Universiteit Utrecht

As I pointed out above, the housing at Utrecht university was a bit too expensive for what they could offer us - the building, we were living in, was old and kind of left behind. We did clean and tried to make it as friendlier as it could be. Besides that small housing discomfort my semester in Utrecht was brilliant!

Dutch for me seemed like a very difficult language. It took me more than a month only to start getting the pronounciation correct. However, in the Netherlands, everybody speaks english... (well most people do). You need to know dutch if you want to get a decent job though. If I wanted to find a job in my sector I had to know dutch if not I had to know 3 foreign languages! Oh, there are also a few jobs for speakers of the german language. Overall you do not need to speek the Dutch language in the Netherlands.

If you are planning travel a lot around the contry, it is really intersting to by a discount card for the train that can be used for 4 persons at the same time. It's quite expensive but you really save money at the end. And the most important advice: if you don't want to spend a month in a hostel, look for accomodation before to get there. It's really difficult to get a room for rent for yourself!!

It was a wery well arranged accomodation, but at the beginning I stayed one month with a lady who had two cats, who gave me a very small room without armachairs where to put my stuff and, furthermore, she wanted to be my mum and she didn't allow me to go out every time I wanted. My second accomodation was the best, it was in the centre of the city, next to my university and my room was really big.

I had previous experience with the German language, and that helped me out a lot with understanding written and spoken language. I still cannot speak Dutch much at all, but I could a little bit if I had to, enough to get by. Take a class offered to you if you can. The Dutch love it if you at least try to learn their language. It was a problem sometimes, not to speak Dutch, but just about everyone in Holland speaks English fairly well, especially the students.

the banking system is either expensive (normal banks) or provide a very low quality of service (post office bank)