I've been on Couchsurfing since it started, and have always appreciated what it had to offer. I stayed with a couple in Cambridge, England, and had a great time, and have hosted people when I've been able. Also, I stayed with someone in Lugano and Zurich, respectively.

In no particular order, and not limited to: Movies: Ingmar Bergman(!), Andrei Tarkovsky(!), F.W. Murnau, Vittorio de Sica, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Werner Herzog, Dziga Vertov, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Sven Nykvist...... Books: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt, Marcus Aurelius, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edward Gorey, Machiavelli, Karen Armstrong, Titus Livy, Anton Chekhov, Jack Kerouac, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (his Confessions, not his philosophy.), Edgar Allen Poe, Dante, William Faulkner........ Music: 1970's Progressive rock, Beethoven, Brahms, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Bach, Chopin, Mingus........