CURRENT MISSION

Resisting everything but temptation. Travelling, discovering other people, loving, enjoying art, knowledge and great food and, when I have some time left, saving the world!

ABOUT ME

"I cannot be replete with other people" wrote Marguerite Yourcenar. This is definitely one of my mottos. There is almost always something to discover and enjoy in other people... The only boring people I know are bored people. "Either you judge people, either you try to understand them": Albeit crude & blunt, this quote from Stefan Zweig is wise and is my life's creed.Irony is the salt that preserves everything; I worship self-mockery: That's why I look so young!I love to travel. Travelling is about becoming an echo, a mirror, to let your emotions infuse in the places you go through. Travelling is an art, and the most difficult one! I am not an artist, just an amateur.

PHILOSOPHY

“It is love that moves the sun and lights the stars”, wrote Dante Alighieri. Thinking, loving, it all points at the same thing. Thinking is an internal impetus towards the outside world. Thoughts and emotions are the means, for our soul, to unite with the universe. The tragedy comes when people forget that.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I would be delighted to meet people from different countries and show them the multi-faceted beauties of my home town. It is usually hard to go off the tourist track and experience genuine natives' life: I will strive to make my guests feel a bit as if they were French! Well, I don't know if it's a fair trade... Anyway, it's yours to discover...
I would also like to travel this way and be able to put myself between brackets from time to time.
Although I do not endorse the "World-Is-A-Village" gibberish, I would love to have some mates and, if anything, be able to share something with them, from other countries.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Work in progress...

Interests

Reading (novels, short stories, social sciences essays, philosophy...)
Cinema
Soccer
Biking
Table Tennis
Cooking

• arts
• dining
• cooking
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• cycling
• soccer
• tennis
• track and field
• table tennis
• social science

Music, Movies, and Books

Among my favourite authors: Marguerite Yourcenar, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Roth, Mishima Yukio (for his short stories, not his novels), Inoue Yasushi, Nikolaï Gogol, Hermann Melville, Don DeLillo, Pierre Michon, Celine, Romain Gary, John Dos Passos, Antonin Artaud, Stig Dagerman, Julio Cortazar, Nicolas Bouvier...
Among my favourite movies: Ordet, Zerkalo (The Mirror), Land & Freedom, Amores Perros, The Werckmeister Harmonies, Aguirre, The Hours, La Jetee, Octobre, Requiem for a dream, There will be blood, Les Tontons flingueurs, L'armee des ombres, Into the wild, Gertrud, das Weisses Band, Freaks, Solaris, Stalker, 12 Angry Men, Freaks, Pusher, The Proposition...
Among my favourite musicians: Nick Cave, Rage against the machine, Rachmanninoff, Geoffrey Oryema, Tchaikovski, Philip Glass, Iron Maiden, Leonard Cohen...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Touring France in my old, wretched car, for a whole month, once a year, each day on the road, eating while driving, sleeping (not while driving!), reading, doing everything in this "mobile home" of mine!
Taking the night Ukrainian train, the "koupe" (well, you'll finally know what it feels like to the milk inside a shaker!), alone with a Latvian who could only speak a few words of Italian (a language totally alien to me)... I spoke French, he replied in Italian, and our conversation lasted in this odd way for more than half an hour...
Having a "Google translate conversation" with a Ukrainian who could not speak a single word of English... He had a laptop: we wrote sentences and it translated them thanks to Google!
I could write reams about Japan, the most amazing country in the world, but I prefer to talk about it...

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Japan, Namibia, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, Germany

• 

•