My social life in Lisbon has been revolutionized by couch surfers.  Couchsurfing.com is where people network to crash on each others couches.  But it turns out that there is a very active Lisbon group and they have regular meetups.  On Friday night I randomly showed up and was suddenly thrust into a group of very interesting, diverse people.  Mostly Portuguese, but also lots of international people that are either staying on the couch of someone in the group or using the network as a way to have automatic friends to go out with in each city they visit. 

It was with people I met through couchsurfing that I finally tried eating snails here in Portugal, a popular appetizer.  I wasn’t going to order a platter of snails for my own, so it was convenient to be with Portuguese people eating snails.  They actually like them!  It was with couchsurfers that I tried another Portuguese drink served at one specific place called puntapenacona which is coffee mixed with beer.  As a side note from the couchsurfing, another Portuguese food I’ve recently tried are temoços.  I sought this dish out because another traveler told me he loved them and he made me feel bad that I didn’t know what it was.  BUT now that i have tried tremoços I wish I had been able to argue with him.. they’re not great.  A tremoço is a big yellow bean that tastes like it has been soaked in saltwater and you eat it after removing the thick skin with your teeth and popping the fleshy part (the endosperm) into your mouth.  For me, this seemed equivalent in sophistication to eating peanuts at Hero’s in Claremont.  With the help of wikipedia I have just learned that a tremoço is a lupin bean.

 

So I met the couchsurfers at a dinner for couchsurfers.. that led to invitations to go surfing the next day.  Sadly, the beach was too windy going the wrong direction and nobody was surfing, but the beach, Praia Grande, was excellent.  There were five “couchsurfers,” two Portuguese, one Belgium, one Australian, and me.