Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

I would like to say that my overall experience as a student at teh VUB was not bad, I made a series of good friends and had some really interesting courses too. My advice to new commers is that they should be adequiately prepared to start in a new culture. For the organisers of the different courses, it will be very interesting to that students do more of practivcal work than theory as most student have the visions of getting to learn more about what they had always known from lectures back in developing countries. Every course should be met by organisation of trips and visits to sites, factories, Industries, Laboratories if the need be.

Belgian generally seems a bit cold in attitude to foreigners, however the environment provides full opportunity for visitors to explore and enjoy their rich culture. It is now left for individual to define the “how far” of their stay and “how well” is has been so far.

VUB is really an international university, I have classmates from different countrys, and all the people in campus can speak english. So, I never have problem with communication in university. And even if the native language of this country is not English, most of the local people here can also speak English, and I'm also studing French now. So, at least we can understand each other. In a word, basically I don't have language problem in belgium.

In this area, I did not have so many problems since my University was in Brussels where most people could either speak French or English which are languages inb which I could communicate. Furthermore, my courses were in English. The only problem was with the library fascilities in the main Campus. Most of the very important literature is in Flemish thereby hindering effective access to them.

For my Campus, I think the housing arrangements were really good. The was no over crouding in the kitchen area as is the case with other commonly shared fascilities. The only problems which I encountered concerned cultural difference like Europeans smoking in the kitchen while it was considered not right in my own culture.