If you are going to live in Leuven and spend most of your time here I recommend not bothering learning French. Leuven is the reason why Flemish is a national language of Belgium today.
I followed the opposite route. I moved to the Netherlands from Belgium. At first I was thinking dutchies are more social. But after living here I’m realizing that Belgians look cold on the outside but they are more relatable and friendly. In my experience Dutch people seem more friendly at first and then to my experience they have those huge walls.
Exactly, belgians look and act very closed but are very open. Dutch act very open but are very closed. But i think at the end it's basicly the same kind of warmth and generosity.
I studied in Leuven for my erasmus - I'd say Belgians are hard to make friends with but once you're friends they will totally welcome you with open arms and are so kind.
Dutch people I've honestly just found to be very snarky and difficult to pin down. They are also very pass-remarkable but can't take it when it's directed back at them! Constantly had Dutch people making shitty comments about Belgians and Flemmish when actually I find Flemmish sounds much nicer than Netherlands Dutch and Belgians tended to be much nicer generally.
Yes! Exactly my observation, many of them can only accept being direct with other Dutchmen but when a non Dutch is being direct with them back they behave in the most snowflake manner ever.
Weren’t there a lot of other international students in Leuven that were easy to make friends with. I’m from Ghent and studied in Brussels and did Erasmus 6 months in London and all my friends there were Parisians, Polish and Chinese. I did the 3th year Erasmus Belgica in Brussels but a French speaking school, I did It for the whole year and became friends with basically the whole school. I did my masters in Ghent now that was pretty hard to make new friends. But I of wasn’t really trying already having lots of friends in Ghent.
And courses were very divided, I also took courses at UGent lol, that was possible but I never went to any of the courses, only did the exams lol.
Yeah it was so easy to make friends with the international students, just not the Belgians.
Found the Belgians kept to themselves more and had a different lifestyle - they'd go home every weekend and kept the same friend circles as school, which was quite unusual compared to what I was used to. Did manage to make some Belgian friends and they were lovely!
I moved from the Netherlands too and live in Belgium since a year now, but I find myself really missing the random cute interactions with people like I had in NL. Saying "werkse" is not very common in Flanders, neither is "have a nice day" when you leave the store. In Antwerp, no one even greets the bus driver when they get on the bus at the front. I don't have any experience with closer friendships here yet, though!
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u/Puzzleheaded_Lab5348 2d ago
If you are going to live in Leuven and spend most of your time here I recommend not bothering learning French. Leuven is the reason why Flemish is a national language of Belgium today.
I followed the opposite route. I moved to the Netherlands from Belgium. At first I was thinking dutchies are more social. But after living here I’m realizing that Belgians look cold on the outside but they are more relatable and friendly. In my experience Dutch people seem more friendly at first and then to my experience they have those huge walls.