Spotkania

One a day.
Never two.

Spotkanie is Polish for a meeting, in the ordinary sense of running into people. One conversation a day is enough.

The thing people fear before a first solo trip is rarely being robbed. It is arriving at 22:40 with nowhere booked and nobody to eat with, and then doing it again the next night. The cure is small: one place a day where somebody on their own ends up in a conversation without having to be brave about it.

Why one and not three

Because a second one turns a trip into a schedule, and you are still travelling alone. You do not need a friend every day. You need one conversation, and then the day stops being a test.

What works

Free walking tours. Every city on these routes has them: you tip what it was worth, and two hours of walking next to the same people is most of a friendship. The hostel kitchen and the hostel dinner. Cooking takes forty minutes and cannot be done in silence. Hostel-run evenings and day trips — a pub crawl, a shared taxi to a waterfall. Language exchanges, weekly in most capitals; search the city's name and 'language exchange'. Queues, decks and trails: the ferry, the fortress steps at sunrise, the first cable car.

What does not

Sitting in the dorm with headphones in, waiting for the group to form around you. It will form around the kitchen.

Where people meet, city by city

City	On	Spotkanie
Kraków		Free walking tours (you tip what it was worth) leave from the Rynek every day, and most Old Town hostels run a pub crawl or a shared dinner.
Warszawa		Free walking tours daily from the Old Town; on summer evenings the city drinks outdoors on the Vistula boulevards.
Vilnius		Free walking tours run daily from the Old Town, and Vilnius hostels are small enough that people talk.
Rīga		Free walking tours daily from the Old Town; on Saturdays the Kalnciema Quarter market across the river.
Tartu		The student bars around the centre in the evening; in term the town is full of people your age with time on their hands.
Tallinn		Free walking tours from the Old Town daily; Telliskivi's bars in the evening.
Helsinki		Saunas are where Finns talk. That is not a joke.
Wien		Free walking tours from the centre daily; in summer, the bars along the Danube Canal.
Ljubljana		Free walking tours from Prešeren Square; Metelkova at night.
Zagreb		Tkalčićeva street in the evening; free walking tours from the main square.
Split		Split's hostels are social, some loudly so, and the island ferries are full of people travelling alone.
Mostar		Mostar's small family-run hostels often cook for their guests — ask at the desk.
Kotor		Old Town hostels run boat trips and hikes; the fortress steps at sunrise are a queue of people on their own.
Zakopane		The trails themselves: start at seven and you walk with the same people all day.
Košice		Hostels are few and small; free walking tours run in season.
Budapest		District VII's ruin bars, and hostels that take their guests to them.
Brașov		Free walking tours from Piața Sfatului; hostels organise shared day trips to Bran and the mountains.
Veliko Tarnovo		The hostels here are small and often cook together.
Sofia		The free walking tour, then the hostel dinner.
Praha		Free walking tours from Old Town Square; beer gardens are shared tables.
Berlin		Free walking tours from the Brandenburg Gate; Mauerpark on Sunday afternoons.
Hamburg		St. Pauli and the Reeperbahn at night; hostels go out in groups.
Amsterdam		Hostel bars and free walking tours from Dam Square.
Bruxelles		The bars around Saint-Gilles and Place Saint-Géry.
Paris		The Canal Saint-Martin and the banks of the Seine on warm evenings.
Bordeaux		The quays fill up on summer evenings. Hostels are few, so book early.
Donostia		The pintxo bars themselves, and the surf schools in Gros.
Porto		Free walking tours daily; Porto's hostels are some of the best in Europe.
Lisboa		Free walking tours, and Bairro Alto's street drinking on warm nights.
Sevilla		The Alameda de Hércules at night.

A chipped enamel mug of black coffee, a torn half of dark rye bread and a bent aluminium spork on a folded linen cloth. — The hostel kitchen at breakfast: the most reliable spotkanie in Europe, and it is free.