The choice of going to Milan

Hello everybody! My name is Aurélie, welcome to my page on Erasmusu, where I’ll talk about my Erasmus experience of this year in Milan, Italy! I'm really excited about this page where I'll get to share many things with you about this unique experience! I have so many things that I want to write about, from things to visit in the city of Milan, to other cities in Italy or other European countries that you need to visit, or even also just share from recipes because I really like cooking! So let's go, hope you like it as much as I will!

I feel like the first thing I should do is explain why I chose to do my Erasmus in Italy, and more specifically in Milan.

What I wanted for my Erasmus was to be in a big city with many things to do, learn a new language and travel as much as I could.

I decided to stay in Europe for different reasons, and I thought of many different countries where I could see myself living for a year. Italy was in this list with two cities: Rome and Milan.

I had been to Italy before, on vacation with my family and I had loved this country and everything it has: the landscapes, the language and obviously the food. I had also already been to Rome to spend a few days there and I really liked the city. On the contrary, I had never been to Milan, but I felt really interested by this city. I also chose Italy over other countries because I like the Italian language, and as I had already started studying it at school, I also wanted to use this year to (ideally) become fluent in Italian, or at least speak it better than I did in France. For all those reasons, Italy felt like the best country for what I wanted to get of my Erasmus.

As the weeks went by I thought more and more about my destination. I had made the choice of going to Italy but I still had to decide on one of these two cities.

February was when I got my answer and I finally knew where I would spend my Erasmus year: Milan. There are two main reasons why I chose Milan over Rome in the end:

I was feeling very curious about this city that I had never been to and which is well-known in the whole world.

Thanks to my previous trip to Rome, I knew more or less what this city was like and I had the feeling that it was great for a vacation but it would be too big and too touristy for me to live there.

So Milan won the battle and after one semester here I’m very happy that I chose it! I love everything here: the monuments, the atmosphere, the fact that there are many things to do and that many national and international events happen here, the location of the city, which enables me to visit more cities in Italy and also other European countries because it’s quite in the middle, the food, the people, the different neighborhoods… and many other things that I am still discovering while being here (even after a few months of living here).

I think Milan is a dynamic and atypical city, mixed between historical and modern, with very welcoming people. It's the second biggest city in Italy.

I will be staying here for a whole year and I want to make the most out of this Erasmus experience.

My university here is the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart). It’s a big university with 5 campuses across Italy. The biggest one is in Milan, with more than 30 000 students according to their numbers, including many international students. It was built in an ancient monastery and that’s why it has such wonderful buildings, inside and out. There are like 6 or 7 different buildings across the whole city (like you need to take the metro to go from one to another, I never had that before... ) but the main one is located quite near the center, served by buses, metro and tram and surrounded by coffees.

That's it for my first post! I hope that now you understand my choice and see why I chose Milan for my Erasmus year! If you want to learn more about this beautiful city and Italy in general, follow along!

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