My semester in Flanders is about to come to an end. I studied engineering in Katholieke Hogeschool VIVES . At TAMK I study electrical building services, in VIVES I studied a happy mix of different engineering courses. I had some ecotechnology engineering courses, an automation project, a project about emerging technologies, a course about global sustainability, and business English. There was a big difference between engineering courses and the humanitarian courses.
I lived in a small city called Kortrijk. It is located in Flanders, half an hour from the French border. The campus of our university is 15 minutes by bike from the center. I did not go to campus every day. I had project work and some lectures were online.
I lived in a VIVES residence with at least 100 other students: Belgians, international degree students and other Erasmus students. For that reason, all my friends were from different countries. Every floor shared a kitchen. In our spare time we cooked at home, travelled to other countries and cities and had walks getting to know Kortrijk. I individually took advantage of Flanders’ flatness and warm weather and started running as a hobby.
We were able to travel a lot. VIVES organized trips to Gent, Bruges, and Paris. Trains in Belgium are very affordable, so all the biggest cities close by such as Bruges, Brussels, Lille, and Antwerp we visited multiple times. We also went to the Netherlands and spent the new year in Paris. Covid restricted mostly restaurant opening hours and you could go almost anywhere with two vaccines.
In my opinion studying in Belgium does not differ majorly from Finland. The engineering courses are similar to Finnish ones. Sustainability as a perspective is very visible in Belgian studies. In my Finnish studies we often talk about energy efficiency and less about sustainability in general.
The course about global sustainability was my favorite. The workload was a lot considering the number of credits, but the quest lecturers offered different perspectives and presented their topics well. The fact that every lecturer was an expert on their field, made the lectures interesting and informative.
Erasmus taught me a lot. I got to know many amazing people and learned about different cultures. I thought that I would know Belgium better after Erasmus, but in addition I learned from other international students too. I would recommend doing an exchange to everyone who is considering it, at least for me it gave so much.
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