Before I arrived in Gothenburg, people in the student chat groups kept saying that student housing here is not easy to get. Unless you are an international student who has paid tuition, you have to find a place yourself. You can either rent on the private market—which is what I did when I first got here—or collect points with a student housing company and wait until you have enough to apply for a room. The experienced ones in the group all warned me that the points system is slow: it usually takes more than a year to get a single room with a shared kitchen, the so-called corridor room. So before I moved to Gothenburg, I queued for student housing while also looking for a private landlord, and luckily I found one who seemed reliable.
The homestay
After about a month living in the landlord's home, I realized I didn't like sharing a roof with strangers. I might even say I hated it.
First, the landlord was not someone I knew. Living under the same roof inevitably creates awkwardness—around the bathroom, around cooking times. When you are a guest in someone's home, the landlord's word is law. Every day after cooking I wiped the stove clean, including the oil splatters on the wall tiles. One day the landlord came home while I was reading in my room and started preparing food in the kitchen. The next day, while I was eating, the landlord's daughter came to tell me that after cooking I should wipe the stove, otherwise the stains would become hard to remove. I was like, what? I clean it every single day. Didn't you know your father used the stove last night? If I didn't wipe it, your stove would have been greasy long ago.
Before I moved to Gothenburg, I mainly communicated with the landlord's daughter. I told her I needed a quiet place to read, and she said the house was quiet because her family worked in the restaurant business in Gothenburg, leaving early and coming back late. On my first weekend in Gothenburg I wanted to take a nap. I had just lain down when the noise from upstairs started. Thump, thump, thump—it was clearly a child running barefoot on the floor. I tried stomping barefoot on the floor myself; I couldn't hear it, unlike walking in slippers, but downstairs it sounded like an earthquake. Along with the thumping came the voice of the man upstairs. He was obviously not Swedish, and his voice was unpleasant, with an intonation that made my stomach turn. He went on and on, just like certain people I had met. So much for my nap. I told myself it was no big deal, lay there for a while, and got up. When I got up, the noise had stopped. I looked at the clock: 2:30 p.m. What a time to make a racket. But maybe they don't nap upstairs, and our schedules were different. I put up with it. A few days later, around 11 p.m., I was getting ready for bed, and the thumping upstairs was still going. After a week of losing sleep, I finally knocked on the upstairs door to remind them to watch the time. The man who opened the door was indeed an immigrant, with an expression that made me want to punch him. I expressed my complaint, and his answer was: if you can't sleep, you should exercise, and when you're tired you'll fall asleep. You shouldn't come knocking on my door to tell me to be quiet. I have children, you know, so you have to put up with it. I was speechless. I'm direct, and although there was some logic in exercising, I shot back: if you want your neighbors to understand you, you first have to respect your neighbors. Because of this idiot neighbor, I was determined to find a student dorm as soon as possible. Immigrants seem to have been spoiled by Swedish policies. Having a child makes you special? You get long paid leave for both parents, you can act like you own the street, you don't even have to carry your child—one child, one stroller—and on the bus one child takes up a whole area while everyone else has to make room. So it's fine if your kids make noise at home and disturb the neighbors? What kind of logic is that?
The new room
After continued effort, I finally got a student single room with a shared kitchen. I was thrilled, because I was truly fed up with the lack of freedom in someone else's home and with putting up with a terrible neighbor. I was excited about the new room and already had ideas about how to arrange it to my taste. Student rooms come without furniture, so that weekend I rushed to IKEA and ordered a big bed, a desk, and other essentials for the new place. I also bought a lot of other things—things I had wanted but hadn't dared to buy before—because I love Nordic-style interiors: simple but not plain.
My supervisor helped me move. I had asked him if he knew any cheap moving companies, and he asked how much luggage I had. I said just a few boxes, and he kindly offered to drive me. My supervisor is a really good person. Maybe the social norms here in Northern Europe are different from back home. He is a professor in the field, but he never puts on airs with us PhD students. He jokes when it's time to joke, asks how we're doing when he cares, and when we discuss problems he is completely on the same wavelength, never issuing orders from above. The new place was not close to the old one, and I was eager to leave the homestay, so we crammed several boxes into his Volvo and made it in one trip, plus a temporary mattress.
The following Saturday, IKEA delivered the bed and other large furniture I had ordered. I was really looking forward to the new bed. I had always slept on a single bed, and in the homestay I had a 90 cm spring mattress. At night I had to be careful not to roll off, and the spring mattress hurt my back—it didn't help me rest at all. So when I bought the new bed, I specifically chose a firm mattress and a 140 cm wide small double. Now I wouldn't have to worry about falling out of bed when I turned over. I could even roll around. Just thinking about it made me happy.
I spent an afternoon and an evening assembling the desk, bed, chairs, and everything else. I washed the new sheets and duvet covers, then arranged all the little things I had bought from IKEA. It was 1:30 a.m. by the time I finished. I collapsed on the bed, exhausted, looking at the little room I had set up myself, and felt completely satisfied.
