I’ve never done as much travelling in one year as I have in 2018. I travelled to three countries in Asia and four countries in Europe. Not only did I travel with friends and with family, I also travelled with a bunch of people I had never met before. This is a short overview of all the trips and crazy experiences I was fortunate enough to go through this year. This is my 2018 travel report.
Note: whenever I mention ‘blog posts/video coming soon’, it might already be up and I forgot to update this post. Check my recent blog posts and my YouTube channel to stay up to date with everything I do!
Click the links below to skip to the destinations you’re most interested in!
I’m not sure if everyone will count this as travelling, but I’m including it anyway. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.
In September 2017, I set off on my most ambitious project abroad to date. I spent four months studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain. Since I came back home in January 2018, I’m going to say it technically counts for my 2018 overview.
During my semester studying abroad, I met amazing people from all over the world (see Instagram picture below), I learned how to be independent and how to solve problems that I had never come across earlier. My Spanish also improved tremendously.
(The only reason I’m not on this picture is because it was taken the night before my first exam and I went home early to revise. See, Mom, I can be a responsible student.)
Studying abroad is usually something you do on your own. I was in a special situation, where I had a classmate who went on her Erasmus stay to the same city as me. We made friends together during the first few weeks, we were in class together and we studied together for our exams.
Big shout-out to Amy for helping me out with all kinds of problems I came across. <3
I went to Amsterdam in February.
One of the artists I had been following for a few years, Quinn XCII, was touring Europe in January and February 2018. When he dropped the announcement for the Europe leg of his The Story Of Us tour, I saw that the closest he would come to Belgium was Amsterdam. I messaged a few of my friends and one of them was willing to go to Amsterdam with me for a concert by an artist she had never heard of. What an absolute legend.
I combined this show with a visit to my sister, who was studying abroad in Amsterdam at the time. She was in the middle of her exams and we met up a few times to go for dinner and to explore the city.
In total, we ended up staying in Amsterdam for three days. We didn’t really visit any popular tourist hotspots, since my friend and I had both been in Amsterdam before (on the same school trip, by the way) and my sister obviously didn’t need to visit them anymore after having spent a few months there.
As I mentioned before, I went to Amsterdam with one of my best friends from high school and we met up with my sister a few times once we were there.
I went to La Plagne in February.
As I mentioned in my travel story, yearly ski trips have been an essential part of our family bonding since I was four years old. Before 2018, we hadn’t gone skiing for a while, but this year we went to La Plagne for a week of fun plowing through the snow.
We skied a lot. I reached a top speed of over 90 km/h (55 mph) rushing down a slope with nothing but two long sticks attached to my feet. I believe everyone should go skiing at some point, but that’s not the question here.
Also: I ate a lot of food. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
I went skiing in La Plagne with my parents and my sister, and we met up with a friend of my sister’s who was there with her family at the same time by chance.
I went to Lille in May.
After I came back from my four-month stay in Spain, I realised how much fun it was to be in an international organisation of exchange students and Erasmus students. While I was in Spain, I went on many trips that were organised by the local office of ESN (Erasmus Student Network).
Many of these trips can be seen in my Travel Videos playlist!
And so, when I was back in Belgium, I wanted to return the favour to the international student community. I contacted ESN Ghent (the city I’m currently studying in) to see if there was anything I could do for them, and it turns out there was. We agreed that I would join an upcoming ESN trip to Lille and take care of the pictures and video.
No sooner said than done, I found myself filming an international group of students I had never met before in a French city.
I went to Lille with two guys who volunteered at ESN Ghent and a group of 30-something international students who were out to explore the best Lille had to offer.
I went to Japan in August.
It’s been almost four months since I came back from Japan, but it still feels surreal to me that I actually went there and it was not a dream.
I spent two weeks in Japan and I visited Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Itsukushima, Hakone, Shirakawa-go and Kanazawa. (More blog posts about Japan coming soon, by the way)
It was action-filled, ridiculous, exceptional, adventurous, unbelievable.
I can’t wait to go back and explore more of this crazy, crazy country.
I went to Japan with my parents and my sister. We also met up with a few people my dad knew from work when we were there.
I went to Bali in September.
After our two-week trip to Japan, my sister and I were still feeling energetic and ready for another trip. So we went to Bali for a week.
Admittedly, we had booked all this in advance, so it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.
While we were in Bali, we visited Ubud (Monkey Forest, rice terraces and Bali Swings), Canggu and Nusa Penida (Kelingking Beach, Broken Beach & Angel’s Billabong). We also ate. A lot. And we got a few massages. #thegoodlife
Bali might be on your bucket list, but you might want to revisit that. Here’s why Bali may or may not be worth a visit.
I went to Bali with my sister.
I went to Singapore in September.
Since I was only in Singapore for a 30-hour layover, I didn’t do a whole lot.
In our short available time period, we managed to check out the Supertree Grove at Gardens By The Bay (during the day AND at night), the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest, Little India and Chinatown.
We also admired a light show at the Supertree Grove (called the Garden Rhapsody) and one at the Marina waterfront. We experienced both shows within about half an hour of each other and it was the perfect end to a perfect trip.
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Singapore with my sister, after our visits to Japan and Bali.
I went to Slovenia in September.
We arrived in Ljubljana, where we stayed for two days and mostly wandered around its quaint streets and neighbourhoods and discovering everything the Slovenian capital had to offer. Some recommendations: a stroll along the Ljubljanica river, Dragon Bridge, Preseren Square and Ljubljana Castle.
After two days in the capital, we took a bus to Bled, where we stayed in an Airbnb located at about ten minutes of Lake Bled. Also, I accidentally walked all the way around the lake on our last day. But that’s a story for later.
Related: get €30 off your first Airbnb booking here.
From Bled, we also went on a day trip to Vintgar Gorge. It was extremely tiring since the hike up there took us a lot longer than we had anticipated, but it was totally worth it. The views were gorge-ous. (I’m so sorry.)
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Slovenia with one of my best friends from school (who is also an avid world traveller and one of the biggest fans of this blog, by the way).
This 2018 travel report wasn’t just meant to make anyone reading this jealous of how much I travelled. It was meant to show you that anyone can travel. If I, a full-time university student, can go on seven trips in one year, there’s no reason for you not to be able to do the same thing.
I’m not rich. I don’t have more time than you do. But I do make travel a priority.
As a travel blogger, writing a travel report like this is like a photographer making a photo album. In the future, I’ll be able to look back at this post and relive everything I experienced in 2018.
All I’m trying to say here is that it doesn’t always have to be a big, fancy trip. You can go to a city one hour away from your hometown and discover things you had never seen before.
Travelling is not about collecting trophies from the most extreme destinations across the world. It’s about experiencing life and living your dreams.
Here’s to travelling more than you think you can in 2019. Let’s make this the best year of our lives.
If you ever get the opportunity to go study abroad, you should definitely do it. If you’re going to study abroad in Salamanca, I have some good news for you. It’s the perfect city for Erasmus students. Why, you ask me? Here’s why.
Latest update: 23 June 2019
Studying abroad a life-changing opportunity. You get a chance to learn a new language. You make dozens of new international friends.
There will be a lot of stories you can tell your grandchildren when you’re old and you’re chilling in your rocking chair.
You become more independent. You get a thorough insight into a foreign culture.
Going on Erasmus is an adventure if there ever was one.
Are those enough reasons?
If yes, good. Continue reading.
If no, you might as well close this page right now.
Salamanca is a true Erasmus city. Obviously, in order for a city to be qualified as an Erasmus city, it must be a university city first. Out of its 230,000 inhabitants, 30,000 are students, making them one of the primary sources of income for the city.
Out of these 30,000 students, you’ll find that around 9,000 students are on Erasmus in Salamanca.
That means that one in every four students is studying abroad there.
Let that sink in for a minute.
This, in turn, means that there are tons of things to do for these people. In other words: as an Erasmus student in Salamanca, you’ll never be bored.
There are two main Erasmus-oriented organisations in Salamanca: ESN and Nuve Erasmus. Both offer a great variety of things to do and trips.
On top of that, there’s this event called “Nochevieja universitaria”, which translates to “Academic New Year’s Eve”.
The concept of this event is that a lot – and I mean A LOT – of students, from all over Spain, gather in Salamanca to celebrate New Year’s, at the beginning of December.
If you have other friends who are studying elsewhere in Spain, this event is a fun way to see them again after a few months apart.
It’s surprisingly easy to be an Erasmus student in Spain. You’ll meet new people, make awesome friends and have the time of your life.
Like I said before, Salamanca has about 230,000 inhabitants. Now, for some people, that might be a lot, but compared to other major cities in Spain (or in Europe, for that matter), Salamanca is relatively small.
This can be both a positive and a negative aspect of life in Salamanca. On the one hand, you’ll get to come across people you know in the streets, you’ll basically know everyone and you’ll get more personal assistance in classes.
On the other hand, however, you might feel like you don’t have any privacy and you’ll want some time for yourself.
In the end, it all comes down to what kind of city you prefer.
In Spain, it’s a well-known fact that the inhabitants of Castilla y León are generally considered to speak the standard variety of Spanish. In other words, they don’t have a specific location-based accent.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
If you’re going on Erasmus, you’re probably looking to learn a new language (or at least enhance your knowledge of a language you already know).
In that case, I highly recommend going to a city located in Castilla y León. And, what do you know, that’s exactly where you can find Salamanca.
Another plus is that it’s relatively easy for a foreigner to understand what someone from Salamanca is saying, because they don’t really have any specific vocabulary or pronunciations.
As for me, improving my Spanish knowledge was more or less the only objective of my studying in Spain. And look how that turned out. 😉
Basically the entirety of Salamanca is made of the same kind of stone.
Most, if not all, of the buildings in the city centre consist of the same blond sandstone. There’s a reason why people call Salamanca the “Golden City” (La Dorada).
Despite – or maybe even because of – the recent oxidation and deterioration of the stone, Salamanca is still more than worth visiting. Or living in, for that matter.
In 1988, the Old City was proclaimed UNESCO World Heritage for “retaining its key attributes of authenticity in terms of form, design, materials, and substance”.
(Tip: Check out the Roman bridge at the south of the city, stretching over the river Tormes!)
Coming from a city where the authorities don’t really go out of their way to keep the city clean, it’s safe to say I was impressed at how clean Salamanca really is.
Every night, city workers set out with the mission to clean the streets – and they do a terrific job every single day.
It’s kind of funny to see these cleaning cars do their thing while you’re still going out at 3 am.
When I – and the other people who were on Erasmus in Salamanca – got my orientation at the beginning of the semester, we were told over and over again that Salamanca was a clean city.
I thought they were exaggerating, but as it turns out, they were more than justified to do so.
In those same orientation sessions, the chief of the police corps was also there to tell us all about how Salamanca worked.
In his five-minute speech, he must have said “Salamanca is a very safe city” at least ten times. It was a bit much, but he did get his message across.
During my four-month stay, I didn’t find out about any big crime once. That might be a coincidence, but I do believe Salamanca is generally a very safe and secure city.
My female friends told me they didn’t feel nearly as oppressed and viewed when they were walking home alone at night as they did at home.
If you’re a healthy mom looking into Erasmus destinations for your dear child, you might want to look away now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Everyone who has spent some time in Salamanca knows about Varillas. It’s a restaurant that is pretty much only opened at night, where you can get French fries, kebab and hamburgers.
Located in Calle Varillas, right in the centre of the Salamanca nightlife, its main clientele is made up of drunk students who want to eat something greasy before they head home and wake up with a hangover.
I must admit, every single time I found myself in this restaurant, I was in that situation exactly. And I have no shame or regrets. Getting number 24 (fries, meat and sauce) here was often the best part of a night out.
Sitting at a table, engaged in drunk conversations with my friends while munching on some greasy food? Those are the things I’ll remember.
Looking into a place to study abroad in Spain, where people know each other, you can have a LOT of fun and your Spanish will increase drastically?
Go to Salamanca.
If I haven’t managed to convince you in this blog post, I’m afraid nothing will.
If you do go on Erasmus to Salamanca, feel free to send me a message or leave a comment for specific tips and tricks.
And as always, thanks for reading!
-S
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If you’re reading this post, it’s either because you 1. have plans of going on Erasmus in Spain; 2. want to go on Erasmus in Spain; 3. are an avid reader of Ars Currendi blog posts (yeah, right). Either way, here’s everything you need to know about studying abroad in Spain.
I’ll be arranging this post in the form of short, to the point tips that should help you survive your stay in Spain. I can’t give you any specific information about housing, weather or nightlife, because I only experienced those things in Salamanca. What I can do, however, is give you loads of information about those things specifically in Salamanca.
To start off, here are some images to give you an idea of what it was like.
Seriously. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make any friends and have to spend 5 months crying myself to sleep because I felt so alone. Well, with the end of my Erasmus stay in Salamanca comes the realization that I had never made friends as easily as I did here.
As an exchange student, it’s incredibly easy to find other people who are right there with you. Most of you will arrive in the city at around the same time, which means that there is a truckload of people who are right there with you – alone and confused in a foreign city.
Obviously, student organizations know this. It happens every year. So they organize countless events to give all those students a chance to get to know some people and find friends.
I actually met most of my friends through these events, so I can tell you this. If you think you’re too awkward to go to these things, you’re not. I’m just about as awkward as they come around new people and I managed to make it work.
As Jan Levinson so eloquently put it in my all-time favourite episode of The Office, people in Spain often don’t even start eating until midnight.
Of course, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it is true that the daily rhythm in Spain is very different from what I’m used to in Belgium. For example, Spanish people usually only have lunch around 2-3 pm. And then they take a nap.
The thing is, basically everything happens two hours later than it does in Belgium. In Spain, you get up later, you eat lunch later, you have dinner later and you go to sleep later. And that’s actually surprisingly easy to get used to.
This paragraph will have a number of very cheesy, or even cringe-worthy, statements. You have been warned.
If someone asks you to do something while you’re on Erasmus in Spain, do it! Whether it be a party, a picnic or just hanging out at someone’s apartment, I can guarantee that it’s going to end up being a lot of fun. Even if you don’t really feel like it.
After all, we only regret the chances we didn’t take. I’m just saying, I’ve never heard anyone say they regret spending time with friends.
This is your one chance to do some crazy things without anyone back home finding out. It’s your time to say YOLO and really mean it.
Having spent four months abroad, I am now certified to tell anyone and everyone that it goes by a lot quicker than you’d expect. It feels as if I just arrived here last week, but here I am back in Belgium. I’ve said goodbye to some amazing people and it breaks my heart to know that I probably won’t see some of them again.
Before I went to Spain, I thought that four months might be a bit much for a first-timer like me. But now, I realize it wasn’t even close to enough to do all the things I wanted to do.
So believe me when I say you should take advantage of the opportunities you get. You will most definitely regret it if you don’t.
I know, I know. Saying this makes me look like the biggest jerk you’ve ever met. But hear me out. School in Spain is relatively easy, especially if you’re coming from a country like Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK or Ireland. (There are obviously other countries that qualify as having “tougher education than Spain”).
That being said, you should not feel ashamed or bad about yourself if you skip on some schoolwork to go to a party or hang out with your friends.
This wouldn’t be a travel blog if I didn’t talk about travelling at all. So, here it is. If you’re studying in Spain, you have tons of opportunities to go travel and see lots of beautiful places.
On that note, go take a look at some of my videos (Salamanca, Bilbao/Gaztelugatxe, Segovia/Ávila, Barrio del Oeste, Morocco) to get some inspiration!
This is an important point because it’s often overlooked. Contacting the people responsible for your Erasmus stay in Spain is essential. For example, you should email your professor before the term begins to see if they even like exchange students. You need to find out what the assignment is if you didn’t hear it in class and you don’t have anyone who can tell you. You need to know when classes start and end. (I think you get the idea)
I said that making friends as an Erasmus students is very easy – and I stand by that. I’m just saying, you shouldn’t expect most, if any, of these friends to be Spanish people.
Anyone who has been an exchange student will agree with me when I say that natives don’t really care about them. I’m not judging them, because the exact same thing happens at my home university.
People won’t hate you, but they’ll mostly be indifferent about you. And that’s definitely okay, because you’ll have a very fun group of international friends to share your adventures with.
It’s terrifying and amazing at the same time. You’re independent but you share everything you experience with your friends. At times you’ll feel demotivated and lonely, but that only makes the other moments so much more worth it. After all, without the lows, you would never reach the highs.
I think it’s easier to explain what my stay in Spain was like with a video. So, without any further ado, here it is. The culmination of four months in Salamanca. Enjoy!
And as always, thanks for reading!
-S
I wasn’t planning on writing another blog post before my Erasmus stay in Spain ended, which is in about three weeks. Then again, I wasn’t planning on being stuck in Ávila and spending the night here. Thank you, Spanish public transport.
Okay, so today was supposed to be the day that I flew back to Spain and then took a bus from Madrid to Salamanca. Badabing badaboom. But, of course, as my luck would have it, there’s some pretty heavy snow in Spain at the moment. This complicated my travel plans quite a lot. This is the story of how that happened.
Disclaimer: this post will be rather short and it won’t contain any pictures.
According to the original plan (plan #1), my dad drives me to the train station, I take two trains to get to Brussels Airport, where I catch a flight to Madrid. After that, a bus takes me from Madrid to Salamanca. By now, it should be clear that that’s not how it happened.
We had a family Christmas thing yesterday, so nobody was looking forward to driving me to the train station. Eventually, we decided that my dad was the person who had to get up at 6:30 to drive me. (Dad, if you’re reading this: thank you!)
So far, so good.
I managed to buy a train ticket before my train left the station, and I caught the train. Luckily, it was one of the newer trains in Belgium, equipped with an electricity socket. I say ‘luckily’ because – for some reason – my phone refused to charge last night. No harm done, because I was able to start charging my phone on this train.
I also watched two episodes of 11.22.63 (a show about an English professor who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy). I highly recommend you give this show a try if you’re into history and conspiracy theories.
This is where things started to go wrong.
Well, nothing too big happened. I didn’t miss my flight. It did leave about half an hour late, though. Presumably because of the bad weather conditions in Spain. This meant that the time that I had counted on for lunch (and to find my bus) was cut short, which started the avalanche of stress.
For lack of a better alternative, I ate at the first airport restaurant that I came across, which happened to be Burger King. Add to this the fact that I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
I had booked a spot on a bus from Madrid to Salamanca at 3 pm. After losing half an hour on the plane, I finished eating my burger and fries at around 2:30 pm, which gave me plenty of time to find out where my bus was supposed to arrive. And I did.
I went to the bus parking, and I started waiting for the bus.
This is where the public transport system of Spain started to fail me.
After waiting for the bus until 3:20, I saw people start to leave the bus parking, heading back inside (where it wasn’t as cold and it wasn’t raining). I obviously found it rather odd that the bus still hadn’t arrived, so I decided to check Twitter for any news.
And that’s when I found out about the snow crisis in Spain. This was the Tweet that informed me about the fact that all buses in Castilla y León (which is where I had to go) had been canceled until further notice.
Great.
Información sobre corte de servicios y carreteras por temporal. Servicios AutoRes. Día 7. Todos los servicios Castilla Leon y Galicia están suspendidos en la AP6. Disculpen las molestias.
— Avanzabus (@avanzabus) January 7, 2018
This is when the “Googling for viable alternatives on my phone, which desperately needs to be charged again” started. I looked at taxis, buses, trains, Blablacar, hitchhiking, … You name it, I probably considered it.
In the end, I decided to go with an updated plan (plan #2), involving another buttload of public transport.
I take a bus to Terminal 4, I take a train to Madrid Chamartín, I take another train to Salamanca, and that’s it. Can you guess whether or not this plan worked? (It didn’t)
It started out fine, though. I feel like I owe you a bit of an explication as to what Terminal 4 and Chamartín are. Let’s see: Madrid Airport (full name: Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas) consists of two buildings. The main building houses terminals 1, 2 and 3, and it is (obviously) the largest of the two. The second building takes care of terminal 4, and it’s smaller and newer (built in 2006) than its big brother.
When my plane landed, I was in the big building, and my bus was supposed to be there as well. Upon finding out that it wasn’t going to come, I found out that the train station was located in the other building, so I had to take a transfer train (which was free, thank goodness) to T4.
The transfer train took me to the T4 building rather quickly. This was when I was introduced to the wonderful world of Spanish trains, Renfe. I bought a ticket to get me from the airport to the main train station of Madrid, also known as Chamartín.
This was rather stressy, as I couldn’t find any way of finding out whether or not I was waiting at the right train track. Turns out I was.
Once I arrived at Chamartín, I started looking for a train to take from Madrid to Salamanca. The ticket machine told me that every direct train between those two cities had been fully booked, so that wasn’t an option any more.
My dad recommended that I take a train to Ávila, and then transfer to another train to Salamanca from there, which was what I was about to do anyway.
I bought a ticket to Ávila, and I got on the train.
Now, I’ve arrived here, and I’ve figured out that there is no way I’m making it to Salamanca today. All the trains had been booked again, the buses are still not driving, there are no Blablacars and a taxi would be way too expensive.
I informed my family, and they told me to stay here and take the train tomorrow. My dad booked a hostel room in my name (again, thanks!) and he gave me the address.
I’m now in my bedroom as I am writing this blog post. I’ve just gone out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I feel like I’m about to fall asleep any moment now.
I’ve booked a seat on a train bound to Salamanca tomorrow morning. It might be a little tight, because the train leaves at 9:15, and breakfast in this hostel only starts at 8:30. And it’s still about a 15 minute walk to the train station. We’ll see how it goes.
With a little bit of luck, I’ll be in Salamanca by lunchtime tomorrow. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thank God for public transport. Right?
If you don’t live in Salamanca or know anyone who lives there, chances of you having heard of the Barrio del Oeste are pretty slim. But hey, isn’t that what I’m here for? In this post, I’ll be showing you the beauty that is this neighbourhood, with its funky graffiti and cute coffee shops.
After some careful planning, my friends and I got together for an afternoon of wandering around the Barrio del Oeste.
The great thing about this neighbourhood is, obviously, the graffiti. There’s at least one piece of graffiti on every single street (or, at least, so it seemed). That’s the main reason why it was so much fun to just wander around. You don’t even need to have any idea as to where you’re going.
The fact that all of this graffiti was made by young artists – with permission of the city – just makes it even better. The project even got its own website, on which you can see every piece of graffiti that makes a part of the project. (It’s in Spanish, but that shouldn’t stop you!)
For anyone who’s too lazy to check out the website, who’s not coming to Salamanca any time soon or who just can’t be bothered to do anything other than scroll, here’s some pictures we took while we were there.
As if all of that wasn’t enough yet, there are quite some works where you can interact with the art. If you need any really cool pictures for Instagram, look no further. (Be creative: find new ways to interact with the graffiti and send them to me on Twitter or Instagram!)
All in all, we had a fantastic day at Barrio del Oeste. I’d say it’s definitely worth coming to Salamanca for this. As if you needed any more reasons. I’ll be sure to show this neighbourhood to my parents and my sister when they visit in December.
While I hadn’t even heard of this place until a couple of weeks ago and it was definitely not on my Spanish bucket list, I’m very happy I visited Barrio del Oeste (it’s free!).
There’s also a video!
I know this was a short post, but there really wasn’t much more to write about when you’ve seen the pictures. (I did promise a lot of pictures in my last post, didn’t I?)
As always, thanks for reading!
-S
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