Leuven Belgium

Spent a year there on Erasmus but did masters courses while there so have a decent idea of the place. I was in the Law faculty but I can give an overview.

Great university, if you've ever seen In Bruges it's that kind of architecture. Each faculty is basically a self-contained little campus with their own bars, resteraunts and library. Leuven itself is class, you get a free bus pass as a student but I never used it; everything is in walking distance and it's a lot cheaper than Ireland. Stella Artois is brewed in Leuven so you can get a glass of it for €1 in one of the student-run bars.
The Flemish are really nice people although try and get accomodation in an international/Erasmus house. Flemish students are notorious for going home at weekends so during international orientation, the university advises against living with them :P
Belgians love their beer, chips and chocolate so if you like these, you'll get on great. The university runs resteraunts that offer heavy discounts if you've a student card although there are are some excellent/cheap resteraunts around town as well (especially if you like Thai food)
If you're ever invited to a Flemish person's house/dinner party, make sure to bring a gift (wine, chocolate etc) as it's a big custom over there.

The university system can be a bit strange to someone from here, a lot of the exams are oral so you go in and have a chat with the lecturer. It means you need to be able to think on your feet and have a good overview of the course but as an Anglophone you'll be fine. It's a lot more hands off than Irish universities: you don't have tutorials or much contact with the lecturers (in the courses I did anyway)
The faculty and students all have excellent English so you're very unlikely to have many problems in that regard.

Any specific questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

abbey wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Just wondering about the situation with accommodation.

Did you find it difficult to find a place? How did you meet up with other international students to find a house? I think I'm going to go over for a look around in August to get the lie of the land.

I went over in August and found housing through the university housing office. It was very easy to find a place and it's cheaper than here.
If you're religious then there's a lot of Catholic houses to stay in with students (very cheap and lovely accomodation), a few of my friends pretended to be religious to get into them :P
Otherwise, just trawl through the housing databases to find something.

abbey wrote: »

Anything in particular that you would recommend sorting out in advance/ stuff to bring?

Not really, it's all fairly straightforward.
One piece of advice: buy a fan when you arrive. You can get one for around €15. Leuven is very hot in the summer and studying for summer exams is almost impossible without one.

abbey wrote: »

How did you get on with the flemish language, I assume all the students will have good English but about when you were going to the supermarket etc.?

Did you make an effort to learn the language?

Thanks.

The university offers free Flemish lessons to foreign students. I went to a few but they didn't really suit me. Everyone speaks English and picking up the basic Flemish for supermarkets and bars is very easy. Anything more difficult, Flemish people would usually recognise from my accent that I was Anglophone and I never had any trouble getting myself understood. However, a few of the older Flemish people didn't speak English but they usually had French so I survived. If you can speak English and French you'll be golden.
I got a job in a bar with very basic Flemish, manager didn't care as he knew the customers can speak English anyway.

Seeing as I'm from Belgium, why not

Leuven is a typical student city, apart from probably the foreign students everyone goes home during the weekends.

In the week however it's packed, it's a very nice city, not too big but lots of stuff to do.

It's about 30km from Brussels, train connection is quite good so there's plenty of opportunities for a day out in the weekend.

The Old Market in the city centre has the nickname of 'The longest bar in the world', as it's basically one pub right next to the other.

If you're one for museums or culture in general you'll love it too.
It has some of the oldest works of art in the country, displayed in some of the oldest buildings as well (Cathedral, churches, castles,...).

It has a summer festival called Martkrock, which boasts quite a few big names over the years
You might pop over there when you're visiting in August (Like you mentioned), it's free entrance.

If sport's your thing, Leuven's football team got promoted last season to the top division in Belgium

All in all Leuven is a very nice city, people are friendly (As they always are in Belgium ), food and drink's great,...

I'm sure you'll love it.

I'd suggest giving the university a call first, to be sure.
I believe that would be stretching it by the way.

In that case, the best bet would be contact the landlords directly (If someone can provide you with some of their details) and explain the situation, maybe one of them can keep a room clear for when you arrive.

Otherwise I'm afraid you're gonna have to look very hard to find something that is not a complete dump.

I'm off to Leuven to do the Master in Stats.
Are people looking forward to it?
Will be first time living abroad.

On the accommodation side; I've not looked. Will hopefully wing it when I get there, maybe stay in a hostel for a bit.

I'm envious of you. Don't worry about where to stay, just go early and find somewhere inside 'The Ring' (the ring-road around the city). Once inside, the closer to the city center the better but it doesn't really matter.