Quick question, so I'll be going to Toulouse, France for 2 weeks for work and I do want to meet people there, but I'll be staying at a hotel and I don't speak a word of french, so I'm just wondering how difficult would it be to mingle with the locals? and what are some of places that you guys would recommend?

As a side note, this is my first time in Europe and traveling outside of the country alone so I'm a little lost as to go how to go about this.

Haiyami,

The French have a reputation for being arrogant towards tourists and everybody who is not French, and they don't speak English that well. On the other hand, 22% of the girls I've had sex with were French (), and I have a date with another French girl on Friday. French girls have been very sweet in my experience. I didn't meet those French girls in France though.

I would absolutely recommend joining some classes or activities where you will automatically meet people. A sport you like, a language class, dance classes, other hobbies, whatever. You're only there for two weeks, but you can probably still find something!

I have some questions as well.

Has anybody taken Spanish classes in South America? Or does anyone know more about this? I will probably take this year off to travel. If I can combine that with learning Spanish this would be very awesome, plus it would be a good way to meet new people.

Also, who has done volunteering in either South America or Asia? Interested in all stories and information.

(07-21-2011 10:23 AM)Mark Wrote:  I don't know man, in the five weeks I was there, I barely ran into any backpackers. You have to get your own place. Not hard to get away from the fray. My apartment was like 20-30 minutes away from the touristy area and I never saw backpackers. There were some ex-pats there, but that was it.

Really depends where you go in Thailand.

Phuket, Samui and Pattaya are full of tourists and sex tourism. Places like Chiang Mai, Koh Tao, Phangan, Samet are full of backpackers and gap year people. Also depends on the time. When you go in July-August, everything is filled with English gap year people... September you have tons of Israelis, Decemper-Jan lots of Swedish in the backpacker towns.

I've been to most of the tourist towns like Phuket in SEA when I was backpacking and wouldn't recommend it. For me personally, I wanna experience something different and not some place where tourists eat at McD and have no contact with the locals or any interest in the culture. Why would you travel around the world to stay in some random tourist place. (Obviously a personal preference)

(07-21-2011 10:59 AM)Haiyami Wrote:  Quick question, so I'll be going to Toulouse, France for 2 weeks for work and I do want to meet people there, but I'll be staying at a hotel and I don't speak a word of french, so I'm just wondering how difficult would it be to mingle with the locals? and what are some of places that you guys would recommend?

As a side note, this is my first time in Europe and traveling outside of the country alone so I'm a little lost as to go how to go about this.

I wouldn't worry too much, just make the best of it.

Obviously, it's a bit more difficult with French people because of the language barrier.

Good ways to meet people are sports activities (course in scuba diving, kiteboarind, etc), couchsurfing

Have any of you ever tried doing one of those language exchange one on ones where you meet up with someone that wants to practice their english while they teach you their native language?

(07-29-2011 09:08 PM)Haiyami Wrote:  Have any of you ever tried doing one of those language exchange one on ones where you meet up with someone that wants to practice their english while they teach you their native language?

I'm actually meeting up with a language exchange partner next week. Never done it before, but a lot of other foreigners here say it's a great way to get good at conversational Korean. I'll let ya know if it works out.