An overrated city for Erasmus?

I could say, like everyone, that Lisbon is great, amazing, breathtaking, full of things to do... This is true, but at the same time I think this city is getting overrated and is losing the original sense of an Erasmus experience. There are so many Erasmus students here that they are even more than the Portuguese students, so when you meet them it's nothing special and no one is really motivated to make a friendship or hang out for more than one night. Unless you are lucky to find the right flatmates or coursemates, or unless you are a very outgoing person that can go to any party and become immediately friend of everyone, it will be actually very difficult to make friends in Lisbon. Most of the people that I met were just for the night that I met them, and then I lost their tracks, because they are so many that when you go to a party it's not common to see the same people again. I was not the only one to have this problem. I met several other Erasmus students who felt alone. A problem that wouldn't exist in a smaller city when you can go out and see the same faces. I was Erasmus both in Thessaloniki and Lisbon, and even if strange to say, the Erasmus students were much more friendly in Thessaloniki than in Lisbon, because they were less. I guess this general loneliness is common in all capital and very big cities.

To this fact I will add another one that is even more important. While the price of life is still ok, the price of rooms is getting extremely crazy and expensive in the last years. There are so many Erasmus students coming here that the city can't offer enough rooms for all of them, so the landlords take advantage of it and keep the prices increasing and increasing. This is bad both for the Portuguese people, who have to go to live in the suburbs because the rent for a room is like more than half of their salary, and for the Erasmus people who have to face the nightmare of looking for a room as soon as they get to the city. If you are not lucky to find the right room soon, or if you are not rich to pay 400 euros for a room that is not even too good, finding a room in Lisbon will be one of the most difficult things you will ever face. I met several Erasmus students who spent one month in a hostel before finding somewhere to live. I even met some of them who spent all their Erasmus in a hostel. If you have a limited budget, keep in mind that most of it will be just for the accommodation and you won't have so much money left to live easily, travel a lot, go to the restaurant...

Source

So again, great views, great weather, lot of things to do, but the fact that everyone is going to Erasmus here may not be so good for the city. It's like in Venice, where the city is beautiful but the tourists are so many that they are almost ruining its atmosphere. If you want to enjoy your time here, you also need to be lucky.