So, you're coming to Bruxelles? Ha ha ha! No, seriously, we've had a brilliant time - wouldn't have given it up for anything. It is hard work, but not in the same way as the past two years. Speaking french full-time is tiring at first, but living somewhere like this is the best way to improve it. By the end of the year, you'll come back speaking fluent gibberish! (i.e. franglais).
Good luck and have fun!
Compared with UEA this is an ancient establishment having first opened its doors in 1834 and as such has its fair share of tradition and architecture. It is also a modern and vibrant university dedicated to its principle of 'libre' education and research. There are three main campuses Solbosch, le Plaine and Erasmus (medicine very separate). Solbosch is the original campus where law, engineering, languages and the arts faculties are based but maths lectures can be here. Also Maisons Héger, the University Press (PUB) and sport centre are here. The main science faculties are based at the Plain which is 15 minutes walk from Solbosch and is a massive campus connected to the Flemish 'free' university, this campus is very quiet there is a lot of room to spare as the university's plans for it are as yet unfinished.
The Cercles are the student fraternities, some of whose initiation procedures last until Christmas, ending in a 'baptème'. They tend to be subject based and replace the student union. You will probably get to hear and see a lot of them, and will certainly know about the baptèmes. This is the reason that people end up wearing odd looking caps - caps which cost around £40!
Don't get involved with all this - it may look fun in some ways, even a way to meet people, but a lot of their activities are humiliating and....frankly....dodgy!
There are more 'mature' cercles - Le Cercle de Libre Examen, for example, who work for student rights. The maths one also organises lectures on maths based topics. A list of them for the year will be published on the valves (MTH/PHYS notice board on the 8th floor of the NO building at the plain). The cercles as a whole were instrumental to the recent series of strikes (the Belgian national hobby along with bank-holidaying!) about funding. They were organised by the 'good' cercles and the Bureau des Etudiants Administratifs.
Three kinds:
i) Luxury
ii) Nearly Luxury
iii) Maisons Héger (the grey building!)
Your address will be:
As for where to find your mail, everyone has an individual mailbox next to the Conciergerie. Parcels are held at the office upstairs for you to collect. Mail arrives 11 am - 12 pm weekdays only.
As for 'phone-calls, you're relying on Roland most of the time - unfortunately. He's normally drunk and his bark is worse than his bite. Any question is likely to be met with a torrent of abuse - its just his way of keeping everything under control so don't worry.
You need to see him for cleaning equipment too; bucket, mop and hoover. If you decide to hire sheets, pillow cases and towels its with Roland that you exchange them. If you bring your own (and we'd suggest it) take back any you're given a.s.a.p. Otherwise you'll get charged for them (260BF/month).
For people 'phoning, the better option is at weekends when the students take over. They're more reliable and practically all speak English to some degree (as does Roland).
The rooms themselves are in pretty good shape and include a washbasin. Bring posters to cover the otherwise large and white walls. The floors are tiled so think seriously about a mat of some description and slippers.
Watch out for the electricity. It fuses easily but can be reset if you ask at the conciergerie.
As for the kitchens.... There are four gas rings and two sinks - that's it. Honestly! This applies (I believe) to all the student accommodation. They're also very small but somehow that was rarely a problem. There's a bit of technique involved in lighting the gas. Equip yourself with a lighter/matches and hold the button down after you light it for a while - this way it stays lit! Another tip is not to leave dishes in the kitchen overnight as they may end up on the windowsill or, worse still, in the bin.
You can have our fridge. Although it'll cost you 200BF/month in rent, you'll need it.
While on the subject of money the rooms are 5810BF/month. (Outside accommodation is a lot more expensive.) Invoices arrive in your mailbox every-so-often. They will need your ULB number once you've registered and they will probably leave sorting out the licence until term starts.
The campus (Solbosch) restaurants are of two varieties:
i) Diner type
ii) Buffet type
In the city centre you will find establishments to suit all tastes and pockets from 'Moules' to 'Frites' and all in huge Belgian portions.
It means arriving in Belgium at the beginning of August and missing the long summer holiday, but it's definitely worth it.
The course you take is decided by a general entrance exam and there are four levels. You do need to turn up by 8.30 on the appropriate morning. It's only over the road from Maison Héger, so this shouldn't prove to difficult. You'll then find yourself standing, looking lost, for some time, but eventually someone will turn up and sort everyone out.
All of the courses are grammar based, but are well written and taught. You need to buy the syllabuses which are about £20 and the course is about £60 (but the latter was paid for by ERASMUS money in our case).
Not only will your french improve drastically but you'll be well settled in by the time most of the other ERASMUS students arrive (and you can reminisce about feeling that lost), and you will feel a lot happier about the prospect of a maths lecture in french!
In general you'll soon find that office hours are strictly limited and that it can be very difficult to get to the people you want to see. In general it's a case of between 10 am and noon that doors are open. You must remember at all times to retain everything you are given, to read conditions, to ask for deposits back and to check you're not getting something you don't want.
You really did only need that which the DRI told you. They even took photocopies for us, and were very helpful. (It was them who pointed out that the police couldn't prove whether we had been there for more than 3 months if we didn't register with them).
Unfortunately, the next step of registration is not nearly so easy. It takes about 3 hours. You have to fill in a long and nightmarish form, but they are helpful with the silly queries you may have. The residences address does not fit on, much less your home address. You need photos, a pen, a dictionary and a lot of patience! Expect problems here with paying your insurance fee.
They do, at the end of it though, give you a certificate for the STIB.
A quick (but important) note here - bring about 3 strips of passport photos; you will need them, and they cost about £5 a strip here. Bring them with you wherever you go - it's surprising when you'll need them.
When you eventually find the appropriate section in the book of courses, you're expected to do 3 of the courses from any year you like. You'll have a meeting with a few members of the faculty sometime when you arrive to decide definitely.
This meeting will probably be with Professor Luc Lemaire and Professor Jean Doyen. Professor Lemaire is the equivalent of the Dean - and very nice although incredibly shy. Professor Doyen is likely to be your advisor here. He also is a lovely man and unbelievably helpful (once you've found him).
The following are the courses we took:
Analysis (1er Candi)
Mechanics (1er Licence)
Mathematical Algorithms (2em Candi)
Talking of which, ULB is in the dark ages as far as computers are concerned. We did manage to get an e-mail account - ask Professor Doyen about this, who will quite possibly send you to Professor Doignon. However, the University is very badly equipped, and this is not normal practice.
The department communicates generally via a notice board (the valves) on the 8th floor of building NO. Places and times of lectures etc. can change at the drop of a hat - consider yourself warned!
You will need a number of your photos at the early sessions of each of your courses, for little 'ID' type cards for the lecturers.
Oh yes - the other big snag - lectures start at 8 am! Also, for some of the courses, particularly analysis, a 'syllabus' is available, containing all you need to know.
Lectures
Certain abbreviations used include:
This is found on the ground floor of the big building just past the chimney. It is oddly organised (mechanics books are in the physics section) and not over-stocked! To be able to borrow books, you have to fill in quite a complicated form, and they don't even give you a card at the end of it!
Be prepared for large shopping bills. On average, things cost about 1.5-2 times the price in Britain. However, alcohol is cheaper and beer is very cheap. You'll never run out of choice on the latter - an average pub has 200 different types!
Another big Belgian product is of course chocolate. We found Leonidas the best value for money. There's a shop at Porte de Namur where we found the best of Belgium's other wonderful produce - waffles; (they're addictive!)
While on eats, find Dandoys on Rue au Beurre beside the Grand' Place. Speculoos (cinnamon biscuits) and marzipan are their specialities, and well worth trying.
Your general shopping will more than likely be done in GB (see map). Bank cards cannot be used here. Look out for white packets with piggy bank symbols - their own extra-cheap brand. It is cheap, but not rubbish. Good buys include : chocolate, beer, gouda cheese and waffles. Bad buys are White Packet coffee, spices and tomato soup with meatballs.
Girls - sanitary protection can be very expensive and British brands aren't always available, so bringing a supply of your favourite is probably a good idea.
A couple of shocks were photos and haircuts, both costing around £20 a go! Bring a Truprint envelope with you and have a haircut before you go over.
Finally, a couple of places to make life cheaper : Pêle-Mêle is a second-hand book and music shop near metro stop Anneessens on Boulevard Lemonnier. It's enormous and well worth a visit.
Marché du Midi is a Sunday morning market (7 am - 1 pm-ish) beside the Bruxelles Midi train station. It's huge and the prices are more reasonable.
There are two pretty close to the residences, although we always used the one on Av. Buyl. They're expensive, but otherwise not bad.
Opening an account here is not advisable. There are stacks of charges for initial transactions and they're not as student friendly as in Britain.
You will need to use CGER (downstairs) to pay your rent. We always used cash.
The cash was obtained by Eurocards; plenty of machines accept them. This needs to be sorted our before you leave Britain. Depending on your bank you may get Eurocheques too. Cash turned out cheaper for us, if taking out a large sum (£100-£200) but it may depend on where your bank puts the charges.
Also advisable is letting parents/someone having access to your account. It's a lot easier for someone in Britain to sort out hitches than you in Belgium! Finally, requesting monthly bank accounts can prove useful for keeping track of how much money you haven't got - remember that you can't get a balance using a Eurocard and exchange rates fluctuate.
The Post Office works on office hours - i.e. it's not open much! The collections are as infrequent. You can get stamps either from the machine in P4 or the actual post office (see map). They will weigh letters and parcels in P4 but the machine can break down at the most inopportune moments.
Post Office personnel are not the friendliest bunch on earth (and all Flemish for some reason!) A basic letter home (under 20g) costs 16BF. After this, life gets expensive. Watch out for the rules too. There's a minimum size for an envelope - (9 x 14 cm) amongst other varied and strange rules.
The Belgian postal system is most renowned for losing letters (it's happened several times to us). You'll never complain about the Royal Mail again.
The Post Office will supply you with télécartes, as do most newsagents. Coin phone boxes are not very common in Belgium, and only take 5BF and 20BF pieces.
Cinema
The Belgians have definitely got this one sussed. All cinemas are very comfortable and palaces compared to most British ones. The price though, stays the same 180BF (£3.60) if you bring your student ID.
The range in Bruxelles includes:
De Brouckère - UGC
Rue Neuve - City 2
Heysel (near Atomium) - Kinepolis
If you can't hack an evening concentrating on someone's impossible accent look for V.O. (version originale) and make sure its not an Italian film!
Bars
The Belgians have a passion for beer which will be impossible to miss, L'Atelier is the 'local' and has a really good atmosphere. Chez Moeder Lambie is another local - we still haven't tried the banana beer. If you learn anything this year it will be how to like beer!
In the city are enough bars to last a lifetime these include Flanagans, Conways and Monkey Business of the highly Americanised type, very cosmopolitan and alive but not exactly Belgian. When looking for Bruxelloise kinds of bar one should take care as it is a big mistake to ask for a drink in French while at a Flemish bar. The night-time scene is centred on the bars but clubs can be found. African night-clubs seem to be the kind favoured by students as the more mainstream kind tend to be expensive and 'up market'.
Last bus/tram/metro tends to leave between midnight and 0045 but taxis are reasonable if in a group.
Antwerp is very close by if you run out of things to do in Brussels and it has been known for the young Bruxellois to go to Amsterdam for the evening!!!
Basically whatever your taste there is something for you to do, even if it's just sit in the Grand Place watching the world (and the 11 pm-ish lightshow) go by.
E111
You have to hand this over to the mutualité downstairs, who eventually send you a sheet of stickers. The opening hours of this are unbelievably limited and normally clash with something. Briefly, appointment fees are paid, but you have to shell out at the time. At the appointment you are given a green form which you take back to the mutualité, who subsequently refund you.
Prescriptions however are not refunded and there is no standard charge - merely a reduction on the cost of the drug.
Might as well say here that non-prescription medicines cost a small bomb - bring a supply of paracetamol!
Sport
You will probably be given a form at the beginning to 'join the club'. What this entails is a medical examination and paying 500BF for the year to a little office in the building downstairs. This entitles you to participate in any uni' sports you might want to for the year free of (any further) charge.
Intradermo
There are two requirements which you have to fulfil whilst at ULB. The first is the 'Intradermo' - your BCG all over again. The second is a medical exam. We were given appointments for the intradermo at registration, whereas the medical comes most of the way through the year.
These are all run by the one company STIB and put Eastern Counties to shame. The DRI will give you a map of the routes for all when you see them. At registration you get a certificate which entitles you to a reduced tariff for passes which you buy in Porte de Namur métro station. You can get monthly ones but we'd advise the year pass if you have enough money at the start of the year. It's about £140 but will save you money and a lot of hassle.
Apart from money and the certificate you'll need two passport photos and patience - the queues are long at the beginning of the year. They are first on sale on 1st September.
As for visitors or yourselves before you can get passes, buy multiple journey tickets as its much cheaper. Five journey tickets can be bought on buses or trams but ten journey tickets are cheaper per journey - easiest to get them from Porte de Namur métro station. Single tickets cost 50BF each then valid for one hour.
Home
There are an unbelievable number of travel agents around, but the two which we used are 'the one downstairs' and Connections on av. Buyl.
Connections first - this is where we found the cheapest flights to London. It costs, this year, 4190BF to go to London Stanstead - useful for Norwich. Lots of student type offers.
Downstairs (does anyone bother noticing its name?) is where we got our coach tickets. For most of this year the Eurolines coach was the cheapest option, under £60 and night journeys are an option. However at the end of this year Hoverspeed brought out a limited offer of a return journey for 2000BF - its quicker too - so keep your eyes peeled! Unfortunately they are always quite busy in this travel agent, and so not over friendly, but it's worth it!
I did actually buy an ISIC card here to get a discount on an air ticket - MUG! They cost twice as much in Belgium and the discount given isn't as much as the UK end. This was the only time we ever needed one!
Within Belgium
Rail travel is easy - Bruxelles is the heart of the efficient Belgian rail system and Belgium is so small that it isn't far to anywhere!
The Go-Pass makes it cheap (10 journeys anywhere in Belgium for 1290BF). It does however get a lot more expensive if you want to leave the country! In this case a second person travelling gets a large reduction - worth considering.
In Bruxelles
Brussels, while being the capital of Europe and Belgium doesn't feel like a big city, the centre is very concentrated and beautiful with sights including the Grand Place, Manneken Pis and Palais de Justice. You also have the pleasure of staying in a city full of museums. Many of them are free entrance, although most museums (throughout the country) are not open on Mondays. Further out is Brupark which has Kinepolis and the Atomium, the Belgian equivalent of the Eiffel Tower.
It is more of a 'Euro-city' than a Belgian city, in the summer one is as likely to hear English or German as French or Flemish in the city centre. It has everything you could possibly want and is perfectly placed for travel to Bruges, Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam and Germany.
In mid-September there is a weekend of 'patrimoine' - loads of buildings open to the public free of charge, many of which are not normally open. Its worth looking out for, just in case the palace is open again.
The Grand Place is decorated at Christmas - another 'must see'.
In Belgium
Mardi Gras is mostly wildly celebrated in the small southern town of Binche. It involves men - Gilles - dressed up in ostrich feather hats (each one costs about £1600!) Its worth waiting for the procession of the Gilles which ends in Binchés Grand Place later in the afternoon. This is when they throw hundreds of blood oranges to the crowd. Catch some if you can as they are supposed to bring you good luck.
We went to:
Brugge
Liége
Antwerp/Anvers
Travel Elsewhere
Luxembourg - er ... Luxembourg
Maths@uea.ac.uk