How it is to live in Belgium for an Indian

All of us in India have built our notion of the west just by seeing the Hollywood TV series and movies, but only after coming to Belgium, I realized that the west also carries a lot of diversity just like the different states of India. I would even go on to say that in many terms Americans are much closer to Indians than Europeans. To give you the big picture, in terms of society, Europe is rather on the conservative side while America is on the exact opposite, and somewhere in between lies UK. You will find a lot many Indians settled in the USA or Canada, even in the UK as compared to Europe. Most of the European countries don't provide any post-study visa to international students which in itself suggests that these countries don't want people from other places to settle here. 

Before I move on to explain my personal struggle let me tell you a bit about how different Europeans are from Americans. Europeans prefer bicycles over the motored vehicle and also they tend to buy smaller cars that fit the narrow lanes of their old cities whereas America is all about Big American balls, from big MacNcheese to pickup trucks that alone cover 40% of the US consumer vehicle segment. Finding a limousine is almost impossible in most European countries whereas it is very common in places like Las Vegas. Europeans are very quiet and shy people whereas Americans are much louder and careless in terms of following rules and regulations. Chances of people throwing up in a bar and being stopped or gunned by a police officer are much higher in the USA as compared to Europe. Sunday mass is a very common thing in the USA whereas Christianity is only left for namesake in Europe just like Hinduism in India, only a few old people can be seen to properly follow Christianity in Europe despite being the birthplace of Christianity. Pop culture and TV are a thing in the USA, you won't find people discussing TV shows after work in Europe. Even dating is quite different in the USA and Europe. These are a few examples of how the USA and Europe differ, believe me, the differences are far more than what I've discussed here.

Now let's come to how it is for a guy from an Indian government college to live and study here. If I have to summarize how different things really are, I would say that I don't share anything in common with these guys except for basic human needs. My friends jokingly told me, now you are in Europe, you can get girls which you couldn't get in undergraduation due to poor gender ratio, and here I was explaining to them, leave alone a girl, it would be a lottery if I could even get a good friend here. You need to understand this, how do people become friends? You share some quirks and sensibility, but I'm positive it is extremely rare to find people here who can even grasp to understand your sensibility. The difference between our society and theirs is astronomical, for instance, if you'll tell someone that your parents are together for the last 30 years, they'll be shocked as to how come people are not divorcing each other because their divorce rate is 70%. I find myself struggling even to explain the most basic concept which we assume others to be already familiarized with like, I had to give the reference of the US's cowboy culture to explain what does bhaukaal means and what role does it play in our lives. To explain them that we don't consider a sandwich as a meal, it's just a snack for us, I had to explain the case study of why Dunkin Donuts failed in India. They can't seem to understand the concept of a college mess where 100s of people eat together and don't even get me started on bday GPL, if they'll witness it and I'm pretty sure they'll call the police. Explaining how the law works in India and how come there are differences in law based upon regions and religions was pretty tough to explain. The only 2 things they know about India is that we have spicy food and slums. They come from Europe to see how people live in slums and nothing could be more saddening than this image of India and Slumdog Millionaire helped in worsening it even more. I can't talk about movies, music, or cricket with them. I can't talk to them about girls and relationships (most discussed topic among boys hostel) because how we perceive relations with the opposite gender is quite different here because of the difference in demand and supply ratio of Indian engineering college and theirs. I'm still struggling to come up with an analogy as for Bakaiti, because they have experienced none. I think that it is not even possible to explain them how we used to live in a boys' hostel, how we used to create ruckus all the time because these guys are only trained to follow the rules and for them to understand it without firsthand experience is almost impossible. Can you imagine that you are supposed to not create any noise here after 10 PM, for us our night used to begin after 10 PM. These are not just differences, it is more like how we perceive relations and what are the factors that we consider important for building a relationship. Like no one's gonna say to you "tera bhai abhi zinda h, jo bhi kaam ho raat ke 3 baje bhi bol diyo bas, bhai hazir ho jaega", no one's gonna tease you by saying "Aur bhai, bhabhi kaisi hain? even if you don't have one". It's not about these exact sayings, it is about how much liberty you can take in a relationship. They behave with utmost respect among colleagues and friends but for us, if we don't hear 3-4 abusive words among friends we feel like why he/she is behaving in such a formal way. I can bet no one of our age plays board games in India but here it is pretty common. You can't find friends just to roam aimlessly around the city on your bikes, going for walks is so common for us but here people only move out of their house when they have to actually go someplace. All the mentioned things make it almost impossible to create a good bond here, privacy is of utmost importance for these guys and for us, privacy was almost non-existent among friends and people like me don't actually know how to make friends without violating an iota of someone's privacy. And before I end this section, there is no equivalent of canteen or tapri here where you can chill and meet with people, they only have proper restaurants. 

But in the end, I'm not here to do Bakaiti, I'm here to study so let's talk about that, curriculum workload is really not that much if I have to compare it to IIT-B master's workload, it's minuscule. We have only one exam per semester for each subject. Almost all the exams are open-book and for a few courses, there is only a viva exam. Subjects don't cover a lot of topics, they don't have an attendance system, hardly you'll be asked to prove theorems or solve numerical in the exam. Anyone can attend any course irrespective of their departments, I have people of age 50-60 in one of my class. So how come these universities have such great ranks, their system is designed to cover topics in much more detail as opposed to cover as many topics as possible, they focus much more on making you understand the concept rather than mathematically prove it, memorization doesn't work here. But still, I'll say you can easily clear exams with your Indian way of studying. But there is a high chance that you won't perform that well in terms of research, the kind of topics they work on are really high level. Here are few research topics for this year, Generating faces using genetic data (extremely tough), establishing kinship using facial features. For us, Computer Science means coding but here it is more like maths, half of the thesis topics I can't even understand because of their pure mathematical nature. You won't be finding much regarding these topics on Stackoverflow. At last, I have been given access to a supercomputer if I require it, there is no shortage of resources here, the only limitation is your imagination. Here is a screenshot of the thesis topics, take a look, and try to guess what they are all about. Here's the link to the thesis topics, if anyone needs to find a research topic in AI https://wms.cs.kuleuven.be/cs/studeren/master-artificial-intelligence/MAI_SIP/masters-thesis/thesis-topic-proposals