Hey! My name is Ufuk. Very recently I ticked off an item on my bucket list and moved to a middle sized postcommunist city: Brno. After living in Rome for one year, this is a drastic but wonderful change.

There is of course a lot more to tell, like that I am still trying to hold on to academia by writing articles in obscure topics on economic thought or that I did juggling for 3 years or that I have a dictionary collection, but let's not give spoilers now.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Meeting people is good; meeting random people is better and meeting random foreign people is the best. I have always loved meeting people with whom I might not have met in my routine everyday life - wait I haven't had any routine everyday life for the last 2 years, here I go.

Now that I'm in Brno, I really plan to travel around. And we all know that, in 2016, travelling without being on CS is a bit pointless. I met wonderful people through CS and I'm pretty sure there are some more wonderful people left to meet out there.

Also, I can imagine that getting around and finding a place in Brno can sometimes be tricky and you might not realize this until you have to speak with a receptionist through an entryphone, in German, under the rain. I can't promise to host you, but if you happen to be looking for a couch, hit me up.

Interests

Languages:
This is the first thing people get to know about me, I am into languages. As for speaking, I speak Turkish, English, German and Italian. I also took Bosnian, Bulgarian and Latin courses and studied some more languages on my own. I read grammar books as if they're thrillers. My current favourite is Polish, it sounds awesome. However, as I am living in the Czech Republic now, I'm taking Czech as a master challenge.

Collecting dictionaries:
It all started when I glanced at my bookshelves and said: "Hey, this is a collection already!". I have dictionaries involving 19 languages and counting. To name a few of the most spectacular pieces of my collection, I have a Estonian-English dictionary, a Sakha-Turkish dictionary and a German-Swedish one printed around 1960s, with fraktur typeface. Adorable.

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: I listen to a very broad spectrum of music, from Handel to Crystal Castles. Some of my most listened artists for the last year, according to my last.fm account are: Jupiter, Flunk, Massive Attack, ODESZA, Crystal Castles, Röyksopp, Grimes.

Movies: I like Krzystof Kieslowski, Lars von Trier, Ingmar Bergman and Sofia Coppola - but I must admit that I have a thing for teen slashers.

Books: I mostly read in Turkish, but to name a few of my better known favourites: Oscar Wilde, Katherine Mansfield, Sartre, Camus, Orwell. My most recent favourite is Judith Hermann. For the last 5 years I have been postponing reading, saying "I'll read it when I have learned French/Russian/Polish". (spoiler: I can't read in them yet.)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Walking through the Greek-Albanian border, and many more.

I really like how Lord Henry put it in The Portrait of Dorian Gray;
"And you should never do anything that you cannot talk about after dinner."

What I Can Share with Hosts

Extreme language trivia, juggling skills, stories, observations, cookies.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Czech Republic, Italy, Turkey