Student Residence

268,06

In Amidonniers, near the Ponts Jumeaux bus stop

Via Crous - I had to apply via my host university

Yes - although I’d say you get what you pay for. I had a 9m2 studio, it was fairly dated and not very clean when I moved in. However once I’d moved in I had no issues, it’s about 20 minutes on the bus into the town centre, but the commute to university is around one hour from door to door. There’s shops a 10 minutes walk away, and Place Saint Pierre is around a 20 minute walk, with lots of bars.

Place Saint Pierre is a good place - lots of bars and cheap places to eat, cafes etc. It’s also on the banks of the river, and when the weather was nice lots of people sit on the steps to the river with their drinks and play music. Clubs - le Purple, Limelight, Downtown Factory, Cafe Oz - in September a lot of places have student deals/nights on, so good to look out for them. The ESN group or AEGEE group run lots of events and socials, often at low cost or free.

University in France is very different to my experience in the UK. I didn’t find the classes to be very interactive, mostly due to the amount of students - there’s not much chance for detailed discussions. For my subject specifically, history, the aim of modules was to memorise information rather than critically analyse it/form your own opinions. Exams were written essays and multiple choice quizzes. I did enjoy my classes - for example Initiation à l’histoire contemporaine and l’histoire économique et sociale de XXe siècle.

Registration was very easy - if you follow the instructions sent by email it’s straightforward. If there’s any issues there was a help desk open for Erasmus students, and you had to go once to verify your arrival, where they gave you a map and had time for any questions. The campus isn’t too big, so it was easy to find rooms. There’s a canteen (although queues were often quite long), a smaller cafeteria plus food trucks and vending machines.

Travel from Toulouse is quite easy, I could fly home to the UK fairly easily but it was expensive, and often I had to take a connecting flight. In terms of trips to take, I would recommend Collioure, a beach town which was 3 hours on the train. Closer places include Carcassonne and Albi, which are great for day trips. I even took the coach to Barcelona for the weekend, which was around 5 hours each way. It’s worth adding that on the first weekend of each month, you can train tickets anywhere in the region for 1 euro. Even when not in these weekends, travel is fairly cheap. Ski resorts are around a 3 hour drive.

You can get a Pastel transport card, a student tarif was around 150 euros for the whole year, and you can use it on buses, trams, metro. You can sign up at one of the Tisseo agencies or online. The city is fairly small, especially on the metro you can get pretty much anywhere in 15 minutes.

No