Ultimate City Guide for Erasmus Students in Liège

This post is for all of you students coming to Liege, Belgium for your Erasmus. All of the information you find in this guide are based on tips from former Erasmus students or from my experiences from my Erasmus semester in Liege last autumn 2014/15.

In the following semester/year you will improve your French, travel to various countries, get to know the Belgian beer and fries (they are not French :) ), find new friends and maybe much more.

Accommodation

Most important issue at the beginning of your stay will be the accommodation. Every year, students who postponed their research on studios (kot) or apartments had difficulties finding a good one when the semester already started. It makes a difference on the duration you are staying, most of the owners rent studios for minimum 5 months or one year. Make sure you have some French knowledge when contacting the owner, many of them don’t speak any English.

There are few places where you can look for accommodation in Liège. The easiest are online. Kotaliege.be is the site where I found myself an accommodation.

Also a good tip are the three Facebook groups: À louer Liège (Petites Annonces kot – appartement – commu – etc.. ), Recherche kot/appartement/colocation à Liege and LIEGE A LOUER – bouche à Oreille. Here you will find new listings every other day.

What you can also do is to visit the Place du Vingt-Août ULg central building, in the left corridor you will also find some listings for available kots or apartments in Liège.

If this all does not work out ask your Erasmus buddy maybe he/she knows anything and can help you out.

There is also the possibility to live in Sart Tilman student rooms, but this is a 30min bus ride from the center and at night there are no more buses, besides most of the Erasmus students live in the center. These student rooms are mostly cheaper than in the downtown Liège.

The most comfortable but also most expensive way to live in Liège is in the Student Hotel. From here you can reach Le Carré, HEC building and the center within 5- 10 min walking but the price/performance ratio is in my opinion not adequate.

The price for accommodation in Liège varies between 250 EUR (small shared kot) and 800 EUR (student hotel) for one person. Most of the students that share an apartment pay around 300 EUR to 350 EUR (all included). I advise you to look for accommodation in advance and let your Erasmus buddy to check the contract for you (if your French is not on that great Level). Also don’t sign anything before visiting the place by yourself, there are many owners who require this and upon arrival you might notice that the kot is in the middle of reconstruction or simply not available (this was my case).

A good location for your accommodation is somewhere in the area of Saint- Lambert square, Rue Saint Gilles, Jardin Botanique (next to HEC) or Gare Guillemins. From all of these places you have a good connection to the grocery stores or buses that brings you to Sart Tilman.

In case you need to buy some equipment for your kot, there is IKEA close to Liege, take the bus N75 from Place Saint Lambert to get there.

Transport

In my opinion Liège has a good transportation infrastructure. But what you might often experience are the strikes. Sometimes the bus drivers announce it only a couple hours in advance, mostly you will get the info from some students on Facebook, be ready that that day no buses will drive you to Sart Tillman and you need to find yourself another way to get there.

A 8 ride ticket (60min) costs 8, 80 EUR, you can buy it at any newspaper stand. If you travel at least two times a week to Sart Tilman and you are under 24 years, get yourself the abonnement for 15, 50 EUR, if you are over 24 years you pay 37 EUR per month. You can get this in one of the two TEC- customer services. One is located at Saint Lambert square and the second at Gare Guillemins.

The sales of the abonnements are very bad organized and be ready to spend up to 3 hours in the line to get your monthly ticket (especially the first couple days in the month). I advise you to get it at Gare Guillemins, the line here is a little shorter and if you know that you will be traveling in Liège a lot, get it for the whole period. Make sure you bring your passport and foto (can be also taken at the point of purchase).

You can look up your bus connection here. You will get to Sart Tillman with the Bus N48 leaving from the Opera. Take into account that if you get in at Gare Guillemins, you will not get a seat. Most of the buses are overcrowded.

For the full free guide go to http://kubasjourneys.com/ultimate-guide-for-erasmus-students-in-liege/