Australian dream

I was lucky to catch Anders just after his 2 weeks arrival in Aarhus.  He is 28 years old, bachelor of Engineering in Integrated Design, originally from Horsens, Dk.

We met in  Waxies for a talk about his journey to Australia. I am dreaming about journey to Australia for years, so it was quite motivated for me to meet person, who made his dream about this country come true.

Anders is devoted to life, he has so much hobbies: sports, scuba diving, skydiving, drawing, hiking. I was glad to have opportunity to talk with such  person.

He lived in South Africa for 6 month for his internship and decided to travel like this to Australia.  He lived in Sydney for 3 month, went  to couchsurfing meetings, language exchange meetings,  found new friends and travelling companions from gumtree.com.au. Then he visited his friend in Melbourne and they went for a  spontaneous trip  to  Victoria’s mountains and to Uluru.

100-days trip of one lovely couple

Airida and her boyfriend Chris were the first international couchsurfers with who I spoke in Aarhus. And if each day during the week when I met  Danish  couchsurfers the weather was great, sunny and warm, then on the day I  was supposed to meet Airida and Chris, it became normal  grey weather in Denmark. It took me more time to get to their place, then I thought, in the middle of  my cycling trip  it began to rain heavily, so I was completely wet and cold when I got to the  labyrinth  of the houses. I couldn’t find the  place I needed, so I called Airida so she could find me.

But it was so nice to meet them, they live in a  house with 5 other  friendly people from different countries, and they had  a couchsurfer from Australia.

I think they are just perfect example of couchsurfers. Airida is 26, she is from Lithuania, Chris is 28 and he is from Australia.  They met at a couchsurfing meeting when they both lived in London, and after some time they began to date, and now they live in Denmark, when they travel they surf and they try to host when there is possibility.

They are open to adventures, life and people. It was such a pleasure to talk with them  and to see other possibilities to travel in couchsurfing. Opposed to me, who likes to plan and to organize everything,  they prefer emergency last minute  requests, then personal ones, and they succeeded to find hosts like this in 95% of the countries that recently visited. They prefer emergency requests because they don’t plan anything ahead, they are quite spontaneous in their trips and they know their destinations only a day before.

Literature student/ west african music player from Aarhus

I was going to meet Aske mainly because off  his hobby, he wrote on his profile that he plays West Africa music and I was curious what kind of person  he is. To tell the truth, I expected  typical person who’s only passion in the world is music and  nothing else interest him in life. Well, like always, the world said to me not to make illusions and stereotypes  about another person just according to his web page. Because Aske appeared to be fantastic friendly, communicative, funny, one of the most  interesting  persons  I’ve met in Aarhus.  I discovered so much from him  just in one hour.

Aske is 25, he studies comparative literature at university,  that was great unexpected surprise for me. I was looking for his advice what to read from Danish authors, and he suggested one of the famous ones Karen Blixen (her alias is Isak Dinesen), I am looking forward now to read her “Seven gothic tales” and “Out of Africa”.

Also he advised to read works of Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher, poet and religious author. It is 200 years since the day he was born and in Denmark there are a lot of events dedicated to his memory.

The main topic of our conversation was, of course, music. He plays on special African drum called djembe. He got acquainted  with this instrument about 10 years ago on music lesson and since then try to improve his skills playing traditional West African music.

Math and science school teacher

With Martin we met at  a very nice  Cafe Jorden  in Aarhus, cosy atmosphere,  retro posters, black and white photos of famous café’s visitors, all this made our  conversation with Martin trustful and lovely.

Our conversation was about Martin’s volunteer job in Red Cross,  his amazing job as a teacher and his hobbies.

He became volunteer in 2001 with Red Cross project in Brandbrand, for kids who were born in Denmark, but they don’t know Danish so good, so Martin helped them with math and language.

Bartender and volonteer

I was looking forwards to meet Nikolaj, he is 25 years old, he lives in Aarhus and he has so many opposite interests. We met for a drink  at one of my favorite place’s in the city, café Vestegade, and then went for a walk and sat near the river.

Some years ago Nikolaj was working at it – company, but one day decided that it doesn’t work for him and he needs something else in his life. He wanted to help people and improve his communicative skills, so he started volunteer projects. His first job was at non -profit place,” Fairbar”, he worked there 2 years  first as as bartender,  and then he was  a supervisor of the volunteer bartenders. That helped him to get his present job at main disco club in Denmark, “Train”, where he works 30 hours per week  during one year. Also he has project at the  Red Cross named  Flygtningementor, he helps  newcomers with Danish language, documents’ translation and to adapt in Danish society. In the summer he will be volunteer  at youth camp for children.

Story about spiritual journey

Today’s hero of my blog is another couchsurfer, Mattias Friis. He is 25, he has bachelor’s  degree in medieval  archeology, he was working in excavations in Ribe and Odense, but he doen’t look at all like boring scientist.

His life is a journey to find himself.

In high school he was very good in cycling, and he was hoping to be professional, but he had accident and it turned  his life to totally different direction.  Now  he thinks it happened for the best, but for some years  he was in confusion about his life, Mattias didn’t know what he wanted from his life.

Harley – Davidson admirer, traveller,editor, businessman

Being an active member of couchsurfing.org I have met a lot of interesting people. I think couchsurfing is a very special community, there are so many different people, but they all have one thing in common – love for travelling.  Mostly couchsurfers are open- mind, friendly, helpful, they love people and share their  homes and food.

So when I started my blog and was thinking about  who should I start writing, one of the first ideas was, of course, about people from couchsurfing.

So I began to meet locals in Aarhus to discover their ways of living, dreams, ideas, hobbies, and, of course, about their way of travelling. Since I love to discover other countries and cultures, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss 🙂