I'm a 23 year-old boy from Belgium, currently studying at the University of the West Indies within the framework of an Erasmus + exchange program. I am here to come out of my shell, meet new people and discover all sorts of wonderful things !

What I like the most is surrounding a campfire with nice people having fun, a guitar in the left hand and a beer (or a few) in the right one.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

It's the best way I found to meet people from other cultures, discover the place and help each other, in order to live my trip at its best.

I'm looking forward to seeing which experiences CouchSurfing will allow me to live !

Interests

• traveling
• guitar
• languages
• cultural immersion
• esperanto

Music, Movies, and Books

Music : Haken, Tool, Black Peaks, Primus, Muse, RHCP, Mathie (a close friend, check out her YouTube channel ;) ) and many more !

Books :
- Paul Coelho - The Alchemist
- John Danalis - Riding The Black Cockatoo
- Jostein Gaarder - Sophie's World
- Maxime Chattam - Le Coma des Mortels

Movies/series : Nolan Movies, Black Mirror

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- I could talk about my best Lucid Dreaming experiences, but I'll keep them for when we meet... ;) -

I've hitch-hiked for a thousand and three hundred kilometres without any concrete destination in mind when I was homeless, and I ended up living with a multimillionaire family in Hope Island, Gold Coast, Queensland. Here's my story :

A few years ago, I travelled throughout Australia with a backpack and the strong will to find out who I was...
and I did.

On the second week after I landed in Australia, I found a Cherry Picking job in Griffith, New South Wales.
I directly left Sydney and got on the train for a ten hour trip. At the station, where I arrived almost too late, I had to disassemble my bike, which a woman gave me in another train the day before (another long story).

When I finally arrived in Griffith, I had to walk for a few kilometres with my 16kg backpack and a huge cardboard box containing my bike, totally took apart, which I dragged for a few hundred meters until I gave up and started hitchhiking. I only had to wait a few minutes until someone helped me and drove me and all my stuff to the working hostel I had to sleep in.

This job turned out to be a scam. We would work for less than 10 AU$ / hour on average. After a week, all the french-speaking people from the hostel gathered and decided to boycott the farmer by leaving the farm, because we were actually losing money by working there. We were all gone by next morning, but no one had a real plan. We sticked together with a few Belgians that were in the same situation as mine, and we've been wild-camping next to a lake for two days. They all decided to go to Melbourne, but as I wanted to head north, I decided to go on my own.

I had heard about the awesomeness of Byron Bay so that's what I wrote on my cardboard. After a few short drives, a truck driver pulled off the road and let me get in his truck. He said he was driving up to the gold coast, and so we made the whole trip together. A few hours before reaching Byron Bay I realised that every single hotel was overbooked and wild camping was not allowed in the area : it was impossible for me to find an accommodation. I explained the situation to Skippy, my new truck driver friend, who told me that I could crash at his place for a few days. It turns out that he was not just a simple truck driver with that strong Aussie accent and a fluorescent work shirt...

That's how I ended up living in Hope Island with a multimillionaire family for over a week, while I was sleeping in the street the day before.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you a bit of French and local Sign Language as the former is my mother tongue and the latter is what I study at my home university.

What I Can Share with Hosts

- A beer! I'm a genuine Belgian mate with good tastes in quality hops.
- Cultural stuff ! I'm here to immerse myself in another culture and I'm always happy to talk about mine as well.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Barbados, Canada, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Barbados, Belgium