On a road trip this summer and am really excited to try out couchsurfing for the first time. I’ve travelled in Europe before and done a workaway, and ended up meeting so many people that I couchsurfed my way around Germany and bear the impressions of so many beautiful experiences and people that I enjoyed along the way.
I love philosophy, music and poetry and try to immerse myself as deeply as I can in all three of those domains. I just finished college and throughout my time, I felt increasingly disconnected with my education and resentful towards it, so I’ve started to put myself through my own self-designed curriculum of study which I put together in patches, usually when I was supposed to be writing papers. I’m starting with the greeks and just made my way to Heraclitus and Aeschylus!
My love musical theatre, and I think of it as the sea into which all my rivers empty. I’ve acted in 4 musicals and worked as an accompanist for a university program, learning a pretty substantial portion of the repertoire, and I’m not really happy with the self-awareness and irony that’s cheapened the genre. I’m trying to orient myself so deeply in music composition, philosophy and poetry so I can express myself as freely as possible. I got a burning soul in here that needs a strong vocabulary to be expressed!
“We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing.” - Emerson. More than sights and smells and experiences, I’m most excited to meet people while I travel. I love the feeling of freedom I’ve experienced with friends I make traveling, and have found that there’s no reason for them to believe I’m anything other than the person I purport to be. It’s difficult to change when you’re around the same people every day, because they may expect consistency and you may feel obligated to indulge them, but I’ve felt so many new parts of myself develop over the past few years and have been timid to express them, and I intend to bring my authentic, uninhibited self to my travels this summer. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (another Emerson quote..i have lots of them up there.. another relevant one: “we but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents”)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

To loot pantries

Interests

• literature
• piano
• fishing
• religion
• weightlifting
• german language

Music, Movies, and Books

Earth, Wind, and Fire = best pop band ever.
Listen to a lot of Wynton Kelly, Oscar Peterson, Clare Fischer, Keith Jarrett, Hank Jones, Teddy Wilson, ROBERT GLASPER(!!) etc. Would love to talk jazz. Am deeply in love with Rachmaninoff. Chopin colors my world ever in a new hue. Ravel is like a swiss watchmaker and I’m beginning to study his orchestrations. Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky have my heart too. Also Scott Walker, Lou Reed/Velvet Underground, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Take 6, Tower of Power, Con Funk Shun, Anomalie, My Chemical Romance (still an emo 13 year old) and …. wait for it…. the Beatles.
Emerson, Dostoevsky, Jung, Nietzsche, and Thoreau are some writers I like and I try to wear the impressions I’ve gotten from them freely. I have vague intentions of doing a walden pond experiment lol. My favorite movie is Good Will Hunting, obviously.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Set an IPF (powerlifting) world record in the squat and played a Rachmaninoff concerto with an orchestra! Also worked at a history museum in Germany and travelled throughout the whole country - did a good bit of couch surfing then, but without the app

What I Can Share with Hosts

I’m a pianist and vocalist, and I also play double bass reasonably well and have taught all 3, but piano the longest. I’m pretty knowledgeable across classical, jazz and neo-soul and would love to teach anyone a bit about music and playing instruments. Also have old italian recipes from my mom’s family and love to cook them. Once upon a time I spoke German really well and would really like someone to practice with!

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Montenegro, Sweden, United Kingdom