I'd do it again

Hi everyone! I wanted to tell you about my Erasmus experience.

Erasmus was one of the most exciting project I took part of, especially when you're in Brussels, which is a masterpiece of a city and Bruxelles is in a really good geographic location which made it possible to reach many other cities, like Lille, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Luxembourg. 

I had never traveled outside of Italy before and during this period I had the opportunity to visit 4 countries! But the best part of it all is that I had the chance to visit all of those cities with friends. Also, one of my favourite things about being in Brussels was getting to know many other cultures, since Brussels is full of people from all around the world, every time I went around the city I would hear some new language I'd never heard before. 

Coming from a southern European town and getting to the "European Capital" in northern Europe made it possible for me to notice many differences between my customs and theirs. One that is stuck in my head is the fact that they don't use tablecloths. Cooking-wise they're really bad compared to us, I already knew that the food there isn't that good, but I wasn't expecting it to be that bad, for the first three days I felt a little bit sick because of the food, but thankfully I got used to it in the short run, at least they're really good at making street food, like the gaufre and the frites. 

The thing that I mostly miss is the organization of the tram/metro/bus lines: I could reach every part of the city, they arrived at the stations every 5 to 10 minutes and they were all connected so you could get out of one tram too immediately catch another one. Something that was really unexpected to me was the weather, because everybody told me before going there that the weather is bad, but in the end it wasn't as bad as people told me, most of the time it was really cloudy, but usually the temperature was really warm and sometimes I could even go out without wearing heavy clothes. The only bad thing I can say about the weather is the rain which was really unpredictable. 

This experience was really important to me since it taught me how to be independent and how to manage my time. If you ask me If I would ever do it again I would most certainly answer 'Yes'!

Luca Moretti 3BIA 2022/2023