Where to do Shopping
Shopping falls under different categories: shopping for groceries, shopping for Indian stuff, shopping for electronics, etc. Groceries shopping is done at supermarkets. There are several supermarket chains in Leuven: Colruyt, Aldi, GB, and Delhaize, to name a few. Aldi and Colruyt are the least expensive, while prices in Delhaize are a bit more expensive. GB comes in between. For people staying close to IMEC or KU Leuven (such as in campus Irena), Colruyt and GB are very close by. Regarding Indian items, you will find almost every variety of vegetables, cereals, spices and frozen food that you normally get in India (not an exaggeration!). There is a supermarket called Exotic World (old timers know it as Unic) located inside the ring, on Brusselsestraat 139. For other things such as electronics, clothes, etc. the city center is a good place to hunt. There are two main shopping streets in Leuven: Bondgenotenlaan and Diestsestraat (if you can pronounce these correctly, you can consider yourself a Leuvenite).
Bondegenotenlaan street
Diestestraat street
Namsestraat street
I am listing below some of the important shops; this list is not complete, but only a starting point.
Shopping Category Shop name(:cell:)
Location
Clothes C & A Bondgenotenlaan
H & M Bondgenotenlaan
Electronics FNAC Bondgenotenlaan
Excell Bondgenotenlaan
Home Electronics Mafrans Diestsestraat
Electrical Hardware Mertens Diestsestraat
Computers PC Warehouse Diestsevest(not Diestsestraat)
Loveno Naamsestraat
Sports accessories Go Sports Diestsestraat
A few other shops worthy of mention are SPIT, IKEA and CARREFOUR. SPIT is located in Ijzerenmolenstraat and is on the 7-8-9 bus route. In this shop you will find all sorts of used items at incredibly low prices. The well known international chain IKEA is a bit far from Leuven (around 20 km), but the bus 358 will take you there. Here you will find almost everything related to your home needs. CARREFOUR is a supermarket (similar to Walmart in the US) where you will find everything ranging from groceries to electronics to clothes, all under one roof. To get to Carrefour, get on bus 7-8-9 in the direction ‘Bierbeek’ or ‘Kessel-Lo’ ‘Korbeek-Lo’ and get down at the stop called ‘Oaselaan’. Anyone can point you to Carrefour from there. The address of Carrefour is Vlinderlaan 1, 3360 Kessel-Lo,
in case you want to locate it on the map.
SPIT
Carrefour
Colruyt
Restaurants in Leuven
You can find some Indian restaurants in Leuven If you are restricted only to Indian food.
Indian Restaurants
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g188669-c24-Leuven_Flemish_Brabant.html
You will enjoy the food in other restaurants like Italian, Thai, etc...
Map for restaurants in leuven
Sports
Well, that is almost all, except for one final section on extracurricular activities. Here, sky is the limit, and you can involve yourself in a huge variety of activities, ranging from sports, cycling, and fitness to trekking and traveling to meeting people from other countries to doing social work for educational projects in India. Much of the sports related activities goes on at the facilities of KU Leuven. If you are a student, you can get a sports card for 15 euros which is valid for the full year. People who are working elsewhere can still use the sports facilities, but the charge is a little bit more. The home page of the Sports Centre is http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/sports/. The university has infrastructure for more than 50 sports; for more details have a look at the link above. A map showing the location of the different facilities is here: http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/sports/facilities/index.htm. The Indian community in Leuven is active in cricket and badminton, which are played during the weekends. For more details, please contact your nearest Indian friend!
Cultural activities
For those who are interested in meeting people from other countries and in general chilling out and having fun, Pangea is a great place. It is a meeting point for international students. More on Pangea and their activities can be found at http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/pangaea The Indian Student Association of Leuven (ISAL), is of course, the main organization of Indians in Leuven. Infact, ISAL is more than what the name suggests, as you will find not only Indian students, but also Indians of all age groups and all walks of life, not only from Leuven, but from other places such as Brussels, Antwerp, Gent and Liege, as well. And don’t be surprised to find a large turnout of non-Indians at ISAL gatherings; everybody is welcome at ISAL! ISAL organizes fun-filled social gatherings several times a year; don’t miss out on all the fun!
Social activities
For the more serious minded among you, you can also involve yourself in developmental work targeted towards improving educational infrastructure in rural parts of India. There exists in Leuven an organization called ROSE, which is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is precisely that. ROSE is in existence since 2001 with the motto “Education for All”, and works towards the goal of a fully literate India. ROSE has two main objectives:
(i) To generate funds through fund raising activities; and
(ii) To identify deserving projects in India and to support them financially.
ROSE has conducted more than 15 fund raising activities and supported more than 40 projects in 10 different states. ROSE is run on a purely voluntary basis with minimum overhead and maximum transparency. To get involved, please visit http://www.rosevzw.net or email rosevzw@gmail.com.
Money Transfer
Money transfer from Belgium to India -
Many of us need to send money back to India some time or other.
There are two types of transfers:
Note: Do not use HDFC/Times of money QuickRemit services as there is a problem with their a/c in europian bank in Frankfurt. Your transaction of money will be rejected with the penalty of 50 eur each time. Be careful with their services until further notice. Quickremit is not responding good from their side.
Direct bank-to-bank
Typically it is safer and quicker to transfer money to India using a bank-to-bank transfer from a Belgian bank to an Indian bank. It is cheaper than sending it through an Indian bank here. There is a Bank of Baroda in Brussels and State Bank of India in Antwerp. But they charge more money for such transfers, and at the same time the transfer takes a longer time. One can do transfers from any of the local banks here where you have your account - Fortis, Citibank, KBC. Especially Fortis bank has got good connections with lot of Indian banks and usually takes a maximum of 3 to 4 weeks before it gets released in your/recipient's Indian account. Things can be faster if you have exact address and probably a tracking code of the recipient bank. If you want to do a bank-to-bank transfer using an Indian bank, you need an account somewhere in that Indian bbank in India (e.g. if you are using SBI in Antwerp, you will need an account with SBI in India). So it might be a good idea to open a joint account in SBI somewhere near your place in India, if you are thinking of such frequent transfers. Having an NRE account in an Indian bank is quite helpful in many cases. Having an NRE - Rupee checking account with Citibank is a nice option with absolutely no extra charges payable during money transfers to India. But Citibank requires quite a large sum (about EUR 2000 / USD 2000) as minimum balance. Most other Indian banks have much lesser minimum balance requirements.
Via online Indian bank's account
Some Indian banks like ICICI and HDFC have their account in other European banks here and you can transfer to them and they transfer to your Indian bank account.
ICICI too provide the same kind of service with different name Money2India with slightly bit less exchange rate. ICICI charges zero transaction fee for transferring money to ICICI account and charges a littl if you transfer to other bank accounts.
Shopping falls under different categories: shopping for groceries, shopping for Indian stuff, shopping for electronics, etc. Groceries shopping is done at supermarkets. There are several supermarket chains in Leuven: Colruyt, Aldi, GB, and Delhaize, to name a few. Aldi and Colruyt are the least expensive, while prices in Delhaize are a bit more expensive. GB comes in between. For people staying close to IMEC or KU Leuven (such as in campus Irena), Colruyt and GB are very close by. Regarding Indian items, you will find almost every variety of vegetables, cereals, spices and frozen food that you normally get in India (not an exaggeration!). There is a supermarket called Exotic World (old timers know it as Unic) located inside the ring, on Brusselsestraat 139. For other things such as electronics, clothes, etc. the city center is a good place to hunt. There are two main shopping streets in Leuven: Bondgenotenlaan and Diestsestraat (if you can pronounce these correctly, you can consider yourself a Leuvenite).
Bondegenotenlaan street
Diestestraat street
Namsestraat street
I am listing below some of the important shops; this list is not complete, but only a starting point.
Shopping Category Shop name(:cell:)
Location
Clothes C & A Bondgenotenlaan
H & M Bondgenotenlaan
Electronics FNAC Bondgenotenlaan
Excell Bondgenotenlaan
Home Electronics Mafrans Diestsestraat
Electrical Hardware Mertens Diestsestraat
Computers PC Warehouse Diestsevest(not Diestsestraat)
Loveno Naamsestraat
Sports accessories Go Sports Diestsestraat
A few other shops worthy of mention are SPIT, IKEA and CARREFOUR. SPIT is located in Ijzerenmolenstraat and is on the 7-8-9 bus route. In this shop you will find all sorts of used items at incredibly low prices. The well known international chain IKEA is a bit far from Leuven (around 20 km), but the bus 358 will take you there. Here you will find almost everything related to your home needs. CARREFOUR is a supermarket (similar to Walmart in the US) where you will find everything ranging from groceries to electronics to clothes, all under one roof. To get to Carrefour, get on bus 7-8-9 in the direction ‘Bierbeek’ or ‘Kessel-Lo’ ‘Korbeek-Lo’ and get down at the stop called ‘Oaselaan’. Anyone can point you to Carrefour from there. The address of Carrefour is Vlinderlaan 1, 3360 Kessel-Lo,
in case you want to locate it on the map.
SPIT
Carrefour
Colruyt
Restaurants in Leuven
You can find some Indian restaurants in Leuven If you are restricted only to Indian food.
Indian Restaurants
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g188669-c24-Leuven_Flemish_Brabant.html
You will enjoy the food in other restaurants like Italian, Thai, etc...
Map for restaurants in leuven
Sports
Well, that is almost all, except for one final section on extracurricular activities. Here, sky is the limit, and you can involve yourself in a huge variety of activities, ranging from sports, cycling, and fitness to trekking and traveling to meeting people from other countries to doing social work for educational projects in India. Much of the sports related activities goes on at the facilities of KU Leuven. If you are a student, you can get a sports card for 15 euros which is valid for the full year. People who are working elsewhere can still use the sports facilities, but the charge is a little bit more. The home page of the Sports Centre is http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/sports/. The university has infrastructure for more than 50 sports; for more details have a look at the link above. A map showing the location of the different facilities is here: http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/sports/facilities/index.htm. The Indian community in Leuven is active in cricket and badminton, which are played during the weekends. For more details, please contact your nearest Indian friend!
Cultural activities
For those who are interested in meeting people from other countries and in general chilling out and having fun, Pangea is a great place. It is a meeting point for international students. More on Pangea and their activities can be found at http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/pangaea The Indian Student Association of Leuven (ISAL), is of course, the main organization of Indians in Leuven. Infact, ISAL is more than what the name suggests, as you will find not only Indian students, but also Indians of all age groups and all walks of life, not only from Leuven, but from other places such as Brussels, Antwerp, Gent and Liege, as well. And don’t be surprised to find a large turnout of non-Indians at ISAL gatherings; everybody is welcome at ISAL! ISAL organizes fun-filled social gatherings several times a year; don’t miss out on all the fun!
Social activities
For the more serious minded among you, you can also involve yourself in developmental work targeted towards improving educational infrastructure in rural parts of India. There exists in Leuven an organization called ROSE, which is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is precisely that. ROSE is in existence since 2001 with the motto “Education for All”, and works towards the goal of a fully literate India. ROSE has two main objectives:
(i) To generate funds through fund raising activities; and
(ii) To identify deserving projects in India and to support them financially.
ROSE has conducted more than 15 fund raising activities and supported more than 40 projects in 10 different states. ROSE is run on a purely voluntary basis with minimum overhead and maximum transparency. To get involved, please visit http://www.rosevzw.net or email rosevzw@gmail.com.
Money Transfer
Money transfer from Belgium to India -
Many of us need to send money back to India some time or other.
There are two types of transfers:
Note: Do not use HDFC/Times of money QuickRemit services as there is a problem with their a/c in europian bank in Frankfurt. Your transaction of money will be rejected with the penalty of 50 eur each time. Be careful with their services until further notice. Quickremit is not responding good from their side.
Direct bank-to-bank
Typically it is safer and quicker to transfer money to India using a bank-to-bank transfer from a Belgian bank to an Indian bank. It is cheaper than sending it through an Indian bank here. There is a Bank of Baroda in Brussels and State Bank of India in Antwerp. But they charge more money for such transfers, and at the same time the transfer takes a longer time. One can do transfers from any of the local banks here where you have your account - Fortis, Citibank, KBC. Especially Fortis bank has got good connections with lot of Indian banks and usually takes a maximum of 3 to 4 weeks before it gets released in your/recipient's Indian account. Things can be faster if you have exact address and probably a tracking code of the recipient bank. If you want to do a bank-to-bank transfer using an Indian bank, you need an account somewhere in that Indian bbank in India (e.g. if you are using SBI in Antwerp, you will need an account with SBI in India). So it might be a good idea to open a joint account in SBI somewhere near your place in India, if you are thinking of such frequent transfers. Having an NRE account in an Indian bank is quite helpful in many cases. Having an NRE - Rupee checking account with Citibank is a nice option with absolutely no extra charges payable during money transfers to India. But Citibank requires quite a large sum (about EUR 2000 / USD 2000) as minimum balance. Most other Indian banks have much lesser minimum balance requirements.
Via online Indian bank's account
Some Indian banks like ICICI and HDFC have their account in other European banks here and you can transfer to them and they transfer to your Indian bank account.
ICICI too provide the same kind of service with different name Money2India with slightly bit less exchange rate. ICICI charges zero transaction fee for transferring money to ICICI account and charges a littl if you transfer to other bank accounts.