Student's Village - the world apart

I've been meaning to write a post talking about the place I live, but I wanted to wait a bit for the ideas to settle in. Now that I'm there for over two months and a half, I think I'm able to write a pretty accurate "review" for this place.

On the beginning of our Erasmus journey, the vast majority of the students chose to stay on the Student's Village, or the Ege Üniversitesi Öğrenci Köyü in Turkish. The reason is simple - being in a foreign city for the first time and not knowing anything about it, a place where you can sleep is always appreciated! And in truth, the place was rather nice when I saw it. At least for the first few weeks! There even was a small supermarket and a cafeteria on the entrance and a main building with billiard and a TV room full of puffs. Not to mention the small square with a giant chess game (we just call it "The Chess") and sport fields.

After some time, I started to realize the inconvenients. I'm staying on the Akasya building - although almost every building has a small garden or green grass on front of it, mine has weeds and dirt. Some buildings are close enough to the cafeteria so they get some WiFi signal, I only get the signal of the trucks honking on the road. And we are all paying the same price, only to get different conditions. One of the most comic moments was when two girls came to our room to get some pictures for they USB Flash drives and a security guard saw them through the window. Since this is not a big deal, we idiotically left the window open, and the show began. The security guy was completely pissed and began screaming in Turkish. We just said "evet evet" and stayed there listening until he finally realized we were erasmus and escorted the girls out of our building. So, no mix at all. Even if you want a friend from the opposite sex to help you cook on the top floor, you're screwed if they find out.

One of the most absurd rules is the curfew - apparently there are fixed hours to return to the village, our 'villagemates' say to me it's at about 1 am. Since I'm an Erasmus, this particular rule doesn't apply for me I don't know why, but thank God! Another comic rule is that you have to say to the security staff if you are going to spend the night out - another one that doesn't apply for the Erasmus since I already spent several nights out and nobody said me a word (maybe that's because none of them speaks English hmm! Nice!). If you want friends to come over and visit you there, they can. They only have to show their IDs (the staff will hold them up until you're gone) and say the name, room and building of the person they're visiting. And they must leave until midnight - after that a bunch of security guys will wander around the entire village try to find them and escort them out.

Regarding the size of the shared and individual rooms - they are small. For a single person is enough, but for two persons it's another story. We knew this the first time we saw them of course, but after this much time living in this space with your roommate you start to feel almost trapped. You have no privacy, no sofa to lay back a bit, you can't go nowhere inside the room because... well, it's only a room. Of course you can always go the bathroom if you want a change of scenery. You have a social room within the building, but you don't always feel like going two floors up and stay there with a bunch of people that can't communicate and are not willing to talk to with you and stare at the walls. Again, of course I knew all of this when I first saw the room, but the smallness of the place is only started affecting me on the past weeks. And when you think that other students are paying less and in some cases almost half of what I'm paying for a full apartment (shared apartment of course) I get really frustrated.

Still, this was a decent place to live, at least until the recent problems started. One beautiful day we realized we didn't have hot water, only tepid. Tamam, we can shower with this, no problem. The day after, the tepid water gave place to cold water. And then we got several days like this. It's said that cold showers strengthen your skin, but I'm a fan of a soft one, thanks. Now we have hot water again, but it can fail anytime, talking about living on the edge! Then, the electricity problems started. Sometimes the power goes out, no problem on this, it happens. But the last time it happened for almost one hour, and only in selected building like Akasya. It was really fun to play on the computer until my battery ran out with a candle by my side. Now power shortages happen anytime, the last one happened when we were on the middle of our way to the 4th floor for cooking. It even happens on the cafeteria, were they keep serving meals in complete darkness. The heating also fails sometimes, but it's ok since I don't have central heating back home anyways and this is not like Ankara.

But the real problem is about the Internet - or the lack of if. For the first weeks we didn't have a problem, except there is no wireless on the rooms and we had to buy our own ethernet cables. The internet wasn't very fast but it's enough to call on skype without many interferences.  Then, we started having connection issues - first the internet would go down for a few minutes. A nuisance if you were talking to someone on skype or downloading, but otherwise fine. Then for a few hours, then for one day, a couple of days and as of the 27th of November I'm without internet for 2 weeks already. If you think that in this moment the Internet is my only mean of communication between me, my family and friends in my country, you can see how we need it. There is some sort of wireless signal on the cafeteria, but even so, the place is so crowded that the internet signal is very weak, not allowing us to call home. And then after sometime our laptop battery dies. What angers me the most is that the other buildings have the problem solved for over 4/5 days, and mine is still with the problem - and we pay the same price. Seems like inside the village there are differences between the students even if we pay the same. I'm not even going to talk about how half of the washing machines are broken and it's becoming a matter of luck to find a empty washer. For 350 TL you'd expect to have clean sheets once in a time, but no: they give you sheets and a blanket but you must washed them when you want. And you pay to use the washer... and the dryer. Beware that there isn't pans and cooking material on the common kitchen - you have to buy those yourself.

So, in a nutshell: stay in the village for one month or so just to get used to the city and then try to find a flat. It's cheaper and you'll have plenty more space than here. If you like peace and quiet, someone to clean your floor once a week and don't mind living in a box, come to the village! I cannot deny there is plenty of social interaction here, which I like very much.  But don't expect having a reliable connection to the world!