Hello everyone!

I am Umur, a Fulbright scholar who found himself in the intersection of anthropology, design, and technology. I just graduated from Northwestern University - Engineering Design Innovation master program and I spent most of the time and made my final thesis on designing new services to create connections over food between people to have more connected communities.

After graduation, I started working in Chicago downtown as a product manager for a food technology company called Tovala. What I do day to day is asking questions to people, empathize with them to understand their problems, try to validate it through patterns in data and solve with an elegant technology to make their life better and happier!

Currently, my passions are listening stories of people and document them through portrait photography, finding the best pour over coffees in different cities, cooking globally-inspired meals, design, aesthetic, abstract art and of course, traveling!

As a local friend, I am more than happy to meet with you in Istanbul, show you around(best food, coffee, view, activities, music and more!) and I am also looking forward to meeting a lot of great people while I am traveling around the world!

My Social Media Accounts :
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enesumurgokcek/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enesumur.gokcek

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I believe that traveling creates good moments, those moments can turn into great memories when it shared with wonderful people. I love the community of travelers all around the world in this platform and so happy to be part of it!

Interests

• culture
• music festivals
• ethics
• dining
• cooking
• coffee
• fitness
• drinking
• traveling
• camping
• basketball
• communications
• engineering
• study abroad
• gastronomy
• coffee shops

Music, Movies, and Books

Good music make you feel alive and reveal your emotions. The greatest music makes your soul nourished. Music is magic and musicians are magicians.

My jam:
Flume, Moderat, Yaeji, Vance Joy, Matt Strike, Sia, Tame Impala, Hozier, Tritonal, LP, Cheat Codes, The Chainsmokers, Bingo Players, 3LAU, Galantis Marsmello, Lost Frequencies, Daft Punk, Stromae, Swedish House Mafia, Armin Van Buuren, John Lennon, Queen, Evgeny Grinko, Einaudi Ludovico, Eva B. Ross, Charlie Cunningham, Lucy Rose.

Movies:
The pursuit of Happyness, A Beautiful Mind, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 3 Idiots, Hidden Figures, The Godfather, Schindler's List, Inception, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Interstellar, Memento, The Wolf of Wall Street, Whiplash, Black Swan,

Books:
Outliers, Sapiens, Sophie's World, The Art of the Empathy, Gun Germs and Steel, Emotional Design Zero to One, The Little Prince, The Design of Everyday Things, The Atlas of Misty Continents, The Power of Habit,

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach:
- Cooking (my interest and expertise are in Turkish cuisines, Italian cuisine, seafood, baking)
- Playing and singing Riptide by Vance Joy or Imagine by John Lennon with Ukulele in 10 minutes
- Empathy and active listening
- Designer frameworks to understand life with new perspective
- Raj Yoga Meditation
- Turkish or English language

Learn:
- Your story first! What makes you, actually you.
- Best place to eat OR drink pour over coffee
- Spanish!
- Your culture and traditions
- Hidden places in the city that you love but tourist cannot find easily

Share
- My name means caring, and I believe that caring starts with sharing!

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Czech Republic, Turkey, United States