Morocco.

Morocco is one of the few study-abroad spots that feels like a proper adventure without draining your loan. You are an hour or two by plane from most of Europe, but landing in Casablanca or Rabat you get the call to prayer at dawn, markets that go on for miles, and a cost of living low enough to actually do things instead of counting coins. For a broke 20-year-old, that combo is rare.

It also stretches you. You will juggle French, Arabic and English in the same day, learn to haggle without feeling rude, and figure out a culture that is warm and generous but plays by different rules than home. If you want a semester that changes how you see the world more than it pads your CV, Morocco delivers. If you need everything in English and a club every night, look elsewhere.

Moroccan student life runs on cafe culture, not pub culture. The default hang is a pavement table, a 1-euro coffee or mint tea, and three hours of talking, and nobody rushes you out. Rabat and Casablanca both have big student populations, so there is always something on: film nights, football, beach days, house parties, live music near the medinas.

The scene skews daytime and food-heavy rather than boozy, since alcohol is legal but pricey and not the centre of everything. Locals are famously welcoming; expect an invite to a family couscous on a Friday within weeks. As a foreign student you will find other Erasmus and international kids fast through ESN-style groups, and a bit of French goes a very long way for making Moroccan mates.

This is the headline: Morocco is cheap, and not in a bad way where you cannot afford to do anything. A sit-down tagine costs a few euros, a coffee under one, and a month of groceries barely dents your budget. Most students live comfortably on 550-800 euros a month all-in, and you would have to try hard to top 950 unless you are flying somewhere every weekend.

The currency is the dirham (roughly 10-11 to the euro) and cash is still king, so carry coins for taxis, cafes and the medina. The things that cost European money are imported goods, alcohol and Western-style flats; the things that are dirt cheap are food, transport, local produce and eating out.

Most exchange students skip the dorms (limited and basic) and rent a room in a shared flat in a central neighbourhood: Agdal or L'Ocean in Rabat, Maarif or Gauthier in Casablanca. Listings live on Avito and Mubawab and in Facebook groups like Rabat or Casablanca colocation and ESN housing pages. Landlords often want two months up front, one rent plus one deposit.

The classic scam is a landlord who is conveniently abroad, cannot meet, and wants a deposit wired before you see the place, so never pay before viewing in person or via a trusted local. Rents are negotiable, especially for longer stays, so haggle. Older medina flats are cheaper but can be freezing in winter, as almost nowhere has central heating.

Intercity travel is Morocco's quiet flex. ONCF trains are cheap, comfy and mostly on time, and the Al Boraq high-speed line does Tangier to Casablanca via Rabat in about an hour. Rabat to Casa is a 50-minute hop you will do constantly for under 5 euros. For anywhere off the rail line, CTM and Supratours buses are reliable and cheap, and shared grands taxis fill the gaps.

In town, Rabat and Casablanca both have modern tram networks that are cheap and easy. Petits taxis are everywhere and cheap if you insist on the meter (the compteur) or agree a price first, so always do one of the two. There is no real student railcard, though ONCF sometimes runs youth discounts, and prices are so low it barely matters.

Teaching leans formal and lecture-heavy, and a lot of it, especially at public universities like Mohammed V in Rabat or Hassan II in Casablanca, is in French with some Arabic. Private and international schools (Al Akhawayn, ISCAE, the business and engineering grandes ecoles) offer more in English, but genuinely English-taught full semesters are limited, so check your host's course list before you fall in love with the idea. Grading is usually on a scale of 20, where 10 is a pass and 14-plus is strong.

If your home uni is in the EU, most Moroccan partners map courses to ECTS (a normal semester is 30 credits) via your Learning Agreement, so sort that early and get it signed by all three parties. Workload is manageable, but attendance and continuous assessment often matter more than one big final. Standouts: Al Akhawayn in Ifrane for English-medium liberal arts, Mohammed V for breadth, and the Casablanca grandes ecoles for business and engineering.

Here is the honest version, and it depends entirely on your passport. Citizens of the EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia and many others enter Morocco visa-free for up to 90 days, so a short exchange that fits inside 90 days needs no visa at all, just your passport and an entry stamp. That covers a lot of one-semester students.

Staying longer than 90 days (a full year, or a long semester) means getting a residence card, the carte de sejour, which you apply for in-country at the local police prefecture within your first three months. Your university issues the enrolment attestation you will need. Start the paperwork the week you arrive: it is bureaucratic, slow, and everyone underestimates it. Non-visa-free nationalities must sort a student visa at a Moroccan consulate before flying.

You will eat well and cheaply. Tagine and couscous are the staples (couscous is traditionally the Friday meal), plus harira soup, grilled brochettes, and msemen or beghrir for breakfast, and enough mint tea to float a boat. Lunch is the big meal of the day and can be a long, social affair; dinner is late, often 8-9pm or later. Vegetarians manage fine; vegans need to clearly say no butter and no meat stock.

A few things catch students out. It is a Muslim country, so dress a bit more modestly than you might at home, especially outside the big cities, and during Ramadan most cafes close in daylight and you should not eat or drink in the street. Friday is the main prayer day, and you eat and pass things with your right hand. The biggest festivals, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, plus music blowouts like Mawazine in Rabat and Gnaoua in Essaouira, are worth planning your term around.

Studcasa's Morocco scene centres on the two big coastal cities, the capital and the economic capital, just 50 minutes apart by train, so you can easily sample both.

Morocco is a cheap-travel paradise, and low-cost trains and buses make weekends easy. From a Rabat or Casablanca base you can be in Marrakech, the mountains, the desert or a chilled surf town within a few hours. Budget a couple of hostel nights and you will do most of the classics for well under 100 euros a trip.

Group up: grands taxis and desert tours get much cheaper split four ways, and other Erasmus kids are always keen. Off-season (autumn or spring) is the sweet spot for both weather and price.

The stuff nobody tells you until you have already tripped over it. None of this is dealbreaker-level, but sorting it early makes your first month a lot smoother.