Experience in Leuven, Belgium by Amedeo

What is it like to live in Leuven? Would you recommend it? What is the city like?

Leuven is literally a tiny paradise for students: it combines a fantastic university with very organized and efficient public services as well as the beauty of a majestic city as it is.

It's amazing how you can be confined in a space smaller than two square km for one year and yet never get bored: it's a city with the size of a town and the monuments and nightlife of a capital city.

What is the student lifestyle like in Leuven?

Studying in Leuven means that wherever you go inside the city you feel always in the university, because everything is related somehow to it. There are few lessons per day and that implies studying also on your own. The city is so focused on the university that you can feel how its rythm goes hand by hand with exams and vacations. Your friends will never be partying while you study or reverse, you will all be out together or be locked studying in one of the many beautiful libraries.

How much does it cost to live in Leuven?

Being a city in the northern Europe, Leuven is not cheap, yet being a city intended for student's life it provides with so many advantages if you study at the university that it makes your experience affordable. For example, you get free public transportations, and if you don't feel like cooking you can eat every day at the university paying almost nothing.

Is it difficult to find accommodation in Leuven? Is there any advice you can give?

Finding accomodation is probably the trickiest part, but I have never known anyone who in the end wasn't satisfied with his room. Student residences are great but you will have to interact with other people, which can be either a good or not that good thing. If you want to feel more independent and/or want to know belgians, kots are a native solution that allows you to share a house yet have a completely independent room for yourself.

What is the food like? What are your favourite dishes?

Since I left i have a serious Frituur abstinence crysis. As an erasmus student I almost never got to go to restaurants, but frituurs are everywhere and you can always end up dining fries and beer. You can never get enough of that.Trust me. And if you are italian or spanish and you feel nostalgic there are plenty of mediterranean cuisine places.. some of them even really from when they claim to be. None of my friends got thinner in Leuven..

What places would you recommend visiting in Leuven?

Everything! Seriously, you can do it in one afternoon if you have a bike..

I also strongly recommend to spend time in the outskirts, especially Arenberg (south) and Kessel-lo park (north-east).

Is it good to eat out in Leuven? Can you tell us your favourite spots?

There are beautiul terraces in Muntstraat and in some corners of Grote Markt, both places almost attached to the centre. If you don't want to spend a common solution I used to choose was to take away from some frituur and eat in Oude Markt: that is probably the thing I miss the most about Leuven.

Is the nightlife good in Leuven? Where is good to go?

Oude Markt! Oude Markt! OUDE MARKT! In a single square there are more than 30 different bars, pubs and nightclubs: depending on whether you feel to dance or to seat down and listen to good musice instead, you just have to turn your head in the other direction. There are other places outside Oude Markt that are very good, such as Metafoor Cafe or Seven Oaks. If you are particularly insane, Leuven offers a combination of schedules that allows you to party literally 24 hours in a row.. and as many rows as your body and mind can stand. Best spot in Leuven in my humble opinion? Cafe Belge: it has everything I said and bartenders are great.

What advice would you give future students heading to Leuven?

Don't change your mind. And once you are there, don't be lazy and participate in as many social and cultural events as you can, because there are really unique experiences to live in there, and if you stay one year every one you miss is a lost one, but every one you take part in is a story to remember forever!