CURRENT MISSION

supporting the cultural scene in Ramallah and the Westbank region.

ABOUT ME

Born and raised in a quiet bavarian town, small Thomas ran away from home at the age of 16 to discover what there was to find on the other side of this big ball earth. He found Australia.

One night then, under the stars, Thomas noticed a peculiar similarity between the word to “chill” and the South American nation “Chile”, so Chile must be chilled out, so Thomas wants to go.

Parents got a little worried about Thomas’ views, told him he should do something with his life, for example study, so Thomas chooses anthropology which doesn’t particularly help to reduce parents’ worries but they go like fck it so Thomas ends up going to Berlin.

Berlin is famous for its parties, so Thomas wants to find out more about this peculiar local culture and ends up hammered in some basement and... suprisingly happy so he really gets into it and also starts organizing parties and other elaborate cultural events with his flatmates and other friends (youtube link below).

After highly disciplined money saving, Thomas finishes his studies with a research on Postmodern Love, goes to Brazil where it's very lovely and evetually surprisingly expensive considering Thomas' lack of employment. So the poor, well-tanned guy ends up returning to Berlin, entering the great, miraculous rabbithole once again.

Back there, Thomas starts a master in "cultural management" which allows him to re-gain the status of "student", making him eligible for all sorts of social benefits which is good.

He graduates on the topic of illegal rave parties, translates his thesis into a funding application at the EU and collects several thousand Euros to run political dialogue projects on subculture. He gets employed at Berlin's federation of music venues, the Clubcommission, and works there for 2 years until ... (long story) ... he goes to Ramallah and starts a job at the German National Cultural Institute "Goethe-Institut".

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

So far I've only surfed Couches and never hosted anyone from the CS community. However, I lived in a big community in Berlin for 8 years and we constantly had visitors, so I'm well used to life in communities, sharing, helping and contribuing.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Couch Surfing in Brazil, Argentina and Chile for almost 8 months with only great experiences.

Interests

Languages, stories of people, music, art, yep, art super important, good food, soundsystems

A video of the work I had been doing in Berlin is here:
http://vimeo.com/58636609#at=0

• arts
• culture
• dining
• music
• anthropology
• languages
• subculture

Music, Movies, and Books

I'm very much into books and music and also films but to list them is tough work.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

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Teach, Learn, Share

Share: I did two medium size anthropological studies on "Love", so if you want to know how they do it on Sulawesi or in Niger, I can tell you a bit about that.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Brazil, India, Nepal, Sweden

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Chile, Germany, Palestine, Turkey