With an enclosed campus and a compact city center, everything feels mostly practical and easy to navigate during those first months. Not exactly exciting. Until autumn arrives.

The marathon is always the first moment when Eindhoven truly wakes up. Streets that are usually quiet suddenly fill up. There’s a buzz in the air, people are outside, and you realize the city has more to offer than you thought.

Dutch Design Week and GLOW push the city into a different gear. You wander around without a plan and suddenly there’s something to see everywhere. Strijp-S feels more vibrant, downtown lights up, and you notice that Eindhoven can actually be a lot of fun—especially when you stop just cycling from A to B.

This year, carnival starts early, so that momentum hardly has a chance to fade. Around November 11 — the official kickoff of carnival — music spills out of bars, and you see groups of people suddenly greeting each other along the cafés.

For a few days, it doesn’t matter whether you were born here or only arrived half a year ago. You get swept up in the celebration. You don’t need to be a die-hard carnival fan to feel that Eindhoven is at its best when everyone is outside at the same time.

And then spring might bring the final crescendo: PSV winning the championship. If that happens, the entire city transforms. Squares overflow with people, everything turns red and white, and Eindhoven suddenly feels bigger and freer than on any other day.

Maybe that’s the charm of this city. It doesn’t buzz all the time, but when it does, it does so in a way that reminds you exactly why you actually like being here.

Wob Knaap is a Data Science student at TU/e. The views expressed in this column are his own.

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.