Erasmus Experience

Setubal can be beautiful if viewed from the Right Places


To say I enjoyed the Erasmus experience throughout would be a lie... I mean as if being thrown into a foreign country with little or no help wasnt difficult enough to get my head around, try being thrown into an area of Portugal which can only be described as poverty stricten. Myself and three other students went to Setubal in Portugal for our Erasmus, we lived in the students residence which was situated 10mins from the campus and 20mins from the city, the students residence was sandwiched between a shanty town, deserted waste land and an estate full of very very poor people in delapidated tower buildings. In saying this the actual residence we lived in was relatively secure although it was very boring and we were placed with final year portuguese students. I think some of the most depressing times of my life were spent in this year abroad, although we were obviously glad to have other irish students there.
1st semester was particularly bad as we got into a routine of staying in the residence as it seemed like to much effort to get out and organise trips. However we managed to travel a lot to Lisbon and the surrounding areas.

In second semester however lots changes and we put it down to a number of factors...
1. Our determination to avoid a repeat performance of 1st semester
2. The change of Erasmus students (fresh blood with more motivation)
3. The weather getting gradually better and better, vice versa from 1st semester

Things really began to change in the first weeks of 2nd semester. We booked flights home for Easter to break up the time, something which we didnt do in the 1st semester (were we endured a 4month stint non-stop). Also with the help of more motivated Erasmus we started to arrange trips to visit different parts of Portugal. Immediately we started to make the most of our time and see the country.
With Erasmus students we went to the Algarve for the National Erasmus Meeting of Portugal, to Peniche for surfing, to Cascais for fashion shows. Also I had friends over and we travelled to Porto and I became very familiar with Lisbon.

Going to Portugal for Erasmus, on the whole, I would definately not recommend it..
Going to Portugal on holidays, I would however praise it, if your interested in coastal beauty, historic buildings, culture, scenery, sight seeing and if you enjoy trawling cities and discovering unfamiliar places then this is an ideal place. This was definately one of the best holiday locations I have ever been but just dont live in SETUBAL!!

Also I thought once I came back to Ireland I could put the bad times we had on Erasmus in Setubal behind me, but NO... not only did we have problems getting the correct results from 1st semester (which has still not been clarified) but also the college will not send over an accurate transcript of results for the courses we completed while in Portugal, meaning that me and the three others students who went to Portugal cant register for Fourth Year of our course in Dundalk..
This is seriously heartbreaking for us as we thought our troubles were over when we left Portugal.....

Lisbon, Porto, Lagos, Algarve