My friend Vesna and I met Nellie by the Stonebridge on Wednesday afternoon. Joining us at our meeting place was also Joanna - another (local) couchsurfer we've recently met. Joanna is actually Polish but is doing a student exchange program in Skopje. So there we were - 4 girls from 3 different countries, with a common current coordinate - Skopje. Our girlgang was supposed to be richer by one but Fine (our CS guest scheduled to arrive that day) - had a change in schedule and actually arrived on Thursday.

Our path (and thirst and hunger) took us back to the same place we went to with Mirjam and Hanna - Nadjak restaurant in Debar Maalo. It was soon after we sat down and decided on whether we'll kick off the night with beer or rakija (the latter) that another 4 friends joined us over drinks, salads and a pile of skara meat (Nellie was kicking herself for not bringing a camera - and I was equally forgetful so our feast remains undocumented). The night took another unexpected turn when, after we stuffed our faces, we went to Vesna's place to watch (or rather, talk over the background noise of) the Champions' League Barcelona-Inter match, where we were joined by another temporary Skopje-local: Cornelia from Austria, also doing an exchange program in Skopje.

[The one thing that's special about couchsurfing is the networks of people it inevitably creates. When you travel somewhere, especially when you are planning on staying a little bit longer, you try to ward of loneliness and meet the locals. Couchsurfing has proven to be an excellent tool in this, Joanna being the perfect example. She first met one of our friends through couchsurfing and then met the rest of us through him. Not that you can't do the same without the CS community, but in general we couchsurfers are very likely to be eager to meet foreigners in our city and continuously help them expand their local networks. Such is this urge to create friends out of strangers that I later virtually introduce Nellie to a friend of mine who also lives in Granada where Nellie is based. It also add additional pressure on us to travel there one day soon as we now have 2 very special people we need to visit there.]

Back to our dinner. We bombard Nellie with Singapore-related questions. We learn that Nellie has 2 names (pronouncing her second name is an SF scenario to me) and that Chilli Crabs is one of the most popular Singaporean dishes. I later dig around the net a bit and find this, this and this recipe for it. Have to give one of these a try soon. Just let me fish out the crabs out of Vardar.

I'm temporary closing the Singapore chapter as I am drooling all over the keyboard.
In the mean time, I'm letting you go with this quote from Wikitravel's Singapore guide:

"Locals joke about Singapore being a fine city because heavy fines are levied if one is caught committing an offense."