Kate (from England) and Jedrek (from Poland) met sixteen years ago on a workcamp in Sardinia. Since then we've lived on a canal boat in England, a medieval tower house in the old city of Sana'a, Yemen, and a flat by the sea in Zanzibar (with a variety of cats).

These days we live in Leiden, Netherlands, which is a beautiful university town not far away from Amsterdam, but our feet are beginning to itch and we're thinking of packing our bags again.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We hosted travellers from Egypt, America, Spain and South Korea while we lived in Yemen; they were all amazing people and we loved showing them our favourite city. We hosted many more people in London, although sometimes our boat felt a bit small. And we also experienced more hospitality than most people will throughout their lifetime.

Interests

We like: reading, films, the theatre, Monty Python and other silly things, boats and canals, cats, long evenings with friends drinking wine or smoking sheesha, growing things, vegetarian cooking, markets, kangas from the Swahili coast, deserts, exploring beautiful places, learning languages, meeting people and finding out about their countries and cultures, serendipity, tea, alternative ways of living, hitch hiking, couchsurfing, mountains, the Middle East, Japanese ghosts, bicycles, legends and folk stories, chess and lots of other games, anthropology, spending a lot of time not doing very much.

• cats
• culture
• literature
• cooking
• wine
• cheese
• vegetarian
• yoga
• walking
• movies
• board games
• reading
• socializing
• anthropology
• teaching
• history
• languages
• mountains
• permaculture

Music, Movies, and Books

We spend a lot of time at libraries and cinemas so it's difficult to know where to start. But a few examples...

Books: Norse mythology, the Mabinogion, "Mrs Dalloway", "Cold Comfort Farm", E.M.Forster, Richard Dawkins, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Tim Macintosh-Smith, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, "100 Years of Solitude", "Catch 22", Terry Pratchett, P.G.Wodehouse, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K. Dick, Robyn Davidson, Lionel Shriver, Arundhati Roy, Barbara Kingsolver, Amin Maalouf, "Persepolis", John Simpson, Elif Shafak, Rohinton Mistry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, fairy stories.

Films: Almodovar, Miyazaki, Alfred Hitchcock; "Harvey", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Paradise Now", "Amelie", "The Last King of Scotland", "Marmulak", "Tsotsi", "Lord of the Rings", "Closely Observed Trains", old black and white comedies.

Music: Arabic music - Ilham al-Madfai, Souad Massi, Cheb Mami, Khaled, Fairouz, Kazim al-Saher, Yemeni music; Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, Miriam Makeba; Goran Bregovic, Balkan gypsy bands, and folk music in general; old rock music like the Rolling Stones; Feist; Regina Spektor; Ludovico Einaudi; classical music, especially Bach and anything played by Nigel Kennedy.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Getting married on a remote Polish mountain, and friends coming from all around the world to join us.

Teach, Learn, Share

We will happily teach you anything we know, but we don't know very much... Kate is an English teacher and can help you with English, or teach you some Swahili or Arabic. Jedrek is very good at fixing things, especially computers, and can take pretty good photos.

We would love to learn anything you can teach us! We're interested in different ways of living, new philosophies, permaculture, other languages, history, playing the ukulele - or anything that you're enthusiastic about, maybe something we haven't heard of yet.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Oman, Palestine, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Syrian Arab Republic, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Netherlands, Poland, Sudan, Tanzania, United Kingdom, Yemen

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