How do I meet people abroad?

A bit of chaos for 2 days, I think it's the aftermath of 72 hours of intense travel.

When I arrive in a new place, one of the biggest challenges is always meeting people. With time, and over 11 years of traveling abroad to new places. I've developed quite a few techniques, and today I know that it takes about 2 weeks before I can have a social life.

To start with, the easiest solution is usually to spend some time in a youth hostel. You'll always meet people to talk to, discover the city or have a drink with.

Well, in my case, it doesn't work.

The second strategy is to live with a roommate. Not necessarily for life, but for the first two or three months, it's great for creating a social life, having someone to go out with or do activities with.

Except that I live with my friend from the Netherlands, and we have an apartment for a month. So that option doesn't work either.

There are still sports activities, but as we have to move around a lot, it's hard to sign up for a sports club or whatever and go for 1 month. Then there's the gym, but I'll leave that social circle to my roommate.

Another solution is to go to bars and play with chance encounters.

Well, that's what we did last night, we got into a heated discussion and the waiters came to tell us they were closing. So this time it didn't work out.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of options.

In countries where you don't speak the language, it's one of the nicest options, as it allows you to meet other expats. Language events: depending on the country you're going to, the format will differ. They can be as simple as meeting up in a bar or playing board games on the beach to learn the language.

When I was in Las Palmas, one of these linguistic events was a meeting at the beach with a game of Dobble. For those unfamiliar with the game, the concept is to shout out the name of the similar object between the card in your hand and the one in your hand as you lay down your card.
In general, it's an ultra-fast game, on which we're still fighting for first place in the family.
Except that when you have to play in a language where you don't have all the vocabulary, it's hard to find the symbols quickly. When you don't know the word, you feel a bit stupid.

This kind of event usually starts in the local language, and lasts an hour or two. When everyone is tired of speaking in another language. Everyone starts speaking in English. And I rediscover my ability to express myself in more depth than just "My name is Julien", "I like going to the seaside" and the famous "It's very hot".

In this example of a language exchange, we started at 5pm.

By 7pm everyone was speaking English.

At 10pm, I'd go off to karaoke with a group of people and by 5am I'd be back home.

In short, a great option for meeting expats and locals alike.

Argentina has another very surprising option for a man. It's the dating app. These ladies are interested, ask a lot of questions, and are very open to showing you around the city, as well as being very pretty. I feel like I've found a balance here on dating apps that I never knew existed yesterday.
Of course, it may also be the exotic aspect of being a foreigner that gives me this impression, and that Argentinian men feel the same way I do in France.

It was thanks to this app that one of them (me and my roommate Anisah) suggested we go to a sunset party outside the city this Saturday with some of her other friends. What more could you ask for on your first weekend in Argentina?