Posted September 1, 2016 by UTS Think Global Global Exchange

Tilburg University

Anyone heard of it? I hadn’t before I looked at UTS’ exchange partners. I decided to go to the Netherlands because I wanted to travel on exchange. Here’s a quick list of the pros and cons from my first two weeks here.

Pros

Almost everyone speaks English
Cheaper than Copenhagen
Central and easy to travel from
People are friendly and honest
Safe town
Probably going to return to Sydney fitter because we ride our bikes almost everywhere within the city
Small city but there are still cool places to hang out, shops to keep me busy and lots of greenery
The Sports Centre/Program is awesome and not too expensive either (well, compared to Australia)
Technology in this university is probably better than that of UTS haha (sorry UTS)
Dutch men are quite nice to look at
Drinking everyday lol and drinks are a bit cheaper than in Australia

Cons

Dutch food isn’t the greatest – learning to eat to live now haha
- Brunching isn’t really a thing here (I miss that – a lot)
Food packaging/menus are usually not in English – usually spend at least 1.5 hours in the Supermarket when trying to cook something even slightly complex with my Google Translate App hovering over it trying to make sense of why it says “COWS ARE EVIL” on a soup tin
They don’t accept non-Dutch credit cards in most places -_-
My butt hasn’t gotten used to all the cycling yet
The student housing can get a bit grotty with a kitchen and bathroom shared between 17 people
DRINKING EVERYDAY ><

But, in all honesty, exchange so far has been great. Lots of social events organised (haha the best party names are: , made friends and traveled to a different city with them already! Everyone is looking to make friends and be a more extroverted version of themselves.

I love cycling and it allows you to be more spontaneous. The other day I was visiting Rotterdam and then decided to cycle to Delft (a small city that has Amsterdam feels) and was able to just do it! And it was super easy because they have specially designated bike roads and cyclists have more rights than other drivers on the roads!

The drinking is great haha they have this event here called Cantus which involves singing at a table (there’s like 1000 people singing in the hall) and having to down (skull) an entire beer/cider at the end of one particular song which keeps coming on meaning everyone essentially becomes a drunken mess dancing on the tables by the end of it haha oh and somehow everyone also ends up being covered in drinks by the end too?

… but as great as the drinking culture is… I had a bit too much on my first night and ended up having to sleep on a kitchen bench. You can use your imagination as to why that happened 😛 the story is pretty crazy though.