CURRENT MISSION

Penetrate the world of academia here in North America... or not:-) Do what I'd like to do, anyway

ABOUT ME

Went into mountains once - and got hooked. Laid my hands on a Tolkien book - and got hooked. Read a saga - well, you get the idea. And since then I've loved languages and talking with other people; that's probably why I did become a translator (though of course it's a job and isn't always as much fun as it should be - but I do love holding in my hands a book I translated) and a philologist - a sort of an in-between. Hand been lucky to have a possibility to travel somewhat extensively in Europe (less so in States and Canada so far); fell in love with France, esp. southern, and of course Iceland is my idea of paradise (could use some more sunshine though:-)).

PHILOSOPHY

Do what you have to do and really like to do - and come what may.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Surfers are welcome.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Didn't have much yet, but what I had was cool.

Interests

Classical music (you name it, I'm interested - from Baroque down to Shostakovich, though, probably, nothing later than that), old Germanic languages and literatures (mostly Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Gothic), etymology, travelling, food&wine, woodcutting (when I can get my hands on a dead tree to fell I'm glad), hockey (hey, I'm in Canada after all), tennis...

• books
• dining
• wine
• traveling
• music
• classical music
• hockey
• tennis
• etymology
• languages
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Books - oh. Let's see. Joyce's Ulysses, Proust's "Á la recherche du temps perdu" (still have to complete books 6 and 7), Cortázar (everything except for the last novel, but esp. short stories and 62), Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, Heller's Catch-22 (one of the funniest things I´ve ever read), of course Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Vonnegut in general (even translated his last novel, Timequake, into Russian), Sherlock Holmes books (though I do not like them as much now as did when I was a kid), Icelandic family sagas naturally, and oh yes - Prof. J.R.R.Tolkien (you probably won't believe me, but I learnt my English translating Silmarillion into Russion on history lessons in high school)!
Music, classic - Mahler first and foremost, then Bach, Schuetz, Mozart (operas - and what a Don Giovanni I've been to at Salzburg in 2001!), Verdi, Shostakovich (chamber pieces), of cource Michel Nyman (esp. music for Cook etc. and Draughtsman contract), and that's not the end of it.
Music, rock - Van der Graaf Generator!!!!!! and that says it all. Then, sure, Pink Floyd, T.Rex, Jethro Tull, Doors, some Russian things you mostly won't be aware off, but they are good, too. Also rarer things like Gong (oh boy, aren't they just great), Magma, Gentle Giant.
And quite separately and specially - Georges Brassens.
Movies - Kurosawa, Fellini, Bertolucci's Il Conformista (still got thrills), Visconti's Innocente, Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis, then Wenders's Himmel ueber Berlin supremely and absolutely, then moving on to less serious stuff Mr. Hitchcock with his good friends the birds, Star Wars (they've had to be here, eh?), then René Lalou and Miyazaki-san (you guessed it) and so on and so forth.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Lots of - but mostly, I think, for a Russian from behind "the barrier", is having learnt a lot of languages and acquired a cosmopolitan frame of mind. And of course winning a very good scholarship which brough me to my dream country, Iceland, for whole three months.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, France, Iceland, Israel, Russian Federation

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