Erasmus Experience in Eindhoven

Hello everyone, I spent my Erasmus semester abroad in Eindhoven, and as it is currently ending, I wanted to share my experience with you.

Architecture and Landscapes

Eindhoven is known in the Netherlands to be the city of Philips; the company has helped Eindhoven become a modern city, with architecture focused on new technologies, which is a great. The landscapes are nevertheless quite absent, apart from a few streams and a forest.

Eindhoven is known as the town of Philips

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Eindhoven town centre

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Culture and customs

In Holland, many festivals are organized. There is also a week entirely dedicated to Design (because the city is home to one of the best design schools in the world: The Design Academy), and a festival of light - both of which are quite nice. However, it should be noted that from 6pm onwards almost all shops are closed, which makes a big change compared to many big cities.

There is a week dedicated to design in Eindhoven

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Restaurants

No, Dutch food is really not my thing. The greasy fish croquettes, the heavy vegetable purées, and meat crushed and mixed with other meats are still a rather strange experience for me. Long live the French gastronomy (and Italian, Spanish, Chinese... whatever you want! )

Nightlife

By choosing an Erasmus destination, I was actually expecting to party every week to the point when I wouldn't always remember what happened the day after.

Alas, I had forgotten that I was going to Eindhoven, and not to Prague or Berlin.

It's straightforward, in Eindhoven there is one street with lots of bars, which is called Stratum street. Remember this name: "Stratum". However, it's all very well to have bars, but it's better with people inside!

Stratum street

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Indeed, apart from during the integration week (Ok, that was incredible, Stratum was filled) and some Saturday nights, parties are not that crazy in Eindhoven and you need to make a network of friends rapidly to improve this aspect!

Hobbies and free time

Being at Fontys, in the ICT course, I did not have a lot of work. I had few compulsory classes, and therefore had quite a lot of free time.

It's great to have some free time, but in a city like Eindhoven, your free time will be focused on: discovering new TV series, movies, chilling and lazing around, as well as sports!

Transport

The public transport (Bus), is too expensive and totally overpriced when compared to cycling. The bike lanes are very well made, it's without any doubt one of Eindhoven's strong points. The majority of students (if not all) travel by bike, and it's nice to cycle (when it doesn't rain obviously).

The majority of students use bikes

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Prices

Prices are relatively high, they are comparable to those of Paris, not even exaggerating.

Climate

Finally we get to the climate, there is so much to say about the climate hahahaha.

Seriously... if you're not mentally prepared to see rain every day, gusts of wind, and all types of bad weather.... forget about going to Holland!

The climate is super annoying in my opinion. And really, I'm not usually a very pessimistic person.

For example, this week I was faced with gusts of wind of more than 115 km/h and rain for 5 days during the week. And believe me, when you have to do 10 minutes of cycling in Rain and gusty winds.... they're the longest 10 minutes of your life haha.

The climate in Eindhoven is very bad!

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So, I hope that my opinion has been useful, although it doesn't give a very positive image of Eindhoven.

Go to Eindhoven if you want to do sports, live healthily without going out much, and see trees and lots of rain.

Go elsewhere if you want to have fun (eg. visit Amsterdam and other cities), make the most of being abroad.; -)

Eliot