V is 25 years old and five of them were spent in the student dormitories from Bucharest. The faculty years and the MA years also meant dorm rooms of different sizes, some of them with many roommates, some with fewer. Although there are many nice moments, living in a student dorm room comes with dissatisfactions too. In the first year he lived in a student dorm in Panduri area and in Leu, in the second year he lived in a private dorm again in Panduri area. The last year of faculty was associated with a bed in a student complex in Leu. During the summer when he remained in Bucharest to work, the student dorm was again the solution: this time one in Stoian Militaru area or even in Măgurele. His bachelor thesis and the admission to the master program didn’t mean a change in his housing situation. He continued his student dormitory route living in Grozăvești and afterwards in Regie. Now he is in his last year of the Master program and he lives in Tei.
Every student dorm comes with its own rules, with specific living conditions and most importantly with new roommates. Now, after five years filtered by his experience of living in a student complex, for V. it doesn’t matter only the living conditions but also “being on the same page” with the guys he shares his room with. In Panduri they were five persons living in a room; in Leu, Regie and Grozăvești they were two and in Tei they were four. The student dormitory from Leu was for V. “the ugliest place on Earth.” In Panduri, in the first years of faculty he lived with his group colleagues and they got along very well. They were the same age and they had many interests and things in common.
Being faculty colleagues they were experimenting together the novelty that the university studies and living in Bucharest brought. When he started his Master program he moved in Grozăvești where he met people „with whom he hadn’t many things in common and so it was a flat experience.” Being passionate of contemporary history and playing computer games, for V. the nights are not only for sleeping. Two of his roommates are also passionate of computer games and board games and sometimes, in the first part of the night when things cool down they start playing games and they recount different stories, they discuss and they make jokes. Otherwise, the jokes and the teasing are a constant and normal form of relationship and of interaction in the dorm room of the four colleagues from Tei.
In spite the fact that the living space is small and the pleasant atmosphere that each of them are trying to keep, the dorm room was never „home”. Here everything is temporary, “you know that at one point you have to leave this place, so you can’t get attached to the room or the location.” There were some attempts of treating the dorm room as his own home, explains V. especially when you share the space with someone else and you have to take care of the room itself, of the people you live with and most importantly of yourself: “If at some point you treat them bad, they will treat you bad too and you don’t want the situation to get there.”
In the student dormitory from Regie he experienced for the first time how it is to live alone: six months with more freedom, without the pressure of any disturbance that his lifestyle could bring for a roommate. V. hopes that after graduating his Master program the living in a student dormitory will be over. To rent a place is the next step for him: he doesn’t dream of remaining in a single place or being held in place by a home or a job. “Home” doesn’t mean for him some walls, but a certain mood that the space gives to the person living there. Living in the student dormitory was a beautiful experience, but home will be the place where he will feel free, without having to answer to anyone and without having to explain himself.
(Writing and editing: Maria Mateoniu, Banu Sergiu, Negru Natalia)