“A-brand” plays “Riding your ghost” at Demorock concert at Katho College, 2007.

1. Parties – starting with week no.1 to the last week, usually in Steenabakkerstraat house or in Oudenaardestraat house. If you don’t rent a bike…you’re doomed, cause it’s the only way you can move around during the night.

2. Trips – some trips are organised for all Erasmus people by Katho college, they are every year and they are really cheap (like 1o euros for the closest one), in Brugges, Gent, Amsterdam and Paris. They are really fun!

3. Events at Katho – as concerts in the campus, student parade, Cheese&Beer tasting night – for free and only for Erasmus students, Fiesta Latina party in the campus and all sorts of other parties.

Here it is a nice video made by one of our Erasmus colleagues with the Belgian students while we were there, about student life in Kortrijk.

Well, this is after almost a year since we got there and I still remember everything like it was yesterday. I don’t know how or why, but it’s like that. Now I’m sorry that I haven’t written this blog exactly those days, so that everybody could stay in touch with the Erasmus experience. Although, it’s worth saying that no one can understand it, it seems fun for them, but they can’t get the actual image of it. You will understand how the Erasmus life is only if you live it, and it seems pretty normal.

So, no words can tell how it was: sad when you leave home and your dear ones, sad when you get there and you feel so alone and you start missing home…but then gradually starting something like a new happy life, a completely different one from the “real” one. Cause what you live there seems so parallel, and it will seem even more when you’ll get home again. You learn to live in a new beautiful foreign country, like Belgium was for me (or Italy when I’ve been with Leonardo scholarship, but that’s another story ), you meet a lot of new people, students like you, very funny and full of life, and the fact that you share this experience will make you such good friends, maybe for life. You get used to this completely new life, this new order of things, your new house, new school, new friends, new country. And you’ll love it! Then, if you’re lucky, you’re home friends, or family or the loved one, if he’s at home, you’ll come to visit you and everything will seem so perfect….then it will all just disappear by having to return home, and here comes another sad, so sad moment. In specially when you will realize things will never be the same again and that Erasmus will be gone forever. But, at least, you will remain with so many beautiful memories .

I’ve made this blog now for people who were like me before going to Belgium: I wanted to know everything about being an Erasmus in Kortrijk, at Katho College, and I was searching all over the net for some infos. And sadly, I couldn’t find a lot of. Specially pictures. So, here I am sharing a bit of Erasmus in Kortrijk experience with you.