They say Paris changes you, but nothing could have prepared me for the transformative six months I spent as an Erasmus student in the City of Light. From sleeping on couches to making lifelong friendships, from museum hopping to spontaneous European adventures, my Erasmus semester was everything I hoped for and so much more. Here's the complete story of how Paris became my second home.
January: Arrival and Finding My Tribe
January 23rd & 25th: Meeting My Erasmus Family
The magic of Erasmus began almost immediately when I met the people who would become my closest friends: Konstantinos, Yannic, Thanos, Ale, Jimena, and Carmen. There's something special about the bonds you form during Erasmus - you're all strangers in a new city, equally excited and nervous, ready to embrace every adventure together. Most of them I met in those first few overwhelming days — at introduction events, in shared kitchens, at whatever bar someone had suggested in a group chat. Paris in late January was grey and cold, but we were all in that strange state of being simultaneously jet-lagged and over-caffeinated, and it didn't take long for a loose group to form around long dinners and pointless walks through the city.
February: Settling In and First Adventures
February 1st: From Couch Surfing to My Own Place
After ten days of sleeping on Alice's couch (bless her hospitality!), I finally moved into my own place. There's nothing quite like that feeling of independence when you get your first proper accommodation in a foreign city. Suddenly, Paris wasn't just a place I was visiting - it was becoming home. The search itself had been a minor nightmare — dozens of listings, a few scams, a lot of awkward French phone calls — but the room I ended up in was small, bright and close enough to a metro stop to walk home at any hour. Unpacking my things onto my own shelf for the first time felt oddly ceremonial.
February 21st: Weekend Escape to Italy
One of the best parts about studying in Europe is how easy it becomes to visit friends across the continent. My trip to Italy to see Lorenzo was my first taste of how Erasmus opens doors to adventures you never imagined. The tickets were cheap, the plan was loose, and within a few hours of class ending on a Friday I was on a Ryanair flight to Pisa. Seeing Lorenzo again after months turned into a two-week trip of its own, and from then on weekend travel stopped feeling like a big production — it was just what you did.
March: Diving into Parisian Culture
March 19th: Art and Friendship at Centre Pompidou
Exploring the Centre Pompidou with Sulo marked the beginning of my deep dive into Paris's incredible art scene. The building itself is as much a work of art as the collections inside, and sharing it with a friend made the experience even more memorable. We spent hours wandering through the modern collections, talking nonsense about pieces we didn't understand and pretending we did about the ones we almost did. Afterwards we stood on the top-floor terrace and realised half the skyline we'd been staring at for weeks finally made sense from above.
April: Birthdays, Ramen, and Belgian Adventures
April 2nd: Discovering Paris's Food Scene
My fancy ramen experience opened my eyes to how Paris has embraced global cuisine while maintaining its culinary identity. Sometimes the best cultural immersion happens over a perfectly crafted bowl of noodles. The place was tucked into a small street, with a queue that barely moved and a counter you squeezed up to. The broth was the kind of thing you sit quietly through, and it was a good reminder that Paris is not only baguettes and steak frites — it's a city that quietly does almost every cuisine very well.
April 16th: Birthday Celebrations in the City of Light
Celebrating my birthday in Paris was surreal - surrounded by friends from different countries, in one of the world's most beautiful cities. There's something magical about marking personal milestones while living your dream abroad. We started with dinner at a small place near Bastille, moved on to drinks somewhere along the canal, and ended up walking home in a group that had somehow doubled in size along the way. Birthdays back home had always been close to family; this one felt like an entirely new chapter, loud and bilingual and full of people I'd only known a couple of months.
April 17th-21st: Belgian Getaway
My five-day trip to Belgium showed me how diverse and accessible Europe becomes when you're studying abroad. From Brussels to Bruges, each city offered its own character and charm. Brussels was heavier than I expected — EU-era buildings and grand boulevards — while Ghent felt like a student town with old bones, and Bruges was almost too picture-perfect. We worked through more waffles, fries and Trappist beer than any five days should allow, and moved between cities on cheap regional trains that made the whole country feel like a single long walk.
April 28th: Royal Splendor at Versailles
No Erasmus experience in Paris is complete without visiting Versailles. The opulence and history of the palace provide the perfect contrast to everyday student life in the city. The Hall of Mirrors was as overwhelming as everyone warned, but it was actually the gardens that stole the day — endless symmetrical paths, fountains catching the wind, and corners quiet enough to forget you were anywhere near a tourist attraction. Walking back to the station in the late afternoon, with the palace behind us, it was easy to see why this place obsessed so many writers.
May: Love, Travel, and Parisian Nights
May 1st: When Love Comes to Paris
Having my girlfriend visit Paris added a romantic dimension to my Erasmus experience. Showing someone you love around your temporary home city creates memories that last forever. We did the obvious stops — the Eiffel Tower at night, a long Sunday morning around the Marais, a picnic on the Seine — but the best moments were the ones I'd quietly learned on my own: a bakery I liked for a coffee, a bench with a good view of the river, a Métro line that happened to cross the prettiest part of the city. For a few days Paris stopped being my routine and became something I wanted to share.
May 10th-11th: French Coast and Spanish Flavors
From Bordeaux and Arcachon on May 10th to San Sebastian on May 11th, this weekend showed me how Erasmus life means constant discovery. The French Atlantic coast's elegance followed by Basque culture in Spain - two completely different worlds in 48 hours. Bordeaux felt effortlessly elegant — stone facades, wide boulevards, wine served in places where nobody makes a fuss about it — and Arcachon added that strange beach-town calm with the Dune du Pilat rising absurdly out of nowhere. The next day in San Sebastián, pintxo bars and a long walk along La Concha beach reminded me how quickly a short hop can change the language, the food and the whole texture of a day.
May 14th: Family Visit - Bridging Two Worlds
When family comes to visit during Erasmus, you realize how much you've grown and changed. Sharing your new world with the people who raised you creates a beautiful bridge between home and your adventure. Walking them through my neighbourhood, introducing a few friends, ordering for them in half-decent French — it all felt like a small, quiet milestone. For the first time I wasn't the one being shown around a foreign city; I was the one explaining how the Métro worked and where to get a good pastry in the morning.
May 21st-28th: The Heart of Erasmus Social Life
This week perfectly captured the essence of Erasmus social life: Konstantinos's name day celebration on the 21st, Catan board game night on the 24th, art appreciation with Asmaa at Pompidou on the 25th, indie cinema in the Latin Quarter watching Donnie Darko on the 26th, Chinese food adventures with Erdem on the 27th, and watching the Champions League final with Yannic on the 28th. None of these events were big on their own, but stacked into a single week they summed up the rhythm of Erasmus — constantly switching between cultures, languages and moods without really planning it. By the end of the week, most of these people had stopped feeling like new friends and started feeling like a small second family.
June: Final Adventures and Farewell
June 1st: French Riviera Road Trip
Marseille, Nice, Cannes, and Monaco in one epic day trip - because when you're doing Erasmus, you squeeze every possible adventure into your remaining time. The French Riviera showed me yet another face of France, glamorous and sun-soaked. Marseille felt gritty and alive, Nice was all pastel facades and pebbled beaches, Cannes wore its red-carpet reputation a little too proudly, and Monaco looked like a postcard someone had over-saturated on purpose. After months of grey Paris skies, spending a single day bouncing between all four felt almost illegal.
June 5th: Tennis at Roland Garros
Attending Roland Garros during the French Open was the perfect intersection of sport, culture, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences that define Erasmus. The grounds were packed but orderly in that very French way, we wandered between the outer courts catching pieces of earlier-round matches, and eventually settled into our seats for the main court with cold drinks and the unmistakable sound of tennis on clay in the background. Growing up watching the French Open on TV, actually being inside it felt borderline absurd.
June 8th: Art, Football, and Friendship
A perfect Parisian day: morning at Musée d'Orsay, afternoon at Orangerie, evening playing football with the boys. This combination of high culture and casual fun epitomized my Erasmus balance. The Orsay had me stuck in front of the Impressionist floor longer than I planned, and the Orangerie's oval rooms with Monet's Nymphéas were the kind of spaces that quiet an entire room full of people. A few hours later I was on a dusty pitch with friends from four different countries, arguing about offside in at least three languages. Paris somehow made both halves of that day feel equally normal.
June 9th-10th: Northern Adventures
Lille on June 9th followed by Amsterdam on June 10th with the whole crew - Emir, Bedo, Flavio, Simeone, Arda, Argo, Kickz, and Canberk. These final trips with friends felt bittersweet, knowing our time together was ending. Lille was a fast, flat walk through the old town and way too much Flemish food; Amsterdam was canals, bikes, a long-overdue visit to the Van Gogh Museum and, inevitably, a late night that none of us remember the ending of. Traveling as a full group at this point was messy in the best way — everyone had their own pace, but nobody wanted to split up.
June 14th-18th: The Perfect Parisian Finale
My last week in Paris was everything I could have hoped for: capturing the Eiffel Tower at moonrise on the 14th, Michelin-starred ramen with Erdem on the 15th, shopping at Madeleine and Place Vendôme with Lea on the 16th, and finally using that Opera Garnier ticket Alice gave me on my very first day on the 17th. The Lyon trip with Erdem, Victor, Tomas, and Marta on the 18th was the perfect last adventure. Each day felt quietly staged as a farewell to some part of the city — a favourite view, a favourite meal, a place I'd meant to get to for months and kept pushing back. Lyon was the right ending: a full Saturday of traboules, bouchon lunches and slow walks along two rivers with four people I'd probably never have met without this semester.
June 19th: Au Revoir, Paris
Going back home after six months in Paris felt like leaving a part of myself behind. The person who arrived nervous and excited in January was completely different from the one leaving with a heart full of memories and friendships that would last forever. The last day was a slow round of goodbyes — coffees that stretched too long, promises to visit each other, one more walk along the river — and then a taxi to the airport with more luggage and fewer certainties than I'd arrived with. I didn't fully understand what had shifted in me until I was back in my old bedroom, watching the same ceiling I'd grown up with and realising it no longer felt like the only home I had.
Lessons from My Erasmus Experience
Six months in Paris taught me more than any classroom ever could. From practical skills like navigating a foreign bureaucracy to life lessons about independence, friendship, and embracing the unknown, my Erasmus experience shaped who I am today. I learned how to be comfortable being the least fluent person in the room, how to rebuild a social life from scratch, and how quickly a new city can start feeling like yours if you let it. More than anything, Erasmus made me trust that I could drop myself into an unfamiliar place and figure out the rest on the way.
Tips for Future Erasmus Students in Paris
For anyone considering an Erasmus semester in Paris, here's what I wish I'd known before arriving: start looking for accommodation earlier than you think you need to, budget for eating out more than you plan to (it's Paris, it'll happen anyway), and say yes to the first few social events even when you're jet-lagged and introverted — most of your semester's people are being chosen in that first week. Learn enough French to order and apologise, use the student discounts on trains and museums shamelessly, and build at least one weekend trip a month into your plans. The academic side will take care of itself; everything else won't.
Why Erasmus in Paris Changed My Life
Paris wasn't just a city where I studied for six months - it became the place where I discovered who I could be when pushed outside my comfort zone. The friendships, adventures, cultural immersion, and personal growth made this the most transformative period of my life. To anyone considering Erasmus: don't hesitate. Your adventure is waiting. Years later, I still talk to most of the people from that semester — group chats that never fully die, random reunions in whatever city any of us happen to be in, plans for the next trip that we keep half-serious on purpose. Paris handed me a version of my life I didn't know was available, and it refuses to give it back.
