Hello fellow surfers and hosts out there in our big, diverse and amazing world!

My name is Søren Olsen. I am 24 years old and love any kind of travelling. Preferably bicycle touring. I also like hiking.

I moved into my own flat last year and decided to take that as an opportunity to try to answer all requests and accept most of them within very short time. You’ll receive an answer as soon as I see your request.

Ksenia - my girlfriend moved into my flat in the beginning of this year. We randomly met hiking in the mountains in rural Albania, so we share the same passion for traveling.

We DON’T mind impersonal copy paste requests from active profiles with references etc. No worries - you guys understand what CS is about.

I hate to write this:
New profiles and generally profiles with zero or very few references are expected to go a bit more in depth, otherwise we’ll likely decline since way too many on this platform simply hear about free accommodation, download the app and treat it that way. We've had some surfers who treated this place like a free hotel. Most of them were inexperienced with little info and few or none references.
I consider it an honor to be someone's first host, but it has to be done right.

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Normal number:
+4542483059. Reach out if urgent.

The summer of 2018 changed my life forever. I did a bicycle journey from Denmark to Macedonia. The people closest to me didn't only dislike the idea. They tried to talk me out of it for months. I decided to go and it turned out to be an amazing experience. It lit a fire which hasn’t burned out. The fire in fact becomes bigger and bigger and I become more and more bored about the idea of living for the weekends. I feel the best when I don't have a clue if it's friday or monday. All this made me decide to cycle from Denmark to New Zealand. I set off at the 13th of september 2019. Actually friday the 13th. The trip was doomed to end at the 13th of march due to COVID19. Another friday the 13th in fact... But I'm still dreaming of crossing continents by bicycle. I went towards Asia again in the autumn of 2020, but had to go home from Belarus due to corona. In march 2023 I returned home after the third attempt due to minor knee injuries. That time I ended up cycling to Tanzania.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I love meeting new people and discovering new cultures. Every single person in this world has a story to tell and I'm always up for listening to those. Few things thrills me more than writing down a good story in my diary to look back on when I'm too old to remember those journeys in details.

Interests

• writing
• books
• photography
• beer
• traveling
• minimalism
• guitar
• hiking
• camping
• geography
• religion
• budget travel
• food
• nature
• learning languages
• people
• exploring
• new cultures
• meeting new people
• new places
• enjoying life
• cycle touring
• deep talks
• bicycle mechanics
• cultural differences
• enviroment
• bad jokes
• outdoor life
• half solutions

Music, Movies, and Books

I love reading books about travellers. Mostly danish writers. Even though space is limited on my bicycle, I still carry a couple of paper books. A nice luxury. Also a nice way to turn off the electronic devices, and zone out after a long day of cycling.

I like a lot of different music. My travel playlist is filled with any kind of music. Sabaton, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, dope lemon, ramstein, Eddie Vedder, AC/DC, Sabaton, Khruangbin, Doobie brothers, Dire Straits, Metallica, Bob Marley, the shadows, gasslamp killer (a spedific song, that'll make you dream yourself to the dessert), psytrance, Paul van Dyk (German), Blake Shelton, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Burning heart (a specific song), Bad Company, Toto, Michael Jackson, Sido (german), Greenday etc etc. I have a lot of danish music in my mind as well and I do like certain disney songs such as son of man from Tarzan.

I like most kind of movies. Would love to watch one from your country!

Not really religious but I do consider Heinz Stucke kind of a god. He left Germany for a bicycle journey around the world and returned after 50-ish years. I had the privilege to visit him in Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFnj_S0A5Z8

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

To do my first bicycle trip from Denmark to Macedonia at the age of 18. It got my whole travel passion started.

Teach, Learn, Share

If you have a broken bike, let me know. Maybe i can help when you / I arrive! I've already fixed a handful of bikes throughout my travels.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Experiences with hiking and bicycle touring and good stories from the road if you're into that stuff! And of course information about travelling in Denmark which I also crossed by bicycle with different routes at least ten times.

Stories from the road. Highlights worth sharing:
- Hunted by a car in Bosnia
- Drunk serbian war veteran who showed me his beloved gun from the Bosnian war (30 km from Srebrenica)
- Random invitation to a Bosnian birthday party shortly before midnight after being rejected from four full hotels.
- Wildcamping amongst wildboars in Slovenia.
- A crash on a crazy downhill in Serbia which could've ended up fatal.
- Meeting a danish-serbian family outside of a supermarket in a small town in Montenegro and afterwards being invited to sleep in their home in the same town.
- Being robbed in northern Albania in 2019 and randomly meeting that asshole again in the streets of the city of Shkodër in 2022 80 kilometers from where the crime happened.
- Meeting two dutch bicycle travellers in the Bulgarian mountains. Against all odds they were carrying a sparepart, which I desperately needed!
- Meeting a 50 year old German anarchist in Bulgaria, who packed his bike and escaped from his home (an abandoned house in Slovenia) by bicycle before the cops came to arrest him!
- Sleeping in a refugee camp in Greece illegally after being invited in by a hospitable afghani refugee.
- Drinking tea around the campfire in Turkey with four other bicycle travellers while hearing wolf howls nearby.
- Cycling six hours from 03:00-09:00 in rain and headwind from Amman airport to my host. It took a bit longer because some military folks found me suspicious.
- Being invited for tea by the Saudi Arabia border police after joking about having weed and vodka in my luggage. They had humor!
- Cycling 220 kilometers in sandstorm in Saudi Arabia. Had a blast!
- Waking up in Saudi Arabia and decide to fly to Ethiopia at midnight in order to escape COVID19 in Asia. Only to be evacuated by the danish ministry 36 hours after I landed in Addis Ababa. And then the trip ended.
- Almost attacked by a wild boar in the Belgium Ardennes while pitching my tent. Luckily it turned around and ran away when it was only 10 meters from me!
- Crossing the Swiss alps by bicycle with a toenail falling off. People on top of the mountain passes looked quite strangely at me when I stepped off my fully loaded bike and couldn’t walk normally. I wonder why?
- Sitting two meters from three homeless drug addicts in Oslo during a cold morning while waiting for my host. They had a rough night, so I prepared coffee for them while one of them injected heroin into one of the other's neck. It was in the autumn of 2020 and I sometimes wonder if they are still alive...
- Almost hit by 50-ish trucks in Sweden after ending up on a mainroad with only one lane.
- A truck tried to hit me on purpose in Latvia when I had a break by a busstop. The driver even laughed at me.
- Promising the Belarusian borderguards that I would quarantine myself for 10 days in Minsk. Instead I went to a huge demonstration at the 25. of october 2020 and continued cycling two days later.
- Cycling in Ukraine during the war. I crossed a couple of checkpoints at midnight, heard a couple of sirenes and met some nice people.
- Cycling in the european heatwave. Sometimes 40 degrees and pretty humid.
- Cycling 120 km in 10 hours through the turkish mountains in order to catch a ferry to Cyprus. There was an election in Denmark and the nearest consulate from where I could vote was on Cyprus.
- Joining falcon hunters for a couple of nights in the desert in Saudi Arabia.
- Being the first in world history to cycle over the border from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait
- Getting detained and interrogated for six hours by Saudi police in Jubail for taking a picture of a random building
- Distributing aid in the biggest slum in Africa
- Cycling in Burundi with an expired visa
- Spending some time living in Kramatorsk in Ukraine while delivering water to villages near the frontlines in Donbass. I get flashbacks sometimes, but nothing too bad.

And there's hopefully more to come!

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burundi, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Denmark, Ukraine