Making friends in a new country | Travel/Culture hacking | Forum

Welcome to the forums!

I am in a hurry, so please bear with my rather brief post on this important matter.

In order to give you something to read till other posts show up, I just refer you to some of the ongoing discussions here either explicitly on making friends or on couchsurfing. The latter turned out to be enormously helpful when I went to Lisbon. Be sure to check out the couchsurfing meetings, groups, social search and other features (even if you don't plan to stay with anyone).

http://www.fluentin3months.com/forum/social-skydiving/making-friends-in-a-new-city/

http://www.fluentin3months.com/social-search/

http://www.fluentin3months.com/practise-a-language-without-travelling/

If you visit the EU, one further idea is to take advantage of the Erasmus programme: Thanks to this programme, European universities host lots of foreign exchange students and thus usually have regular meetings and other events (and they are not only attended by foreigners, but also by locals interested in different cultures). If you ask someone at Erasmus Student Network politely for info on events open to general public, I doubt they'll turn you down (although some events directly funded by Erasmus programme might be exclusive or require you to pay extra). They should at least be willing to introduce you to locals looking for a "tandem" (language exchange).