My Domicile

I live at Kruisstraat 159b. What this means is that I live in a building called Parnassos. It’s basically a dorm for international students and Dutch students attending the faculty of music and dance. Kids are always jamming out downstairs.

I share a kitchen, two toilets and two showers with 11 other exchange students. Two are from Czech Republic, two came from Sweden, two from Germany, two from Belgium, another two from Taiwan and my roommate and I hail from the States. It’s an interesting mix, to say the least.

I think I’ve learned something about each place. In Sweden, the government has a monopoly on hard alcohol sales. Everything is dirt cheap in the Czech Republic. Belgium has great beer and chocolate and the people from the south half are much like the French. German girls like to party and Taiwanese girls don’t get Western humor. Oh and Americans are ignorant about the world.

Yep that about sums up the place where I live… except for my room. So my room is about the size of a standard dorm room. I share it with a guy from Oklahoma University. Our beds suck, a nice foam mattress. However, the room isn’t without charm. The ceiling is roughly four meters high, and a window runs almost its whole length, spanning a good three meters of wall. This window is my favorite part of the room, and I love sitting by it, drinking wine while looking down at the luscious garden below.

Our room also has a loft. I initially thought it was a couple of plywood boards thrown across the room so that we could store our suitcases. I was wrong, and once I climbed up, I found that three people could sleep in the loft. Sure they’d have to cuddle a bit, but nothing two comfortably straight men couldn’t handle. The loft is fantastic, and adds an enormous amount of leisure space to the room.

This is my home for four more months.