CURRENT MISSION

I just need to visit one more city to fulfill my alfabeto telefonico italiano: Rome.
My new plan is to visit all 107 Italian provinces. Still on my list: BL, BZ, EN, GR, PN, SU (or rather CI), VI, and VT.

After that the new plan will probably be: eat at all the famous slow food restaurants in Italy. Or visit all Dissapore-rated gelato shops. Both plans are already in action.

Or maybe learn all official languages of the European Union to some extent (maybe A1). That would mean that I'd have to learn Irish, Finnish, Maltese, Portuguese, Croatian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, and last but not least: Polish. Please stop expanding the EU.

In the meantime, I maintain a reading bingo chart in order to push me to read more and spend less time on the internet. So far it's working.

Some places attract me just by their sound: Samarkand, Odessa, Socotra, Dar es Salaam, Baghdad, Lucknow, Manaus, La Paz, Vladivostok, Kiruna, Bonifacio, Antofagasta, Trabzon, Viterbo, Winnipeg, Isfahan, Vientiane, Irkutsk, ... I hope to get there one day.

If someone offers me a job in any country ending in -stan, I'm in.

And I would like to learn to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

ABOUT ME

I look older than I am, but I act younger than I look.

I have a baby, born in April 2022, and he is the best.

Currently teaching Dutch to refugees in high school. I am not a full-time traveller anymore, but I still want to see the remaining provinces.
I'm quiet until I get the opportunity to speak a foreign language.
My wife says that I'm a pig.

PHILOSOPHY

Voglia di lavorare, saltami addosso - ma dimmi dove cadi, cosí mi sposto.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have only hosted four official couchsurfers so far. Besides that I have surfed a lot myself. If my luggage allows me to, I like to bring something typical from Belgium or the Netherlands for my hosts.

I talk about Couchsurfing to people who don't know it. This doesn't seem to make them try it :)

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have mainly surfed in the Nordics and in Italy. These were my hosts:
2010
- Pieter in Helsinki
2011
- Kirstine and Michael in Copenhagen
- Martin in Copenhagen
- Lena in Oslo
- Matthias in Oslo
- Adrian in Gothenburg
- and I had a nice 'fika' with Vanda in Malmo
2013
- Danguole in Terlizzi, Puglia
- Franz in Mola di Bari, Puglia
2014
- Alan in Llandrindod, Wales
- Fasil in York, meeting Estella and Tom as well
- Chloé in Dole
- Thomas in Luzern
- Francesca in Varese
- Francesca in Verbania, meeting Lorenzo as well
- Amir in Torino
- Cristina in Torino (twice)
- Luca in Savona
- Margarita in Genova
- Antonella in Bolotana, Sardegna
- Paula in Cagliari
- Maria Teresa in Livorno (twice)
- Max in Lucca
- Rosmarie in Eschen, Liechtenstein
- Yasser in Helsinki (twice)
- Tommy and Pirianna in Rovaniemi
- Juulia in Tornio
- Karim in Oulu
- Vít in Lübeck
- Marco in Pavia
- Ruggero in Agrigento
- Franz in Mola di Bari (second time!)
- Gabriele in Lecce
Furthermore I travelled a few days in northern Italy with Kristen and we met some other couchsurfers at a barbecue in Como (Steven, Ivano).
2016
- hosted Franz from Mola di Bari
- Franco in Verona
- Stefania and Pietro in Riva del Garda
And I visited Franz again in Mola di Bari.
2017
- Franz in Mola di Bari (third time!)
- Cecilia and Margherita in Piacenza
- Massimo in Cremona
- Cécile in Parma
- Ivan and Silvia in Modena
- Vincenzo in Peschici
- Luisa in Bucchianico
2018
- hosted Debora from Paris
2019
- hosted Jae from Chemnitz
- hosted Willem on his Rhine route
2021
- Ottmar in Kassel
- Marcel in Weimar
After coming back from my German trip in 2021, I found out that my wife expected a baby. He was born in April 2022. Since then I'm not couchsurfing on a regular basis anymore.

Interests

Our baby boy Jules. Cats, especially our home queen Margherita. Languages I can speak. Culture. Good food. History. Scandinavian movies (not thrillers). Books, lots, lots of books. Sports (more watching than playing myself, though). Calvin and Hobbes. Card games. Languages I can read but can't really speak (Arabic, Hungarian, Russian). Puzzles. Maps. Nice cats. Politics. Riddles. Paintings by Walton Ford and Edward Hopper. Languages I can't even read (Amharic, Georgian etc.). Mean cats. And sleep.

• cats
• culture
• books
• dining
• sauna
• politics
• movies
• puzzles
• rowing
• cartography
• history
• languages
• slow food
• chinese calligraphy

Music, Movies, and Books

I love to read German, Italian and Swedish books, but my favourite authors are Jens Christian Grondahl, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bohumil Hrabal, Roald Dahl, Torgny Lindgren, Oliver Sacks, and first of all Primo Levi. I am inspired by Hans Fallada and Primo Levi not to end up in what the 20th century gave us.

My favourite movies are La meglio gioventu, Intouchables (the French movie with Omar Sy), Mar adentro, Auf der anderen Seite, and Wes Anderson's and the Coen brothers' movies. Apart from these, I like to watch Danish, Swedish and Norwegian movies. I love Lars von Trier's Riget (The kingdom) series, for instance. And I kind of start liking Michael Haneke (Das weisse Band, Amour).

Music: too much to list, although I always end up playing the same CD's. Basically any music with at least a little bit of melody. Preferred artists: Paolo Conte, Mark Knopfler, Michael Kiwanuka, Paolo Nutini, and a few others. In Italy I discovered Fabrizio De André (literally all Italian couchsurfers love him). I like Django Reinhardt because he's Belgian, and I love the biopic Django.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I made a baby!

Enjoying an oldtimer ride to a lovely Finnish lake, a late-night meal with a real Finnish family and a Finnish sauna afterwards. Feeling at home abroad is the best feeling you can get.

Sitting on a rocky beach in Sardinia at night, watching the stars and falling in love with a girl who turned out to become my wife.
In the autumn of 2014 I did a Paolo tour: in two weeks time I saw (and listened to) Paolo Nutini in Amsterdam, Paolo Conte in Milan and Paolo Fresu in Catania.
Visiting the capucine crypt in Palermo alone - never again!
Monks singing without ever getting tired in San Miniato in Florence.
The palio in Siena, seen from the starting corner.
A smoke sauna in Riga, surrounded by old Russian bare bellies and buttocks and the smell of dried birch twigs.
Walking on a narrow ridge towards a glacier for an hour.
An evening ride around the Elan Lakes in Wales.
Bumping upon sea sparkle in Rotterdam.
Driving around in California and on Sardinia.
Getting seasick on the Atlantic Ocean while visiting the Faroe Islands... Amazingly nauseating.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can always teach you at least three words in at least three languages you don't know. I can give you some insight in the jungle that's called Belgian politics. I can share my failing efforts to understand Dutch people's behaviour.
I hope to learn something as well, from making proper coffee to tying my laces one-handedly. And I am becoming a gelato expert (at eating, not producing!)

What I Can Share with Hosts

Since I've travelled so often in Italy and eaten so many gelati, I usually can give some advice about nice places to stay and good gelaterie all over the beautiful country!

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russian Federation, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Vatican City State, Viet Nam, Wales

Countries I’ve Lived In

Belgium, Estonia, Italy, Netherlands

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