This is an opinion article by Nele van den Broek
1,5 years ago it was all set, I was going to study in Lisbon for two years. The university accepted me and I saved money with different jobs in the previous years to make this possible; I was going to leave the Netherlands in September.
Even though I had never been to Lisbon before in my life, I had a good feeling about it. What I hadn’t realized yet was that the biggest journey was about to come before I could even start my adventure; finding a place to live.
It was a strange experience to look for a room in a city that I had never been to and I didn’t know anything about. Where did I need to look? What neighbourhoods should I focus on? How can I make sure the room offers are reliable? I also wasn’t going to have the opportunity to visit the apartment and room beforehand. Of course, I looked up information online, but it’s very different from experiencing a city, the neighbourhood, the house and the room.
How it was going to be was left entirely to my imagination.
Scholarship rejected: future undefined
My search started by going through all the offers on renting platforms and Facebook pages for renting rooms in Lisbon. The options on different websites were more expensive than I had expected. The good deals were taken quickly and you had to be very lucky to get them.
The rooms on Facebook pages were a lot of times cheaper, but those were often tiny, dusty-looking rooms with just a bed and nothing else, sometimes not even a window. That was not what I imagined when fantasising about my life in Lisbon…
When I realised how hard this search was going to be with my budget, I decided to look for scholarships. The selection procedures of the possible scholarships were long and the requirements were high. I found different Dutch funds that provide scholarships for studying abroad. The first scholarship I tried to get had a procedure of different rounds, including, answering a ton of questions online, writing a motivation letter and writing an essay.
I managed to reach the last round, which was an interview with the manager of the scholarship organisation and three employees, who bombarded me with questions about what tasks and work I had done next to my studies to contribute to society, why it was so important to me to go and study in Lisbon and what my plans for the future were. I couldn’t even imagine what my life in Lisbon next year was going to look like, how could I have a clear plan for the future?
A few days after the interview, the scholarship emailed that I was rejected. The reason: my plans for the future were not defined enough.
I tried other scholarships with comparable procedures. After many rounds of advertising myself, I eventually got accepted by one. However, they were only financing one-fifth of the amount I requested. While helpful, it wasn’t what I had hoped for. I decided to go with this; the first period in Lisbon was going to be affordable with this extra money; and I could proceed with my room-hunting journey.
The first crisis: new contract sent
Via the website of my university, I soon came across an organisation that rents out rooms in different apartments across Lisbon. The organisation was focused on foreigners. Students and starters from different countries and cultures live together in these apartments, that made me enthusiastic.
The rooms are furnished and the smallest rooms they offered were not extremely expensive. After contacting them and talking about the possibilities, the room was arranged surprisingly quickly.
Since I had no idea how the room and the apartment would be, I decided to start with a contract for half a year – extension was always possible, they told me.
On 4 September 2022, the adventure started.
I arrived at my apartment in Lisbon and saw my room and flatmates for the first time. It was everything I had hoped for. It was very different from what I imagined, but at least as good. The city became known to me soon, I was living in a cosy room, in a good apartment, in an atmospheric neighbourhood, with people who would soon become my friends.
I felt at home.
After a few months of my stay, the rental organisation asked if I wanted to extend my contract after the first half a year. I was happy here; of course, I wanted to extend my contract. I wasn’t even doubting this until I saw the new contract they sent me.
While reading the new conditions I froze for a second; the rent increased by more than 100 (!) euros a month. The stress hit and in a panic, I started looking for other rooms across the city, but the rent was comparable to what I was going to pay with the new contract of my current apartment.
A few days later when I was calmed down a bit more; I sent the rental organisation a message to ask for an explanation for the bizarre increase in rent. ‘It’s the inflation’, they told me. After talking to the rental organisation and explaining my situation, they wanted to make a deal. I could pay a bit less because I already rented the apartment for a few months. I still needed to find a way to pay this rent increase, but it was going to be possible. I could stay home.
A tale of luck
As I said, moving to Lisbon lived up to my expectations from the beginning, and it still does. Unfortunately, you need to get yourself through an unrefined journey to find a place to stay and make it possible to start that new adventure.
I realise more and more how lucky I am that I have this room. I have heard many stories of students struggling to find housing. I know international students that spend the first few months of their studies living in an Airbnb, just because they were not able to find a place to live. I even have fellow students who were scammed when renting a room in Lisbon. They arrived in Lisbon at their rented apartment, and it turned out not to exist – but I will leave to my next story here at Mensagem.
I had my saved money, my scholarship, a landlord who was open to adjusting the price, and my apartment actually existed. Even though I had to overcome some barriers, I had the luck that my imagined adventure turned out to be possible and real.
Hunting for a house in Lisbon as a foreign student is everything besides easy. Now that I have lived in Lisbon for more than a year, I know where to look when I need to find a room, what neighbourhoods to focus on and I can visit a room before I sign a contract. But the most important thing I know now is that, and this is for all foreign students desperately looking for a room, the journey is worth it.
Once you find a place to live, your adventure in Lisbon is going to be better than you can ever imagine.
Nele van den Broek was born in Breda, the Netherlands in 1997. She graduated in sociology but always wanted to follow her passion for writing. In September 2022, she moved to Lisbon and started a master’s degree in journalism. She enjoys the experience in a new country, a new city and getting in contact with people from different cultures. Nele is an intern at Mensagem de Lisboa.
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