CURRENT MISSION

Keep my eyes and ears open, and experience the world around me

ABOUT ME

Thoughtful, but relaxed.
Someone who likes to observe, to look around, and to watch carefully.
Someone who rather walks than runs.
An enthousiast of libraries, forgotten alleyways, antiquarian books and prints, hidden gardens, arcane bits of knowledge, anything old, timeless or beautiful tucked away in the cityscape.
Not as elusive as I might seem, a classicist who is more a generalist than a narrowminded specialist, hovering at times somewhere between cultural history, neo-philology and ecclesiastic architecture.
See my photos.
Likes a pint, good food and a nice chat.

PHILOSOPHY

Keep your eyes and your ears open, and experience the world around you.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None yet, but hopefully soon.

Interests

(inter alia:)
history,
languages,
literature,
architecture,
geography (including fictional -)
art & archaelogy,
collecting old books,
real music,
well-made movies,
sitting around comfortably with friends,
traditional pubs,
politics,
philosophy/religion,
photography (as a complete amateur),
culture (in the broadest sense of the word)

• arts
• culture
• books
• literature
• architecture
• photography
• dining
• pub crawls
• politics
• movies
• music
• archeology
• geography
• history
• languages
• religion

Music, Movies, and Books

Books on my mind at the moment:
Aeschylus, Persians; Lycophron, Alexandra.
T. Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature; A. Erskine, Troy between Greece and Rome; T. Judah, The Serbs.
S. Jenkins, England's Thousand Best Churches; N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England.
Obe Postma, Samle Fersen; W.H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems.

Music in my head:
Still the Irish folk jam session I heard in the Elm Tree the other day, plus lingering tunes from Bach's St Matthew and the acoustic residu of the ubiquitous Evensongs.

Movies recently watched:
Zwartboek [really good!], The Golden Door, Brideshead Revisited (Revisited); should go to that Nixon movie and that one about Andreotti, but haven't been to a cinema overhere yet.

Teach, Learn, Share

I have some linguistics on offer: the Dutch language, which is far more than just guttural tonguetwisters, and something a bit less usual, Frisian. I speak, read and write this so-called "closest relative of English" fluently, and I am always happy to further the knowledge and awareness of this little-known language.

Apart from this, I am easily tempted to try to actually speak Latin, however clumsily, with anyone who is interested in reviving this ancient tongue ;-)