CURRENT MISSION

Reading, studying, traveling, drinking good beer or wine with friends

ABOUT ME

It is really important for me to be interested in what I do. So now I am PhD student in Paris, working on the place of art in the construction of diplomatic relationship between different countries in the 1920s and 1930s. I love studying, and spending my time in libraries and archives in different countries (it is a sort of scientific tourism).

PHILOSOPHY

Nous ne voulons servir l'histoire que dans la mesure où elle sert la vie. Dès qu'on abuse de l'histoire ou qu'on lui accorde trop de prix la vie s'étiole et dégénère (Nietzsche)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Like people here. There is a lot of wonderful initiatives and projects (soirées, spending time together etc.)

I practiced it lot in 2008-2013, now less, and unfortunately for the long time no supplementary couch for travelers, and not enough time to meet people.

Interests

Art in general (but specifically modern and contemporary art)
Contemporary history
Visits of Museums (and Libraries as I said earlier)
From "popular culture" : American series and Superhero movies.
Reading

• arts
• culture
• literature
• contemporary art
• wine
• beer
• drinking
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• history
• sociology
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

I like almost all music styles, but especially industrial metal (like Paradise Lost), gothic classic (like Diary of Dreams), Russian rock (simply all Russian rock) and electronic music (French, but not only), and of course classic music (Chopin, Rachmaninov and others, played piano fo several years)
Books: Russian classics like (Dostoyevski, Bunin), Magical realism (Cortazar), Classics of anti-utopia (Zamyatin, Huxley, Orwell), Kundera, Umberto Eco (great scientist and writer).
Movies, easier to say what I don't like - horror movies, but other stuff I can watch all the time.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Trying to do something good each day.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm now teaching assistant in the university Paris 7. I love to teach, and I am really happy if someone can discover something new from me (mostly in human sciences, like sociology, history, literature or modern and contemporary art).
I can tell a lot about my native country (Latvia), I worked as a guide there for several years, and now about my hosting country (France), where I live since 2009.
At the same time I am interested in stories of other people (their life, knowledge). This is my private collection, that I don't share with anyone, but I like to collect.

What I Can Share with Hosts

My knowledge, my interests, my experiences in traveling and living in different countries.

Living in France allowed me to taste a lot of wine, so I became a sort of expert in that, and as I am from Latvia, where we have a lot of beer, I am a kind of expert in that too, so I can share this experience as well)))

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, Latvia, Russian Federation, Ukraine