Student dormitories

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Cristi

Grozăvești

Andra

Giurgiului

Mihai

Regie

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Living in students' dorms and renting require a great deal of mobility, as well as the capacity to adjust to new environments and changes.

The fear of the future in general and the fear of not finding a proper dwelling in particular is a reality that defines today's young students and graduates. Between the dream of living individually in their own house and the possibilities foreseen for the future, the path is sometimes long and very difficult.

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Cristi

Grozăvești

Cristi never thought he will not spend his life in the home where he was born and where he grew up. Now he is a PhD student and lives for over 7 years in the same student dorm. When he moved for the first time in the dorm room he saw it like a bird cage. After so many years of living in a shared space where you need to learn to take care of yourself, to make sure you have supplies of food, to pay your accommodation at the dorm, to share the kitchen, the washing machine and the bathroom with others, Cristi says that living in a student dorm is a form of maturity and it can help you define yourself as a person.

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Andra

Giurgiului

For Andra this is the third year of living in a student dorm. She says that after every summer vacation spent at home, coming back to the student dorm means a re-learning and a resumption of the habits of living in a shared space, much more now when she has a new roommate. Living in a student dorm taught Andra that she needs to live without the things she had for granted at home and that she needs to organize her space and her time so that she can have a decent life with what the student dorm can offer.

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Mihai

Regie

Moving to Bucharest for his University studies, Mihai wanted to live in a student dorm. He says the advantage of living in a student dorm is that in a space like this a community is quickly formed where everybody helps each other and where you can always find someone to spend your time with. The issues that give him dissatisfaction with living in a student dorm are the small number of bathrooms that needs to be shared by around 100 students and the fact that they aren’t allowed to have hot plates in their rooms.

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Five years and eight rooms in student dormitories

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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)

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You can contribute in our documentation of the experience of living and dwelling in the present day Bucharest and you can take part at the development of The Bucharest Housing Stories project. Share your experience, your knowledge and your photos on the Bucharest Housing Stories platform.

Any story is part of something bigger, something we can call „reality”, „history”, „society” „life” etc. Our documented cases from the project don’t cover all the aspects and contexts of living and housing. Together we can add layers to The Big Story of living and housing in Bucharest and its surroundings.

  • • You are living in Bucharest since you were born, you started living here at some point or you lived here for a period of time: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;
  • • You are part of a NGO or an informal group whose activity is related to housing: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;
  • • You know and you have experienced a particular type of living and dwelling which can’t be placed in any of the 7 episodes of our project: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;
  • • You did research or you are doing research on the topic of housing/dwelling: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;
  • • You have family photos that capture the topic of housing from any period of time: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;
  • • For any other aspect uncovered in the lines above: join The Bucharest Housing Stories community;

We invite you to send us your own contribution in the form of text or photos. In the case of photos, please specify: the approximate date when the photo was taken, the type of dwelling, the context in which the photo was taken.





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