I have been living in The Hague for nearly two months now. It is a great location considering how close it is to other major European countries. This makes it very easy to travel by plane, train, or even bus. So far, I have traveled to several different cities and countries. Amsterdam’s airport is close by and has flights to almost every city you could think of. Many of these flights are affordable for a college student looking to do some traveling.

Up until my trip abroad, I have never stayed in a hostel. When the word hostel came to mind, I imagined a giant room with an endless row of metal bunk beds. The hostels we have stayed at have been nothing short of great. Some are right in the middle of the city, some are on the outskirts. You can use sites like booking.com and Hostelworld to find a hostel. Usually, it costs around 15 to 30 Euros depending on the day and location. Often times, the price includes a free breakfast. A good rule of thumb to follow is to pick a hostel that has at least an 80% rating on the website.

Hostels are an interesting place to meet other travelers. It is almost like getting a random roommate every time you stay in one. In most cases, the rooms are mixed which means you can have roommates of the opposite gender. More often than not, many hostels also have different room types to choose from. Some offer a big room like ten or more beds, some offer smaller rooms for two to four people. The smaller rooms usually cost a bit more. Some of the smaller rooms have a private bathroom in them while the bigger ones have to use a community bathroom. Hostels are basically a cross between hotels and dorms.

The people working at the front desk are usually pretty good resources when it comes to finding out the local spots to hang out or get something to eat. Two things I would invest in when staying in hostels are a lock and a small towel. Every hostel has a locker in the room for you to use. But they do not give you a lock to use. I recommend bringing your own lock, something smaller than a combination lock as those are usually too big. Also, you do not want to carry around a normal sized towel when you are traveling. You want to travel light and a big, bulky towel will not help. Something like a swimmer’s towel or a small washcloth works. It is light and gets you dry enough.

I hope this gives you a better idea of what to expect when staying at a hostel. If you have any questions or comments, let me know and I will get back to you. Thanks for reading!

Chiraag Bhimani

Hello from The Hague, Netherlands! It has been nearly three weeks since I left Louisville and it has all been a blur. Before I came, I read the other blog entries on The Hague to get an idea of what to expect. I am glad that I did as it has been a huge help. I will tailor my blog posts so that it will give you an idea of what to expect about life in The Hague and abroad through my experiences. It does not take much time to get settled down in The Hague. It is an extremely diverse and international city. I definitely did not expect it to be that way. Almost everyone speaks English and you will see that many of the people are students or young professionals. I am here with another UofL student, AJ Bucci, and we were lucky enough to find an apartment in the city center. The city center is where all of the restaurants, bars/clubs, and stores are located. We bought bikes, which is the primary form of transportation in and around the city. AJ talks about it in his blog post, but biking is a huge part of Dutch life. They have special roads and traffic lights dedicated to bikes only. They even have these rails on stairs for you to use in case you have a bike with you. For us, walking to school or the train station takes about 20 minutes. But with the bike, it is less than half that time. I am not going to lie to you, before I came to the Netherlands; I was expecting to conquer Europe one country at a time. It is definitely easier said than done. It can be tough to plan trips around school but the key is to travel as much as you can as early as possible, before you get deep into classes. A good rule to follow is every other week for travelling out of the country. And you have to plan early to get good deals on planes and trains. Also, don’t be afraid to be the first one to make travel plans. Other people will follow once they see someone else do it. So far, the weather has been pretty good. Good enough to where we were able to make it to the beach one day. That was pretty nice. But everyone is telling us to enjoy it while we can before it gets worse. The classes have been very interesting so far. Group work and presentations are a common theme among all classes. You will get to meet people from all over the world here. In a single group, you could have someone from Russia, Thailand, Mexico, and Slovakia. It has been a great experience so far. I’ll be back to update you on more from The Hague, in the meantime if you have any questions you can send me an email or leave a comment.

Chiraag Bhimani