Blog

Living

Portugal’s an awesome place to live, as everything’s really cheap, the subway is well connected, and the city in general is really safe. You’re going to be paying anywhere from 200-500 euros a month for your pad, with 200 having some roaches for roommates and 500 being a sweet solo apartment.

Ideally you want to be near Saldanha (red + yellow), or Marques de Pombal (blue + yellow), because both make it really easy to get to school, and to enjoy the nightlife. If you’re going to school, it’ll likely be between Laranjeiras (blue) and Cidade Universitaria (yellow), and is quick to get to once you’re on one of those lines. Personally, I’d rather be by Marques de Pombal, as the blue line is the best connected, and Saldanha is a bit more expensive. Anywhere in the general area that’s circled though is fine.

As a heads up, you’ll be taking the metro a whole bunch and also walking a ton. It’s really cheap, and worth it to keep grabbing the monthly pass (at least I found it was).

I was personally with a company called UHub, which has a residence that’s mostly students from all over Lisbon. However, there were also some randoms (I had two 40 year old Brazilians living across from me), but everyone meshed really well. Beautiful new residence (built 2015) at the Picoas subway stop. I think I paid 425€ a month. All single rooms, kitchen is shared with 8 people with a huge kitchen / terrace upstairs.

Another great company is Livin’ Lisbon (http://www.livinlisbon.com/marques/), who I hear great things about, but they were sold out by the time I tried booking. Little bit cheaper, bit better on location, not necessarily as nice.

School

I was at Catolica Lisbon. Realistically (as an exchange student), go to school the least amount you can. I worked my schedule to be 2 days of class (Mon / Wed one semester, then Mon / Tues the next). Your ideal is Wed / Thurs or Tues / Wed because of travel, but it can be tough to swing! Don’t be bummed out if you have 3 or 4 days of class. A friend of mine got her mom to complain that she had 5 days of class, and she got it down to 3 days. Or you could just sort it out with the coordinator yourself to make life easier. Note that unless things have changed, people at NOVA take half the credits than the other schools (or at least Catolica) because of some bureaucratic things. If you aren’t at NOVA, deal with it. It’s still an easy semester.

As a finance major, I took as many marketing courses I could. Digital marketing, consumer behavior, etc. Didn’t really need to go to too much class. Please note that I wasn’t, and you probably shouldn’t be going on exchange to go to school.

Again.

YOU ARE NOT IN PORTUGAL TO BE STRESSED OUT STUDYING!!

Of course this is my personal opinion, and can’t force you to not study while in school, but I think while your on exchange you have an incredible opportunity to experience something outside of school. I had friends that were getting killed by exams in fixed income, derivatives pricing and the like. I took one called financial decision making in a business context and holy hell that was hard. Thankfully they don’t fail exchange students, but it was still a total pain.

Taking innovation management, negotiations, etc. were real easy, and fit with my schedule really well. You need to consider the tradeoff for yourself, or if you think you can skip a class then all the better – book it in whenever.

On a different note, Catolica has some awesome events where you get to meet people at the start of the year. This is where I made a ton of friends. The trips were going on an overnight, attending a dinner, hanging out at the beach, etc. Tons of fun, and I got to make best friends right off the bat.

If you’re cool with it, (hell even if you’re not), get out of your comfort zone and sit beside someone you don’t know on the bus at these events – say hi to everyone! You’re all in the same boat, and Europeans are in general ridiculously friendly. This is frosh week all over again, but without needing to try and look cool.

Travel

Ryanair and Easyjet. Definitely not the most comfortable of flights, but 20€ for 3000km? You bet your butt you’ll deal with it. Booking in advance you save a ton, but even the day before flights it’s way cheaper than Canada. I managed to travel to:

• Portugal
  • Azores
  • Madeira
• Spain
• Morocco (one of my all-time favourites)
• Amsterdam
• Ireland
• Belgium

Some of my friends did way more than me. It’s really easy to get around which is nice. The issue with Lisbon, is there are only so many Ryanair flights. Going to Spain, I used blablacar a whole lot (it’s a non-sketchy ridesharing service that everyone in Europe uses). Also used it while in country a few times. I wouldn’t recommend taking the train too much as it’s expensive, but hey, you do you.

General

Coming in for exchange, buy a one way plane ticket – I had to change mine because I was having too much fun. I also got my now full time job while in Portugal over skype. So if any of you are freaking out about that, keep recruiting and work your tail off, but make sure to enjoy your time. Yes, I was taking calls while in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the Azores islands, and it gave me some fun things to talk about.

If you are really worried about not having a job to come back to after exchange (i.e. really, really hard time getting interviews), then maybe book a two way flight. But I did that and had to change my flight for $300, which wasn’t fun, but obviously worth it for an extra month.

Phone plans are ridiculously cheap and they give you a ton of sim cards with a free month at school. Snag as many of these as you can, and if you run out it’s like 5gb of data for $15. Also, everyone uses Whatsapp abroad.

If you want to learn the language, don’t use duolingo. Funny story. I was on it for 6 months only to figure out I was learning Brazilian Portuguese. Helped with talking to my roommates, but pronunciation was totally off. Definitely recommend taking the Portuguese course though at school, it’s fun to learn a language. You can also potentially talk your way into making it worth more credits (I somehow swung that).

Go to a football (soccer) game. Absolutely insanity and like no sporting event I’d ever been to before. Seriously, go to a football game.

Any other questions, or to plan out what restaurants you want to hit, feel free to reach out!

Always happy to chat.