 2-3 people per bike, with a teenager in charge
- Making a human rights advocacy video at the UN Headquarters — this might have involved some covert filming of bickering diplomats
- Spending a week in a hammock on a beach on a Puerto Rican island — beautiful but would not recommend on rainy nights
- Walking alongside the great loop of Tokyo’s Yamanote line in one day — taking a photo in front of each of the 29 stations

Teach, Learn, Share

Things I'm working on learning right now:
German, cooking, internalizing the private sector’s emphasis on efficiency, maintaining a clean apartment despite post-work exhaustion.

Things I can teach:
English (and Czech, but let’s face it, who cares :D), photography and film making (incl. work with editing software), the mindset of a person who truly respects and works to understand individuals of fundamentally different experiences and opinions, the appreciation of tea.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Norway, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Timor-Leste (East Timor), United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Czech Republic, Germany, India, Singapore, South Korea, United States