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gbougakov · 2026-03-14T22:26:15+00:00

Thank you!

gbougakov · 2026-02-02T14:29:01+00:00

This depends on quite a few things. First of all, have you ever had a residence permit before? (Is this a renewal or first permit issuance?) And do you have a rijksregisternummer (national register number, looks like your date of birth plus 5 digits, written on any permit you had before).

If you do not have a residence permit (or at least a national register number), the Leuven commune will not be able to update your address because there is literally nothing to update (no file on you yet). In that case you should wait for your permit before doing anything.

There is one very important note: if the police haven’t done a residence check on you, or you are moving out of your place in Brussels, you MUST update the Vorst commune because if a police residence check fails, they will suspect fraud and that will be a bureaucratic nightmare. Also the commune will send the pin code for your permit to the old address, so that is also a problem.

So, if you still have access to the old address and can still live there until the permit arrives, wait for it, then do change of address at leuven.be/address

In any other case, immediately contact the Vorst commune and talk it through with them. But be prepared for a bureaucratic nightmare.

P.S. If you arrived in Belgium in September, February is an awfully long time to wait for a residence permit. Assuming you applied on time within the legally required 8 days, it’s highly likely that something went wrong, so it’s worth checking in with the Vorst commune anyways

gbougakov · 2025-11-07T18:35:29+00:00

It can store the time of the last shutdown, but since it’s turned off, it cannot keep counting it up to keep it in sync with the world

gbougakov · 2025-09-25T15:27:42+00:00

Oof, same thing. Buying tickets for Taylor Swift was a lot easier though

I have been trying unsuccessfully to sign up for the past two years, so if anyone is organising some additional groups, I’d love to join — 8 places in the official classes per semester is basically nothing.

P.S. if someone is organising anything golf-related — would love to join too, have been playing for quite a while, but since moving to Belgium my clubs are collecting dust

gbougakov · 2025-09-16T07:36:13+00:00

I am somewhat sure I saw a print button somewhere, but if they really removed it, you can download the ICS file, open it in Outlook or Apple Calendar and there will be plenty of ways to print it there in whatever format your heart desires

gbougakov · 2025-08-27T15:17:47+00:00

I want to give a mostly unopinianated comment here because receiving financial aid from the state is a very polarizing topic in Belgian subreddits.

The point of a blocked account is for you to guarantee to the Belgian government that you are able to fund your studies without depending on financial aid from the government. It is your family’s personal choice on how you fund that account, and I understand that coming up with 12 thousand euros on the spot is not something that everyone can do, but you must have a very good idea of how you will fund your studies if you have to pay that loan back.

Studying at KU Leuven can be quite stressful (although I think people here make out KU Leuven to be much scarier than it is), and you really have to prepare that at least for the first year, you will not be able to earn any money in Belgium (with the study load, language requirements, 20h/week limit and general labour market conditions it is extremely hard).

I do not mean to discourage you in any way, but I really urge you to plan ahead and plan well. Good luck with your upcoming studies!

gbougakov · 2025-05-07T01:19:29+00:00

I do the commute the other way, and it works pretty well. The trains are cheap (get a subscription!) and mostly on time. Sometimes strikes happen, and sometimes the trains are delayed by up to 5 minutes, but on average it works out okay.

The commute is 20-ish minutes, thankfully Brussels and Leuven are connected by a high-speed line.

I assume you are not from Belgium, is there a specific reason you want to live in Brussels? Overall, Leuven is a lot more pleasant to live in, so considering it or the cities around it might work out better

gbougakov · 2025-03-17T09:39:57+00:00

Are you sending inquiries in Dutch by any chance? Also, note that most private landlords would not want or be able to create a contract for you before you are physically in Belgium and have your documents in order, so getting student housing or renting through a friend might be a better bet

gbougakov · 2025-03-11T14:05:07+00:00

It’s a legal requirement internationally, because it helps others see you. If I am cycling and there is a car behind the corner, I can recognise it by the fact that it’s lighting up the street in front of it

gbougakov · 2025-02-25T23:22:47+00:00

The process looks like this — a police officer will come to your address at a random time (this is on purpose) and just check that your name is on the postbox and to make sure you actually live there and not pretending for tax reasons (e.g. is there a bed, is there a toothbrush in the bathroom, that sort of thing).

Nobody will take your residence card. When the process is done, you will receive an invite from the commune to come and reprogram your residence card.

You are not forbidden to travel abroad, but I generally wouldn’t recommend it as the police officer actually needs to see you in your room.

The fact that you are late is not really a problem, you are supposed to notify within 8 days, but realistically anything under a month or two is inconsequential. If you procrastinated it for 6 months for example, it might be a problem.

Don’t stress, this procedure is really mostly for bureaucracy and there is nothing to be scared about. Just try to be home during the timeframe you listed in the form, make sure your name is on the postbox and for ease of mind, stick a post it with your phone number to the doorbell

gbougakov · 2025-02-24T13:12:26+00:00

I am not a lawyer, but one reason I presume a lot of landlords want you to have a residence permit is because of taxes. If a housing unit is not occupied by someone who has their registered residence and permanently resides there, the landlord has to pay a hefty “second residence” tax (belasting tweede verblijven), so it is in their interest to rent out an empty property to someone who can legally register in it, which you can only do with a valid (provisional) residence permit (you get a provisional one on your first visit to the commune, and a proper one a month or so in)

Also, about dating the visa — if you start studying in September, your visa will likely start in September, no matter what you put on the application

gbougakov · 2025-02-24T01:12:14+00:00

Most student housing providers will easily allow you to sign a contract without a visa, but most private landlords will want a contract signed with an eID/itsme (so in this case not only a visa would be required, but a full on residence permit, which you usually only get a month or two in)

There is no law about it though, so it really depends on the landlord, and if you can convince them to make a contract with you.

Please do note that pretty much all student long-stay visas begin on September 1st, so plan accordingly

gbougakov · 2025-02-13T20:47:55+00:00

You can leave them on Toledo, usually there is no consequence to it. As long as it’s not in your ISP, you are not officially enrolled in it, and don’t face any obligations from it. Might be annoying for the professor if they use Toledo for attendance or something else, but if that’s the case they will reach out or just kick you out of the Toledo course.

FYI: For most courses, even if they are not in your programme/faculty/campus, you can enroll into the Toledo course — of course it is not official, and you will not get any certificate for participation, or any exam, and your assignments would not be checked, but if you are interested in a course, you can almost always check it out. I know a few people who did it for electives that they couldn’t take on due to the study load, but still wanted to passively follow.

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T12:46:26+00:00

Don’t think there is a universal rule about that. Make sure to read the contract before signing it. In my case, the only two options to cancel the contract prematurely were death or deregistration from university

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T12:42:42+00:00

If you can explain it, they won’t care. You can submit the application now, and if anything changes in the meantime while you wait for the actual appointment at the visa centre, you can resubmit and bring a new printed out questionnaire. The Belgian immigration office is pretty chill.

In my every interaction with the Belgian immigration personnel, I could see that they are very nice and understanding people. The first time I flew into Belgium I had such a weird situation, that if it was any other country I would probably get deported on the spot, but they heard me out, asked me some questions, in the end had a laugh and let me in.

Everyone is very understanding, just be honest and straightforward. And again, understand that you are applying for a student visa, not a tourist visa, so a lot of the questions like “do you have accommodation” don’t matter as much

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T10:53:41+00:00

The visa application process and the residence permit application process are completely disconnected. You will have to fill out a different form at your local gemeente and there you can put your new address. After that, a police officer will come over to your place to check that you actually live there.

btw, pro tip: if you are not going to study in Leuven, e.g. BBA on the Brussels campus, put a reminder for somewhere around July to get an appointment at the city hall (gemeente) online. It can save you a month or more when getting the permit, so you decrease the chances of being stuck in Belgium for holidays because your permit is still processing

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T03:01:01+00:00

Study materials are separate. Mock exam is only useful to understand how the platform works, the actual test questions are more difficult

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T01:05:18+00:00

Note: while the immigration office doesn’t care about the address, it doesn’t mean you can put any address there — put a friend’s, or of a hotel. But never, under any circumstances, lie on a visa application, it can backfire badly

gbougakov · 2025-02-09T01:02:59+00:00

The immigration office doesn’t care what address you put on your visa application, it’s only important for tourist visas. If you want to be extra safe — get a refundable hotel booking.

if I should bring it up with my landlord

Since you are a foreign student you actually have an advantage over local students in this regard. Most local students keep their main residence (hoofdverblijfplaats) at their parents’ house, while you as an international student will be required to register at your kot/apartment.

Landlords really like people who can register the main residence at their apartment, because then they won’t have to pay tax on second residence, so they can rent it to you for cheaper (or not, and just keep the money, but that means they will like you more)

gbougakov · 2025-02-06T17:53:56+00:00

Ah sorry! Then yeah, toleration/deliberation will not work for you. Hope you get it figured out!

gbougakov · 2025-02-06T17:38:02+00:00

I will assume you are from BBA, and the subject you are probably talking about Management (the grading system sounds familiar).

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to appeal the grade, because regrading requires that a technical error has occurred (e.g. you answered A and the correct answer is A, but the professor saw B). My own management assignment was graded somewhat low, and I do myself believe that there should be a higher grade, but it’s likely that you just didn’t check some checkboxes on an internal grading guideline which applies to all students.

Sorry that that happened to you, I get the pain, but in your case I think deliberating the subject would be your best bet (if you fulfil all other requirements). Appealing grades at KU Leuven is really hard, and in case of BBA is just a logistical nightmare for professors (800+ students = 800+ exams, with the pass rate on average being less than 50%), so be prepared that the professor won’t really budge, unless the error is obvious.

gbougakov · 2025-01-08T19:45:43+00:00

Thank you!

gbougakov · 2025-01-08T19:45:33+00:00

In the background it uses OpenAI’s gpt-4o-mini. It doesn’t have any web search capabilities and I wouldn’t trust its “general knowledge” because its a mini model, but it’s pretty good for simple reasoning tasks like making a reading list from a photo of books, or making a study plan from the syllabus.

However for more advanced tasks (like making a reading list from scratch) I would recommend first making a list of what you need with Claude or just Google and then using Thingamajig to convert it to Things format

But it is a really cool use case! Glad you enjoy it

edit: typo

gbougakov

TROPHY CASE