As a rule, travelers interested in encountering the local population should avoid the places the guidebooks identify as “a local favorite” (they will be filled with people like you). Instead, find a bar that offers free snacks and cheap lager. Your fellow drinkers might not be the most non-threatening people you’ve ever met, and they almost certainly won’t break into a spontaneous rendition of a local folk song, but they’ll be real.
Chris Wright, “Going Broke”, Hemispheres (March 2015), 35.