Tiny rooms, filthy student houses, space-boxes, too few vacancies, too high rental prices. Searching for decent student housing in Delft is difficult and depressing.
Delen
Many TU foreign students are now moving to Rotterdam, where good, inexpensive housing and a hip and young city await them.
Delft is a pretty, historic little city to study in. But living in Delft is, to put it kindly, less than ideal: too few, too small and too expensive student rooms; no really good clubs or shops; non-multicultural (except for the TU’s foreign students themselves); and dead boring on weekends.
Rotterdam, though, is indeed, as the city’s website boasts, “a swinging, young city with excellent shopping facilities, restaurants and cafes.” It’s also a great place to live for TU students, as it’s only 10 minutes away from Delft by train, 25 minutes by #129 bus (direct to the TU campus), or 45 minutes by bike (an enjoyable route through beautiful Dutch landscape along the Schie, from Delfshaven to TU Delft).
Rotterdam’s a real city, full of people and things you rarely experience in Delft, like urban guys cruising in pimped-out cars, streets alive with exotic foreign melodies, hip-hopsters in baggy ghetto-wear, skateboard dudes sailing along the Westblaak on their boards, colorfully dressed African and Caribbean momma’s strolling with their kids.
Add plenty of affordable housing to this (compared to Delft), and it’s no surprise that many TU foreign students are opting to study in Delft by day, but then return to Rotterdam to live and experience life in the Netherlands.
Student housing
Rotterdam, this harbor city, is very different from other typically Dutch towns. True, there’s no lovely old downtown (German blitzkrieg bombs flattened the city during World War II). But from the amazing modern architecture to the city’s residents themselves, Rotterdam’s an unpredictable, exciting mix of old and new.
Interesting shops and venues are scattered all over the city, from the main shopping area Coolsingel (and its underground passage, called the ‘koopgoot’ (‘shopping gutter’), in Rotterdam worker’s speak), the Nieuwe Binnenweg’s specialist music and clothes shops, and US-style ‘big mall’ shopping at Alexandrium, to the Middellandstraat, a street especially popular with foreign students, where you’ll find small stores selling food from virtually all corners of the globe, from its ‘Chinatown’ shops to the Suriname, Hindustan, Indonesian, Moroccan, Turkish…shops dotted all along this street.
As for nightlife, put it this way: you won’t miss Speakers! Great Rotterdam nightspots are found on the Witte de Withstraat (Bazaar, Witte Aap) and Nieuwe Binnenweg (Rotown, Westerpaviljoen). For trendy club partying, ‘Now & Wow’, ‘Off Corso’ and ‘Hyper Hyper’ are superb. Rotterdam also hosts many special events, ranging from the Caribbean-styled ‘Summer Carnival’, to the ‘International Film Festival Rotterdam’.
With so much to do and so much multi-cultural life, Rotterdam is becoming an increasingly popular ‘student town’. To find affordable (student)housing in Rotterdam, check out the city’s various ‘woningen en kamers te huur’ websites and newspaper (‘woonkranten’) ads. Popular Rotterdam neighborhoods for TU Delft students include those near Central Station; the Delfshaven and Middellandstraat neighborhoods; and anywhere along the #129 bus route.
Rotterdam’s multicultural Middellandstraat. (Photo: Ekim Tan)
Delft is a pretty, historic little city to study in. But living in Delft is, to put it kindly, less than ideal: too few, too small and too expensive student rooms; no really good clubs or shops; non-multicultural (except for the TU’s foreign students themselves); and dead boring on weekends.
Rotterdam, though, is indeed, as the city’s website boasts, “a swinging, young city with excellent shopping facilities, restaurants and cafes.” It’s also a great place to live for TU students, as it’s only 10 minutes away from Delft by train, 25 minutes by #129 bus (direct to the TU campus), or 45 minutes by bike (an enjoyable route through beautiful Dutch landscape along the Schie, from Delfshaven to TU Delft).
Rotterdam’s a real city, full of people and things you rarely experience in Delft, like urban guys cruising in pimped-out cars, streets alive with exotic foreign melodies, hip-hopsters in baggy ghetto-wear, skateboard dudes sailing along the Westblaak on their boards, colorfully dressed African and Caribbean momma’s strolling with their kids.
Add plenty of affordable housing to this (compared to Delft), and it’s no surprise that many TU foreign students are opting to study in Delft by day, but then return to Rotterdam to live and experience life in the Netherlands.
Student housing
Rotterdam, this harbor city, is very different from other typically Dutch towns. True, there’s no lovely old downtown (German blitzkrieg bombs flattened the city during World War II). But from the amazing modern architecture to the city’s residents themselves, Rotterdam’s an unpredictable, exciting mix of old and new.
Interesting shops and venues are scattered all over the city, from the main shopping area Coolsingel (and its underground passage, called the ‘koopgoot’ (‘shopping gutter’), in Rotterdam worker’s speak), the Nieuwe Binnenweg’s specialist music and clothes shops, and US-style ‘big mall’ shopping at Alexandrium, to the Middellandstraat, a street especially popular with foreign students, where you’ll find small stores selling food from virtually all corners of the globe, from its ‘Chinatown’ shops to the Suriname, Hindustan, Indonesian, Moroccan, Turkish…shops dotted all along this street.
As for nightlife, put it this way: you won’t miss Speakers! Great Rotterdam nightspots are found on the Witte de Withstraat (Bazaar, Witte Aap) and Nieuwe Binnenweg (Rotown, Westerpaviljoen). For trendy club partying, ‘Now & Wow’, ‘Off Corso’ and ‘Hyper Hyper’ are superb. Rotterdam also hosts many special events, ranging from the Caribbean-styled ‘Summer Carnival’, to the ‘International Film Festival Rotterdam’.
With so much to do and so much multi-cultural life, Rotterdam is becoming an increasingly popular ‘student town’. To find affordable (student)housing in Rotterdam, check out the city’s various ‘woningen en kamers te huur’ websites and newspaper (‘woonkranten’) ads. Popular Rotterdam neighborhoods for TU Delft students include those near Central Station; the Delfshaven and Middellandstraat neighborhoods; and anywhere along the #129 bus route.
Rotterdam’s multicultural Middellandstraat. (Photo: Ekim Tan)
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