Hey there!

Nice that you stumbled upon my profile! My name's Thomas and I'm a student at the Friedrich-Alexander-Uni in Erlangen. I'm studying electical engineering and am doing my masters right now. Please note that I live in Erlangen, even though my profile says that I'm living in Nürnberg. I did this because I want to reach more people and because there is a train to Erlangen from the main railway station quite frequently, so I could still host people at my house. See more at the "Public Transit Options" section.
I learned English and French in school, though my French is really not that awesome because I didn't really use it outside of school lessons. My parents are from the hungarian-speaking part of Romania, so that's why I'm also fluent in Hungarian.
One important thing about me, I absolutely love to go hiking! Scotland is really good for that, which is partly the reason why I did an exchange program there. So if you want to go on a hike, I'm more than happy to join!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I've been traveling to a few countries and always thought that it's kind of sad that I don't really know anybody from the place I was visiting. Mostly I ended up doing the classic tourist things but didn't really get to meet people that weren't tourists too.
At some point I heard about Couchsurfing and the concepts behind it. I thought it's a really awesome idea and wanted to join too. I hosted a few Couchsurfers while I was doing my exchange year in Glasgow and only had great experiences! Because of these, I decided to continue taking part in the community.

Interests

As I already said, I'm absolutely in love with hiking. Just give me my backpack, a national park and I'm happy. My recent trips were a three week tour in the Rocky Mountains in Canada just for hiking and a multi-day tour with my bicycle from my home to Barcelona which was around 2500 kilometers (1550 miles) and took me 36 days. But it was absolutely worth it!
Running and playing the viola is just something I do in my free time.I play the violin and viola since I'm 11 years old and am still part of a few orchestras. I once thought that I might study my instrument, but I decided to keep music as a hobby instead of making it a profession.

• running
• electronics
• violin
• cycling
• hiking
• choir
• viola

Music, Movies, and Books

In terms of making music on my own, I'm playing a few solo pieces for viola right now. When listening to music I don't really prefer any genre and am rather mainstream to be honest.
A recent movie that I thought was really well done was Interstellar. Even though many Sci-Fi movies end up with the whole crew killing itself because they are mentally unstable, this one was slightly different. Aside from that I watched a few series.
Lately, I've read the books 'A Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins' , 'Inferno - Dan Brown' , 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful - Sean B. Caroll' , 'The Martian - Andy Weir' , 'Lord of the flies - William Golding'

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I rode a mule on the rim of the Grand Canyon!

What I Can Share with Hosts

I'll express my gratitude for staying at my host by buying food, cooking for him or inviting him for dinner and respecting his house rules. It is correct that couchsurfing is meant to be free of charge but nevertheless hosts take care of you in their free time. So a surfer should try to make the experience also a good one for the host. Even if it just means leaving some food behind that they bought. I can also fully understand if my host has no time to show me around. Sometimes it's just not that easy to keep on with the everyday life and also organizing a trip for a visitor.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Canada, China, England, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Macao, Nepal, Netherlands, Romania, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, India, United Kingdom