With almost 80 000 students Gent is truly a student city. Gent is located in the Flemish part of Belgium, a 30-minute train ride away from Brussels. Being a quite compact city makes it easy to navigate around but Gent has still a lot to offer for the size of a city it is. Kaa Gent matches for football enjoyers, canal rides to admire medieval architecture, and cozy bars with arguably the best beer offering there is. A bonus point is when you get tired of the streets of Gent you’ll be in Paris, Amsterdam, or Cologne with a 2-3 hour train ride.
I am a third-year business administration student in business management. My exchange started in September with a welcoming week filled with just grouping activities. I feel the welcome week worked out well since that way you already got to know people before courses started. I was lucky enough to get an apartment through the Artevelde schools housing department. The apartment is a couple of kilometers outside of the city but that wasn’t a big deal thanks to good bike routes and bus lanes. The first thing I’d suggest you do would be to rent a bike since that is the best way to get around the city. Everyone there from mother to child is biking and you can rent bikes for an affordable price of around 15-20 euros a month.
After the first week, the first module course of 8 weeks started along with the elective Dutch basics. Artevelde Hogeschool had introduced a new system where they have two 8-week modules in one semester where one module is worth 12 credits. This worked out pretty well since you only have to focus on one big course at a time alongside your elective. Most lessons have been in class but not mandatory. We’ve had classes most days of the week (for me one day off per week). A lot of group work.
This is starting to sound like a paid promotion with the praise I’m giving to Gent. Nevertheless, with all honesty I’ve had a perfect Erasmus experience so far. Outside of schoolwork, we’ve been going to Uni futsal sessions, great bars and restaurants, football matches, outdoor cinema, beer pong tourneys, and Erasmus events. Since the lecturers weren’t so strict with attendance we also did some traveling around neighboring countries and cities. Belgium has also great cities to explore and they are easily accessible by train. My favorite one to visit on a sunny day was definitely Bruges. If I had to give one negative it would of course be the weather. Belgium has really UK-type weather with quite a lot of rain and cloudy days. Personally I didn’t find the weather a problem at all but in all fairness, my contrast is the Finnish weather that I’m comparing to…
Fully recommend Gent as an Erasmus option!
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