Hey everyone, happy to meet and host you in my home town Heerlen! :) Anyone can feel free to send me a message also just to meet up, there is a lot to do in this region that I love to share with people.

I am not on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter and I believe I still exist as a person and am still perceived as such by other people. :) :) :)

I think it's our duty to try to see the positive in any other person and to work on this every day :)

I love languages, literature and linguistics -- reading has been my biggest "hobby" my whole life, but I also love cooking and baking (even some elaborate just for myself :D), music of course, lately I am more and more getting into meditation, yoga and tai chi. My family is very important to me and of course also my friends from school times and the many international friends I met through the years.

Generally I would say I am a political person, very interested in a genuine (philosophical) public debate and geopolitics. My work is teaching Dutch and German and doing translations between these two languages. I never have a multiple year plan haha, so that will probably not be what I will do for the rest of my life, we will see....

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I LOVE Couchsurfing. I have had the most amazing experiences with it, more than I could have ever expected from it. It has allowed me to put my life in perspective in the best way, even more by hosting than surfing myself. Hospitality is a huge value for me and something I want to put into practice as much as I can in my everyday life.

I also went to several CS meetings in Amsterdam when I lived there and organised some CS meetings in Mainz when I was living and studying there :D Really like this way of being active in the community aswell. Right now I live in the inland of Spain which is a whole new experience and a great way to practice Spanish. Looking forward to meet people here.

My travelling aspirations for now (other than continue to travel in Europe) are to go to Iran and make a REALLY big Russia-trip at some point. I am very interested in the perspective of countries that are not part of the western world.

Interests

• writing
• singing
• reading
• traveling
• music
• classical music
• teaching
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Literature is my life, I am a lover of the German classics mostly Hölderlin and Goethe. Any German reading this I recommend "Park" by Marius Goldhorn. My favourite Dutch book is the classic "Nooit meer slapen", otherwise I enjoy a lot absurd literature by for example Daniil Charms. I could write a lot more about that but let's keep it at that. :)

To give you an idea of my music taste, I love for example Metallica, Pink Floyd, The Stranglers, but also classical music like Rachmaninov, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Schubert and Debussy. I especially love piano music and classical singing (Lied) as I do that myself too.

I also have a lot of very cringy guilty pleasures when it comes to music, I'll share this with you when we meet haha

I am really quite ignorant about cinema so you are welcome to enlighten me!

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Meeting so many amazing people from all over the world!

Traveling through Europe by train has been one of the most amazing experiences for me so far. When it's done with friends it's of course even so much better. I hope I'll be as lucky to have many more of those trips.

I translated a book about Russia from German into Dutch

Teach, Learn, Share

Uhm language stuff I guess? Dutch/other languages in the Netherlands/German maybe

Everything you'll want to teach me I will most probably find interesting! I really like to learn new things about cooking so let's make a nice meal together :) I got better at cooking in the last couple of years so there might be some things I could teach you about that too.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I hope we can share a nice time together and experience the feeling of how amazing it can be to meet random people and have a great time with them!

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain