“Not Cassius, perhaps; rather, your archetypal Dostoevsky student: starved, and in conflict with demons.”
― John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl
The right apartment size is supposed to be proportional to your income, number of family members and the region you live in. By thirty most people have already figured out which wheel of society they want to be – or at least it seems to be common knowledge that you are supposed to have it all figured it out by now. And here I am, single, living month to month with half a job, trying to survive while somehow getting myself through university.
After finishing high school, I had no idea what to do, so I took a job as a carer and moved in a four-bedroom apartment with five other girls. Needless to say, it was a catastrophe – not to mention the lack of privacy or alone time; the problem with the bathroom schedule or the cleaning roster.
When I got here to S. I stayed in a student home for about a year. The room was pretty small and long so that the bed took almost half of the width of it – and it wasn’t even a big bed, or a bed. It was actually more like a small and very hard couch and it was very hard not to fall off every time I turned in my sleep. Anyhow, the bathroom was about two square meters and looked like a plastic capsule for astronauts made of a strange material all in the same orange-pink colour. The shower curtain used to stick on my body each time I turned the water on, and it was impossible to stretch out your arms in it. The whole room had a maximum of ten square meters at the end of which there was a big window with a beautiful view and the ability to turn the whole room into a sauna or a refrigerator depending on the weather. The kitchen was separate and available to the whole floor. Rent was ca. three hundred and fifty euros a month including the occasional warm water, electricity and three GB of extra slow internet. A really good deal if you don’t mind having to dress yourself every time you want to go to the kitchen. After a few months of working from “home” and slowly caring even less about how you look in public, the walls began to come closer and closer and I had to escape to survive.
After a brief period in which my brain did not function properly, I finally moved into my first apartment. And with this I mean the first time ever I got the chance to live alone in an apartment with bathroom and kitchen. I am now proud lessee of a 26 square meters apartment with a small but very new kitchen (with a dishwasher!), a small bathroom with a bathtub instead of a shower that would save space and be more practical to shower; a small walk-in closet (or better a storage room I had to convert to make my closet fit) and a work/dining/ bedroom. The price sounded reasonable (still one of the cheapest places here) with 500 euros a month. The thing is, I forgot to take into account other expenses like electricity, internet, phone bill, health insurance and occasionally I also like to eat and maybe go out from time to time. My expenses are now so high that I’m not able to save money, on the contrary, every month I live in fear of not being able to pay my rent. I once tried to apply for an income support and the guy behind the counter just laughed and told me that I should not even try because I’m a student and students are not entitled to get social welfare since they could work. Which I do. The problem is that a day has only 24 hours and since I also like to sleep sometimes, it’s not possible to work more than I do now, if I want to continue to take classes and finish my studies, which in turn take longer when I have to work more… and that is what one could call a vicious circle. Of course, one could take a loan, but one never knows if it’s even possible to get out of those again. Now, the question is, what can I do? Well who does need a social life? I’m constantly struggling to choose between stuff I need to do and stuff I want to do and not in a good way.
After a while you don’t even want to go out with friends anymore because you can’t even enjoy your free time while thinking of all the work waiting for you. Your friends start meeting people, planning holiday (I’m not sure I even know what that is anymore), getting cats and getting married and you are still sitting in your room wandering how you should meet a partner without getting out of the apartment, without having the time for it. The good thing is, you don’t have to worry about choosing between having kids or not because time is slowly running out. One less thing on your plate. And that is how you find yourself single, living month to month with half a job, trying to survive while somehow getting yourself through university, wondering: was it really worth it and how come everyone is always pushing you to get a proper education since having a job seems way more easy. What’s wrong with that?
Aromatic deception 