Beautiful city views, friendship and French wine
Dimitri Ionescu was a TalTech Erasmus student during Spring 2020. Dimitri is French, and his home university is in Paris, where he studies civil engineering and architecture, and is actively involved in entrepreneurship. Thanks to this passion he became a finalist of StarterTallinn in Estonia, in Spring 2020, and of ClimateLaunchpad in France.
Current place
I live in Narva mnt 7, in Tallinn city center. I have 3 French flatmates and one Italian: Clément, Sophie, Margherita, and Jacques. We have three rooms with five separate beds: one serves as a common space, and two others are shared sleeping spaces — one for me and Jacques, and another for Margherita, Sophie and Clément.
First accommodation in Tallinn
My first accommodation was in the Academic hostel, at Endla street, 4. At the beginning of the corona crisis, they closed it because of the kitchen and bathroom being common rooms and so we could not follow the 2+2 rule. All dwellers of Endla, 4 had to move to Academia tee 11/1 building, also owned by the academic hostel. Staying in the student rooms, without a lot of light, was rather uncomfortable. And therefore after a month of quarantine, we decided to look for an alternative with other Erasmus students.
Beautiful finding in the old town
I found an accommodation in the Tallinn Old town on kv.ee. When I was visiting it, I asked the owner if he has something “fancier” and then he showed me our current apartment. We took it without hesitation. The owner has a number of apartments in the city center, and he has housed more than 30 Erasmus students during the last three months of the semester. The rent was 1000€/month+250€ in utilities. In total it is 250€/person for my flatmates and me. It was the same price as in the academic hostel!
Advantages only
The balcony is fantastic, and overall the flat is very luxurious. The view is just crazy beautiful from both sides of the flat. We had everything close by :
- Large Rimi and shopping cente rin Nautica
- a lot of restaurants (Tar Tar is the best one:)
- The old town, Kadrioru park, the Linnahall, port Noblessner and almost every bus/tram line
Besides, the owner of the apartment provided us with everything we needed to live in the flat. The only thing we had to bring extra is a corkscrew, a bottle opener to enjoy French wine on our balcony.
The best flatmates
We are excellent friends with my flatmates, all of them are Erasmus at TalTech. I met Clément and Jacques while living in the academic hostel. Clément studies industrial engineering, and Jacques — IT. Sophie and I had a lot of courses in common because she is a student of Civil Engineering. Margherita was Sophie’s roommate in academic hostel and she studies international relations.
We went on several trips together: Lapland, Saaremaa, Narva, Parnü, Jagala and Keila waterfalls, Vilnius, Riga, and 10’s of other cities in Latvia and Lituania. For me, my absolute favourites were Saaremaa and Klaipeda in Lituania.
