Lovely Host : Yiannis

I bought a double decker bus shape tinned scottish short bread from M&S as a gift for Yiannis (on the desk in front of him). It is quite a cartoonish illustrated one, there proved again what Yiannis had said about Asians:“Yes people are very different, for me, Asians are like they are from Mars. There are so much that I can’t get it, for instance, every Asian people I have met, they all love cartoons. To the level that they want everything they use to be decorated in cartoons. Yes.. I watch cartoons too when I was young, but.. how can people put so much love in just a cartoon character?...”

While Yiannis making this statement, I thought about Snoopy and Smurf, which I love so much since very young age and still love. He is right, how the hell I can feel so much love to these ‘cartoons’? It is truly strange, I found myself agreeing secretly while trying to explain to him why, and he made tea for me with a illustrated fish mug, he said that cartoonish fish mug is specially for me to use, and then I realize that, Yiannis takes all cute illustrations as cartoons.

x

If I am not mistaken, this is what Yiannis told me about him: His grandmother is from Georgia, and the rest of his family are from Turkey, he is born in Greece (and he have been living and working in Norway for more than 20 years, he met his Norwegian ex-wife somewhere and they are having 3 kids).

I got very confused of whether to take him as a Georgian or Turkish or Greek, it is not much of a different for me as all those countries are neighbors and they share many similarities (it might be very different for they themselves though).

Yiannis is my first ever Couch Surfing host, he is a very experienced traveller and he is very easy-going and relaxing. He loves making friends but also enjoys some quiet time in a day to rest his mind as he works full time. He loves to collect high quality up to date detailed maps wherever he visits and he love history. It is by very lucky chance that I got Yiannis to host me for last few days of my stay, I am feeling grateful that good things do happen to silly unplanned people like me.

Yiannis had been hosting different people almost everyday last year and he decided to stop hosting this year as he gets too tired. Somehow he decided to host me and I only realized how lucky was I after a couple of days staying with him. We went to a CS party together and there we met 2 German backpackers, Yiannis told me quietly that, those 2 guys had asked him to host but he had decided to host me.

x





On the way to top of the hill, where an outdoor film screening was held, candles were placed to lead along the way.


Yiannis with friends he knew through Couch Surfing.


True Romance by Quentin Tarantino. It got quite cold when the sky got dark around mid night. We had to walk home as the tram stopped running. By walking we were not feeling as cold as when we were sitting still watching the movie. It felt like a long way when we took tram to get up there but it took only 25 minutes to walk home.