I like big books and I cannot lie. And gin & tonic (because life is supersonic). Bad puns. Always day-dreaming about really long train rides and road trips. Intact sense of wonder.

I get unreasonably excited about mundane things. Able to make mundane things sound moderately exciting. Good at remembering the lyrics to obscure 90s pop songs (I can do the rap part from the Backstreet Boys' 'Get Down'). Staying up real late. Spotting photoshop mistakes. Making impromtu decisions. Making pumpkin seed semifreddo.

LGBTQ friendly. Berlin - Kreuzberg.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

After years, I have revived my profile - I used to host and surf quite a bit when I was studying and then never kept the pace while i was writing my PhD. Now I'm trying to find out whether this site is still as amazing - and its people as wonderful - as it used to be back in the day.

Countries coucsurfed: Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Estonia, Lithuania, United States, Belarus, Moldova, Romania. I was lucky to welcome wonderful people from Romania, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands at my places in Berlin and Istanbul.

Interests

Getting unreasonably excited about mundane things. Making mundane things sound moderately exciting. Remembering the lyrics to obscure 90s pop songs (I can do the rap part from the Backstreet Boys' 'Get Down'). Staying up real late. Spotting photoshop mistakes. Making impromtu decisions. Making pumpkin seed semifreddo.

• education
• magic
• teaching
• political science
• volunteering

Music, Movies, and Books

Orhan Pamuk's 'The Museum of Innocence' might be my favorite book as it was so dear to me when I lived in Istanbul. Max Frisch's diaries. Eva Illouz. Max Goldt. Judith Hermann. Zadie Smith. Sartre plays. Yasmina Reza plays. Roberto Bolaño. Bukowski. Herrndorf. And oh, so many others. So easy to get lost in books.

I'm still wondering why 'Bored to Death' is not widely considered a phenomenal TV series (it is!). Agree with everyone on 'The Wire'. That moment when Bodie died, oh, the heartbreak. Im Angesicht des Verbrechens. Bojack Horseman ('This is a situation comedy. No one watches a show to feel feelings' - Herb). Durch die Nacht mit. Also I want to be Leslie Knope.

The above paragraph used to be much longer. Fuck you, Louie.

Und natürlich ist das Traumschiff auch eine Fernsehserie. Ich liebe das Traumschiff, und gar nicht so heimlich. Wer guckt mit mir? Natürlich mit Eierlikör. Oder sonntag morgens Shopping Queen. Außerdem besitze ich möglicherweise eine Jim Knopf & die wilde 13 DVD.

Wes Anderson movies. I don't care if people think it's hipster porn (it probably is). Roy Andersson movies. Jarmusch. 'Night on Earth' might be my favourite movie (if there is one such thing) and I have a hard time putting my finger on a reason why, which is probably exactly what makes it so magical. Trier. Coen Brothers. Waltz with Bashir. Can talk for hours about why 'Apocalypse Now Redux' is so much better than the "shorter" versions despite being obviously more boring.

Music is a difficult beast, too omnipresent to describe in bullet points, so here are some random notes. Miles Davis' 'Jean Pierre' are the perfect 10 minutes and 42 seconds. Röyksopp's 'Monument' is the song I listen to the most, or at least so Spotify tells me. If I'm ever given an award at an award show, I want to enter the stage to either 'Green Onions' by Booker T and the MG's or 'Chameleon' by Herbie Hancock. The Roots' 'Dun/Undun' is my go-to albm whenever I have no idea about what mood I'm in. Or Frank Zappa's 'Roxy & Elsewhere'. Listening to music, for me, is so much more about albums than about songs. 'Rumours'. 'The Suburbs'. 'Lost in the Dream'. 'Run the Jewels 3'. 'Illmatic'. 'People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rythm'. "Du liest ein Buch / ich lease ein' Benz" (KIZ). 80s power ballads are everything. Toto's 'Africa' is the most everything.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Italy, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

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