CURRENT MISSION
I wish I had one at the moment (except for starting to host again ;-)

ABOUT ME
"All about me?" Sounds like a film title to me ...
I'm just not very good at giving a good (public) overview about myself (...I know, everybody's writing that, but: who is?), at least without fantasising or getting solemn. So you have to put together my persona yourself by reading on, I'm afraid.

......
My 'current missions' that are true all the time:
* Pondering about what that means for me: 'One must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.'

PHILOSOPHY
To say it in short philosophical terms: a strange and changeable combination of romantic idealism and cynic, existentialist realism, I would say, with the backing of well-tempered, but unstable Nitzschean individualism and sometimes some Woody Alleneske sarcastic homour to ease it. But who cares about all these -ISMs anyway? ^^

I'm not going as far as Woody Allen once did describing his perspective on life: "I do feel that it's a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is that you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself ... and I'm not the first person to say this or the most articulate person on it, it was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O'Neil: One must have one's dellusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and clearly life does become unbearable because it's a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit."

But I certainly won't copy some corny quot here about how wonderfully perfect and what an interesting adventure life actually is, advising you to make love not war and smiling all the time and so on...

And if all hope fails, there's always http://make-everything-ok.com

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING
I'm living alone and my flat is too big for me, so what's better that having a nice guest from another country - e.g. YOU - at my place from time to time ;-)

Plus, I am/was moderator of the Innsbruck city group, although lately I lost interest in investing my time in the local community b/c the CouchSurfers here don't seem to be very eager to get an active community going and I had a lot of other things going.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE
As a surfer:
Paris: in September 2008
Marc & Anne-Eliane, living in Le Marais/Saint-Paul
- incidentally together with lovely Lisi from Vienna
Nadège & Guillaume, living in Saint Marcel
Nicolas, living in the banlieu of Saint Ouen

Linz, cultural capital 2009 [August]
Daniel, the locomotive driver ;-) [2]

Vienna, at different times
Chanda & Lukas [twice]
Arved, also a fellow student of Orientalistics

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The "guest list" of my surfers:
[number of nights surfed]
-----
2013
-----
Gosia & Eva from Poland who hitchhiked to Rome in just 2 days (May 2013) [1]

/ Julian from Germany & Eleftheria from Komotini, Greece, where this lovely couple found each other through CS and decided to travel together for a while. (March 2013) [2]

Maddifrom Canada staying in Innsbruck and having a chaotic time here. (January 2013) [?]

-----
2012
-----
Elena & Liesa from Dresden, Germany hitch-hiking to Italy - last minute hosting. (August 2012) [1]

Martin et Lili a pâtissier and a art student from the west of France.
(July 2012) [1]

-----
2011 no hosting because I was in Paris most of the year.
-----

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2010
-----
Emilie from France together with her dog Togo, alternative wayfarers through Europe.
(August 2010) [2]

Ellie together with Simon on their first real journey and only 2nd CS experience.
(July 2010) [2]

Adeline and Alain from Paris, my French teachers and hiking companions ;-)
(July 2010) [3]

Tony the pilote together with his collegue Kevin on their Euro trip visiting the Innsbruck airport.
(July 2010) [2]

Joshua engeneer and entrepeneur on his Euro trip.
(July 2010) [1]

Nitya, art historian from Montreal, Canada together with her Alex, on their extended Euro-culture field trip.
It was their first CouchSurfing Experience :-)
(June 2010) [2]

/ Simona, Erasmus student in Linz from Lithuania together with Cemre from Linz/Turkey.
(May 2010) [2]

Jenrissa/Genevière, filmmaker and musicien from Montreal, Canada together with her lovely mother Dominique.
(May 2010) [2]

Daniel, the locomotive driver return visit together with Ruta Lithuanian from Linz.
(April/May 2010) [3]

Lukas, the paramedic from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
(March 2010) [3]

-----
2009
-----
Cactus from Hong Kong, not from China^^
(August 2009) [3]

Touko, who just showed up at the meet-up ^^
(extreme last-minute August 2009) [1]

Kyle, a real beachboy from Santa Cruz, CA, USA
(August 2009) [2]

/ Maryhelen from Canada, working as a teacher in Kairo
(last minute, July 2009) [1]

Wim from Leuven, Belgium
(last minute, July 2009) [1]

Kira, together with her dog Tulku, from Lithuania
(June 2009) [4]

Chris, a photography expert from the USA
(last minute, April 2009) [2]

Sabrina from Berlin, Germany
(March 2009) [5]

-----
2008
-----
Mimi & Nico from Bordeaux, France
(August 2008) [2]

Chanda & Lukas from Vienna, Austria
(August 2008) [2]

Matina from Thessaloniki, Greece
(July 2008) [4]

Peter + his friend Dylan from Syracuse, NY-USA
(June/July 2008) [2]

/ Andi + her sister Steffi from Quito, Ecuador / USA
(July 2008)

Helen from Patra, Greece
(June 2008) [1]

Interests

film & literature,
photography (especially street ph.)
arts in general;
"philosophy", politics
just to name all the usual suspects ... ;-)
also, to quote Churchill, 'no sports'

Culture-wise, I'm trying to get to know what the 'Westerners' call "the Orient" a bit; something everybody should do in our times of 'Clash of Cultures'.

and I would be on the wrong website here if I wasn't mentioning "travelling" as well ...

• dogs
• arts
• culture
• writing
• literature
• photography
• beauty
• dancing
• politics
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• investing
• magic
• hiking
• sports
• art history
• teaching
• history
• study abroad
• hitchhiking
• last minute travel

Music, Movies, and Books

There is not enough room for even the best of my favourite movies - the same with books.
I'm almost always up to watch films, by the way - so just ask! ;-)

On another profile I wrote:
"American Beauty", Terrence Malick & Iñárritu films & a lot more less profound ones ;-)
Lately also more and more classics from the 30ies to the 60ies like film noir or screwball comedies (Billy Wilder!) and visually impressive stuff (e.g. Asian cinema by Wong Kar Wai 'Ashes of Time'; Zhang Yimou 'Hero'; Ang Lee 'Tiger & Dragon') and now and then an older horror flick or something completely unusual.
It has to be mainly entertaining in a nice intelligent mood though; I don't like naturalistic analytical films (like stuff made with the Dogma-approach).

With music I am less than an amateur; I'm listening to almost everything, but know almost nothing, except the commonplace things (like of course Dylan, Cohen, etc.) - and I can also live without any music at all, I've discovered ;-)
So bring some music to play and tell me about it!

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I hate these questions, because I can never give a good answer respectively remember any "amazing things" (which doesn't mean I haven't done/seen some, I guess ...).
But for me the amazing things are not the things that sound interesting or are describable to somebody else.

Maybe resuscitating a human being: it's a strangely exciting and exceptionally real thing.

In a way, I live on such & similar rare glimpses of convincing, unquestionable reality, just as much as on the consoling illusions of art and beauty, I guess.

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: Basic First Aid stuff maybe and a bit about useless literary theory and how Hollywood films work ;-)
Maybe a little bit about photography as well.

Learn: A lot, I guess.
language-wise, polish up my English and embarrassing myself with my French.
And: Photography techniques

And useful travel experiences, or course :-)

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Croatia, Cuba, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, North Korea, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Austria, France, Germany

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