Hi!
My name is Maxim Sigalov, but in English people usually just call me Max. I am 20, and just graduating from Columbia University in the City of New York, where I am majoring in Computer Science, Linguistics, and Mathematics. I am the son of two Soviet physicists, and have lived in various university towns my whole life.

Two years ago I Couchsurfed around western Germany, Benelux (unfortunately without the Lux), and some of Central Europe and had a blast.
This summer I'm backpacking from Madrid to Helsinki and then back to Copenhagen over 10 weeks before coming back to NYC to start work for Google, and I hope to meet some great people along the way!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Travel is the most gratifying activity I've done, and I've found that Couchsurfing has been a great way for me to meet people who live in the places I visit, get some fun conversation and local insight, practice my language skills, share some of my story, and make some friends! Also, once I stop living in a closet-sized college dorm, I would love to host people too.

Interests

I love learning languages, and especially getting to use them to communicate with native speakers. I enjoy being experiencing unfamiliar situations and places. Although I can spend hours wandering around museums, I will also just wander the streets of a new city all day and people-watch.

I play chess, and before starting college was an active tournament player. I am also an avid fan of Euro-style board games, although these are sadly not too popular in the US. I play guitar and read avidly, often in French to improve my knowledge of the language. I played soccer for my whole life, but in New York this has sadly become quite hard to do.

Academically, I am interested in theoretical computer science and linguistics, and particularly in NLP (natural language processing). I am also a bit of a history buff, and have spent many (honestly, far too many) hours crawling Wikipedia articles, getting pulled in deeper and deeper by its web of endless links.

• books
• board games
• chess
• guitar
• skiing
• soccer
• computer science
• history
• languages
• mathematics
• science
• linguistics
• judo

Music, Movies, and Books

I listen mainly to classic rock, in particular Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Cream, CCR, etc. along with a few slightly more modern bands (Radiohead, Nirvana). I also like a few Russian rock bands and Russian bard music (similar to French chanson).

I like a variety of movies, in particular comedies, dramas, and documentaries. I really enjoy a lot of British movies and shows (especially comedies such as Monty Python, A bit of Fry and Laurie, Mr. Bean, etc) Other favorites are Arrested Development, Faulty Towers, and The Office. As for movies - Forrest Gump, Solaris, Dr. Strangelove, Pulp Fiction, Grave of the Fireflies, A Clockwork Orange, The Royal Tennenbaums.

I read a variety of books across genres and languages, with some of my favorite authors being Kurt Vonnegut, Viktor Pelevin, Isaac Asimov, Bill Bryson, Arthur Conan Doyle, George R.R. Martin, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol', and Jules Verne.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I entirely accidentally snuck into a DC movie theater on Christmas day to a 3D showing of Star Wars VII. It was alright.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you some words in a bunch of languages, some guitar, a bit of chess, random history facts you probably didn't want to know, and some embarrassingly nerdy CS jokes. And as for learning, I try to be a sponge, and so would be happy to learn anything and everything.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Netherlands, Palestine, Russian Federation, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Japan, Russian Federation, Ukraine, United States