Campus Grozavesti

Hello my friends,

I want to start writing about Campus Grozavesti where I stayed for months, in Bucharest during my Erasmus Learning Programme.

So in case, you will stay there, you might have some nice or scary opinions. But for sure, everything I am writing here is only my opinions. Campus Grozavesti is located in the area called Grozavesti which is in Sector 1. Bucharest has 14 Sector, and as I understood they are given numbers by the closeness to city center or popularity. So you can easily go to Campus Grozavesti by using yellow line on the metro system, which goes between Pantelimon - Dristor.

Here is the picture of the metro system of Bucharest in case you need.

So, I recieved an email from University of Bucharest, when I was accepted as Erasmus student, whether I want the university to arrange an accomodation for me or I would find it by myself.

I wanted the university to find the place to stay because my intention was to stay with other Erasmus students in one place all together... So I let my university to arrange me the place and in the end of august I was informed that I had my place in Campus Grozavesti, in a room for two, with an Erasmus student from Netherlands... But there was something I was not paying attention! I had never stayed in public dormitory before.

In the city where I am studying college, in Turkey, I used to stay in private dormitory, where I had a small apart with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom that I was sharing my room with a roommate. My breakfast and dinner were prepared everyday by the dormitory's chef.. I was pretty living cool there. And after two years I have begun to live with my parents, in my pretty much comfort zone, where I had everything I needed.

So to be honest I was expecting a dormitory like that even though I knew that It would not be that well but still they would have toilet in the room, or they would have a kitchen to cook, or we would have the dinner prepared by the dormitory etc. HAHA! An exact disappointment when I had first arrived in there. A big building in a beautiful campus garden, where C and D buildings were together, five floors in each buildings, and thirty rooms in one floor, rooms were for two students, and five toilets and seven showers in each floor.

But when I had arrived some of the showers and toilets were not available because of some construction. So if my room was located in China, the toilet was located in England in the other corner of the hall. In Turkey we have a song says '' Uzun ince bir yoldayım, gidiyorum gündüz gece' which means ' I am on a road which is long and lane, I am going day and night. ' So whenever I was going to toilet, inside my head I was singing that song.

But I have to admit that because of laziness I was waiting till the point I couldn't stand my pee anymore and I was running always by singing that song in my mind. By the way, toilets did no have toilet seats or maybe they had before but someone stole them I do not know. I was just surprised because some of the students were carrying their toilets seats while they were going to toilet. Not really for a person like me who waits till the last minute and then runs. And what about showers, you might ask!

Hmm, 3 showers for many students both girls and boys, and only one of showers has the proper handheld shower-head, so everyone was trying to have shower in that one, that's why it was mostly occupied. And the shower cabins did not had lock, they had actually but impossible to move them because of the mold. So you need to put your towel always hanging from the cabin because someone can open it if you are a bit silent while washing your body with soap or if you closed the tap so someone might not notice you are there and TADAAAM.

I am afraid that the things that I am writing here sound cruel and you might have thought that I hated campus Grozavesti, but no! I used to love it. But for me it takes some time to love! Especially when I am out of my comfort zone. So I had not done a good start with the toilets and shower cabins. Not only with toilets and showers, but also with room and kitchen. Actually not with the kitchen, but with the fact that we did not have a kitchen to cook in the dormitory. Which is worse as it was written on the website of the dormitory, it is said that there was a kitchen for students to cook but, when it comes to reality, you realise that the dormitory managers had converted that room, into a room like a guest room or a room where they are keeping unnecessary goods.

So that means that you need to eat always out, or you need to cook in the room. For Romanian students it was okay because I was seeing Romanian students were coming to dormitory with their families and bringing everything they would need in the 4 years. They had their fridges, their cooks, their televisions in their room. And some of the parents even painted the rooms and brought some other furniture like bed and table instead of using the available ones in the room. So considering the fact that the management of the dormitory was not against bringing our own goods, for Romanian students, I think campus Grozavesti was a suitable place to stay.

Lets talk about the room itself. I think it was the best part of the campus Grozavesti. At least it was not for many students. It was only for two, and mostly they were giving Erasmus students with other Erasmus students. So in the first times of my staying I also had my roommate who was in Roumania for Erasmus learning programme. The room has two beds, a huge window, a table, two chairs, a cupboard with two doors, one is for me one is for my roommate, and a big drawer under each bed. I think if we did not have the drawer, we would have no place to fit our clothes. Especially me! I went there with over fifty kilograms. Okay okay, not all of them were clothes, it was including my shoes, my hundreds of tea bags, of course Turkish tea which I might be addicted. I carried even my own boiler in case I could not have hot water for drinking tea always, whenever I want actually.

I was lucky as my roommate was a really nice girl from The Netherlands, her name was Chanine but she could not stand the conditions of the dormitory more than couple of weeks and she decided to leave to a flat, and while she was leaving she left me a toilet seat that I did not bother to use ever. I am a lazy person to carry it, I told you. So she left and I did not have a roommate for approximately one month. The first week was a bit tiring for me because in the end my body said " I can not stand all. I don't want to share the toilet and the shower with 60 students, I am going to be sick. " So my body became weak and I got sick, but luckily not more than a week. After some times, my body became friends with microps I think. Actually during my staying there, I even became professional about when to use toilets and showers. I observe that almost no one was using the shower at eight o'clock on Saturday mornings, as many of the students were sleeping hard after a hard Friday night. So showers were pretty clean and quiet on Saturday mornings, not only Saturday mornings, but also Sunday mornings too. And in the week days, you should have your shower in the morning if it is possible and if the one with the proper handheld shower-head is not occupied. Because later you may not find the showers so clean.

When I was alone, I hated that room because it was so empty, even though I had my stuff, there was one bed which was empty. And the walls were empty, the floor was empty. And I really do not like empty walls and places. It looked like this:

In Turkey, in my own room, I do not have empty walls. I put everywhere some photograph frames, or pictures, tables, oil paintings or anything I just fill them. So one day while I was sitting on the bed and looking to the big empty wall which seemed to me so ugly, I just decided to do something about it. Because I knew that only thing i needed was some colours. So if I managed to give some colours to the room, i would feel probably more comfortable to be here. So, I went to Carrefour which was located just behind the campus Grozavesti. I still remember the woman who was working there and laughed when she saw that I bought one purple towel, a red spoon, a blue knife and a green fork. I think she must have understood the longing for the colours in my head.

And I also bought some stickers, and gift-wrapping papers and some colourful towels and goods. And later, I began to cover things. Firstly I covered the table which looked to me so ugly.

And later I covered the wall which was painted while it had the closet in front of it. So it was only partly painted.

And I put used the stickers to make the room look a bit more alive and liveable for me.

So in the end, I had a bit more colourful room which looked nicer to me than the previous one. Especially I like the wall that I covered with the colourful wrapping papers. It was looking like a photo studio now. I was feeling happier with the room now, but still I was waiting for a roommate to arrive. Because still there was an empty bed which was waiting for my new roommate to arrive so it would have some colourful bed sheets on it and I would get rid of seeing the white bed.

Before coming to Roumania, I was saying that I could live under any conditions for a short period of time like four months. But I think I could not live in that colourless room, if I had not done this colouring mission.

I really thought that I would not like that dormitory ever, but that dormitory, once again, reminded me that what makes a place habitable is the people that you live with. I spent amazing 4 months in that building with my friends that I will never forget. And it once again reminded me that "Home is where people who loves you live in ". Campus Grozavesti taught me that I do not need separated bathrooms or kitchen to be happy. I will always remember the amazing moments that I spent with beautiful people in that dormitory. And all these moments have become parts of me.

So, whoever is reading my post about campus Grozavesti, you should keep in mind that, that place might really scare you in the beginning. We had many friends who left there in the first weeks as they decided that they cant make it. But believe me, if you stand it in the first times, it will later be a place that you will not ever want to leave. So please give a shot.

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