Hey, I'm Tolga! I was born and grew up in Bursa, in Northwest Türkiye, and I hold dual citizenship from Türkiye and Bulgaria. As of June 2026, I just completed my physics undergrad at Bilkent University in Ankara with a minor in math, and I'm about to start my master's at one of Heidelberg, Munich, Cambridge, or Zurich in atomic physics. During my undergrad, I had the chance to do summer internships in Bochum and Innsbruck, living three months in each. My interests goes beyond physics, though. I love to learn, experience, and try different things from reading and art to sports, traveling, and meeting new people. Some of my hobbies are charcoal drawing, playing bass guitar, reading (from novels to encyclopaedias), stage acting, tennis, volleyball, judo, scuba diving, and paragliding (well, I only did the last two once!). I'm also fascinated by dinosaurs, math, biology, psychology, and archaeology - topics I can spend hours talking about. My childhood dream was to become a NatGeo explorer, which I think I'm fulfilling with science/art/traveling/learning/reading/..., just not in the strict sense. A big part of who I am comes from my family. I consider myself lucky to have teacher parents. Our home is full of my art teacher mother's reliefs, oil and acrylic paintings, felting, watercolour, gobelin, and vessels - growing up surrounded by all of that sparked my own passion for painting and self-expression. My physical education teacher father introduced me to tennis, volleyball, and swimming, which became important ways for me to connect with people. His role as a wrestling referee had its own magic too. He brought back fascinating items from around the world like a clay teapot from China, a papyrus with hieroglyphs from Egypt, a poncho with colourful motifs from Mexico. But the most important thing my parents taught me is about humanity. Both are Balkan Turks from Bulgaria. In the 80s, the communist government pressured the Turkish minority, which ultimately led to the expulsion of 300,000 Turks from Bulgaria in the summer of 1989 - my parents and their families among them. Despite that, they hold no resentment toward Bulgarian people. In fact, some of their closest friends are Bulgarian. Their positivity and openness, rather than bitterness, shaped the way I see the world, as a place full of cultures worth discovering and people worth meeting. That spirit has already led me to some great adventures! Three highlights so far: (1) hitchhiking from Innsbruck to Zurich in a single day, meeting incredibly warm people along the way; (2) spending two days at the Paris 2024 Olympics nearly for free, including watching the wrestling finals live. That wrestling connection runs deep in my family, it sent me back in my mind to the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, where my great-grandfather Lyutvi Ahmedov won a silver medal in heavyweight wrestling; (3) competing in the Turkish version of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and did 9/12 ('I was on TV mom!'). Those experiences inspired two exciting plans for the summer of 2026. First, I'm hitchhiking through Southern/Mediterranean Europe with couchsurfing along the route Lisbon-Granada-Barcelona-Marseille-Monaco-Florence-Venice-Dubrovnik-Athens, a journey of more than a month. Second, I'll be joining the Mendik Tepe archaeological excavation near Şanlıurfa in Southeast Türkiye, part of the same project as the world famous Göbekli Tepe, just 30 km from the Syrian border, for a whole month! This is exactly what I'm here for on Couchsurfing, meeting people while traveling and genuinely exchanging cultures. Along my Lisbon–Athens route, I'm looking for hosts who are happy to share their local culture and hidden gems in their own style. I'm equally happy to share mine, whether that's Turkish culture, quantum physics, Jamiroquai, or whatever else comes up in conversation!