Errant musician, sleepless translator, irreverent Yiddish teacher, rootful cosmopolitan. Λυράρισα.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I've had several CS stays as a guest - in Krakow, Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Turku, Helsinki -- and all of them were exciting and insightful.

I've only hosted a few times, it was fun.

CS is a wonderful thing, kudos to those who invented it. It's about good will, openness and trust, which make the world go round.

Interests

Singing!! Dancing. Travelling. Reading. Speaking in languages. Strumming and bowing. Rhyming. Hugging. Flying. Cycling. Sleeping. Translating fiction. Walking. Cooking. Cooking for somebody.

Music is what keeps my lights on.

I love exploring cities on my own -- on foot. Especially big cities built on water!

I'm head over heels in love with Yiddish culture in all its sweet and savoury moods.

• culture
• poetry
• singing
• folklore
• dancing
• cooking
• walking
• reading
• music
• cycling
• travelling

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Black Cat White Cat (Kusturica), Amarcord (Fellini), Vabank (Machulski), Les Aventuriers (Enrico), Stealing Beauty (Bertolucci)

Music:
folk: Greek, Scottish, Breton, Bosnian, Macedonian, Roma, Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Irish, Romanian...

Brave Old World, Lakocha, Romica Puceanu, Ray Fisher, Jeannie Robertson, Ewan MacColl, Ljiljana Buttler, Piwnica Pod Baranami, Mostar Sevdah Reunion, Caci Vorba, The Klezmatics, Psarantonis, Orkiestra Swietego Mikolaja, Beatles, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ella Fitzgerald, Georges Brassens, Mercedes Sosa, Erik Marchand, Tom Waits, Wojciech Mlynarski, Jaromír Nohavica, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Bulat Okudzhava, Django Reinhardt, Paco de Lucia, Abbey Lincoln, Satchmo, Zakir Hussain, Schubert, Grieg, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Gershwin

Books:
Prose -- Cortazar, Steinbeck, Dovlatov, Ondaatje, Tove Jansson, Halldor Laxness, Gandlevsky, David Grossman, Diana Wynne Jones; God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder
Poetry -- Auden, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, K.I.Galczynski, Mandelstam, Derek Walcott, Brodsky, Ondaatje, Itzik Manger, Mindy Rinkewicz

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Singing a Hasidic niggun in full voice in the midst of a playground full of kids, teenagers and adults who stared at me.

Climbing Crimean rocks, ages ago, when I was a rock-climber.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can sing some folk songs for you -- Bosnian, Scottish, Polish, Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian...

Also, I can teach you to cook a vegetarian version of Ukrainian borsht...
...or Azerbaijani ajabsandal the way my Azerbaijani-born Grandma cooks it.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, Moldova, Ukraine