We are a family of four living in Burscheid near Cologne in Germany. It is like living in London Zone 4, so it takes about 40 minutes with buses and trains to Cologne, but here it is quieter and greener.

Me, Karen, I am 51 years old, Andreas is 52, our son is 16 and our daughter, who travels lives in Porto at the moment, is 21.

I work as a cooking teacher, help elderly people with their households and do charity work as a carer for the dying. Andreas is a graphic designer and loves drawing.

We love travelling - especially to the UK, Jersey and to Portugal. In our spare time we love fresh, good food, of course, as I love cooking (especially vegan food), we cuddle our two pitch black cats a lot, we have a small garden with bbq and a nice seating area that we care for in spring and summer and we hear a lot of music. I also love watching the birds outside my kitchen window, I always do so when working with my laptop, like right now.... And we love our very special house, it is quite quirky.

I am the social part in our house, hubbs is more the reserved one, until he gets to know one really well.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Since our daughter travelled with Couchsurfing and hostels we would like to give something back to the hosting world and we would like to start travelling with CS ourselves. We usually book rooms in peoples houses on airbnb, but CS seems closer and more personal. And of course it is cheaper. I know CS is not about free bed and breakfast, but there are soo many people out there travelling or wanting to travel, but only have a small budget, so I do not judge this point of view as a crime.
We experience it quite hard work and from time to time very difficult to find a proper host (well our daughter does, I sometimes help her), as there are also people on CS who try to exploit especially young solo female travellers.
And of course it is even more difficult without or just a few references. Sadly trust is very rare by now in our world. We tend to indulge the bad experiences instead of enjoying the positive ones, which mostly prevail, if we take an honest look at our lives.

Interests

• cats
• vegan
• yoga
• meditation
• drawing
• music
• travel
• food
• nature
• meeting friends
• holistic
• gin
• kundalini yoga

Music, Movies, and Books

Andreas and me listen to Swing, Rockabilly, Rock 'n Roll, Punk and Brit Pop, mainly from the 80ies.
My favourite bands are Prefab Sprout, The Divine Comedy, but I also listen to a lot of Yoga Music like Deva Premal & Miten, Jai-Jagdeesh and Snatam Kaur.
Andreas all time favourites are The Stray Cats, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Peter and the Testtube Babies, and loads of Punk, Punkrock and Swing bands.

We watch a lot of movies and netflix series, but never the ordinary telly....

I love reading, wanted to be a librarian when I was young. I mostly read travel books, spiritual books, books about alternative medicine and sometimes fantasy. My favourite authors are Stephen Fry and Helge Timmerberg.
Andreas loves fantasy but is more into audio books.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Giving birth to two wonderful human beings.....

Travelled to Manchester on my own when I was 14. Had a penfriend there which I only knew from letters. This was a really big thing for me, don't forget, it was 1981, no mobiles, no internet. Went to my first ever concert then - Adam and the Ants at the Apollo Theatre. Wow, so exciting! At the beginning of this year my old friend found me on Facebook and now we are back writing eachother on WhatsApp! You always meet twice!

Teach, Learn, Share

We learn our whole lives, well we should be willing to. Standstill is mortal. And we should pass on our knowledge.

What I Can Share with Hosts

A quirky, homely place, a vegan dinner, breakfast, laughs, the two nicest cats in the world and the nice surroundings here.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Guernsey, Italy, Jersey, Netherlands, Portugal, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany