Student Housing: Where do TalTech students live?
Every accommodation has a story created by its tenants — long conversations in the middle of the night at your dorm kitchen, Netflix marathons with your flatmates or cooking together with your partner. Even pictures on the walls, old washing machine of your grandma or little decor elements tell a little something about you.
Today you are welcome to visit Oryna’s and Liia’s places, student dorm on the campus and private apartment in the city centre.
Oryna is a second-year student of Law and International Relations programme. She is currently living in one of the dorms around the campus.
Oryna’s place
This is the first and only accommodation I’ve lived in since I moved to Estonia. I found out that there is an option to live in dorms through our uni’s website and then picked my building among others on the list.
Advantages and disadvantages of a dorm life
What I really love about living in a dorm is the people around you, no matter where you go around campus- you will always meet somebody. Also, it is super cool that we have a forest, small lake with ducks, and a lot of places for a picknick or a study session outside.
The disadvantages of living exactly in my dorm are curtains, that are not blocking any light, that can be annoying during summer period, also we don’t have an oven and an elevator (it especially sucks when you have heavy bags) and it can be pretty noisy from time to time.
Dorm mates
I literally adore my mates! There are currently three of us: Mari from Georgia, Anya from Russia and I. We cook, drink tea or coffee together. Sometimes we are going for a walk around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, but the funniest thing we’ve done happened last year. It was in the middle of September, I just moved into the dorm and we were just becoming friends when we suddenly decided to go for a swim in the sea. We took a bus and then we also had to walk for approximately 3 hours. It was already dark, we got lost a couple of times, and when we finally arrived, at a very beautiful spot by the way, we could enjoy the next 30 minutes of our well-deserved swim. After that we rushed to the closest bus station so not to miss the last bus going back to Tallinn ;)
Furniture and accessories
The dorm is already equipped with all the basic furniture we need, so I didn’t have to worry about it. Most of my kitchen utensils and accessories I bought in various thrift shops like Sõbralt Sõbrale or Paavli Kaltsukas. I like that things from there as they are always special and unique in a sense. Besides, buying thrifted goods helps to consume less by giving second life to the old stuff.
A lot of people are surprised when they hear that I have my own washing machine in our dorm. It happened because when I was moving here, I was only 17, so my mom helped me packing everything I may need. I ended up bringing a car full of stuff and one of the items I brought was my grandma’s washing machine, which is like 25 years old and we used to keep it in our garage. Turned out it is not that convenient to use it, so in the end it became my laundry box:)
I also brought some printed photos with friends and some pictures from family archive, that are really special to me.
Liia also studies Law and International Relations. She is currently renting a flat with someone else in the city centre, Kesklinn area of Tallinn.
Liia’s place
I moved in a while ago after mainly living in a single dormitory room (Akadeemia tee 5). I moved out of the dorm because I didn’t have to physically attend the university that much during my last year so it was no longer a priority to live nearby. Also, I felt ready to invest in a more spacious place with an attractive location. During my first year of university, my priorities were very different — I would rather spend money travelling and buying stuff than getting an apartment. Now that I more settled in Estonia and I can afford a place I actually want, I am happy that I went for it.
Looking for a perfect match
Me and my boyfriend had been looking for an apartment for quite a while before we found this one. We mostly used kv.ee and city24.ee as these are the main real-estate rent and purchase sources in Estonia. We did not want to pay a broker fee as it simply didn’t make sense to us — there is a fee for just the fact that an agent listed property on a free and publicly-available website. This has limited the selection of properties, as a big number of those are usually under some agency and not a direct private owner.
In the beginning, we also planned a lower budget than the one we agreed to later so at first we were missing even more possibilities. The reason why this happened was that we failed to research the market well and the price we were looking for was not reasonable considering what we expected to receive in exchange.
We went to see 4 places: all of them were kind of nice but just didn’t seem right. We were looking for the one that would immediately make us both want to stay. As this was planned as a long-term thing, we didn’t want to compromise just to save time. After a month of looking, I made a Facebook post in an accommodation-related group and our current landlord reached out to us. The apartment was within our budget, 5 minutes away from both of our offices, and had a terrace (I know, right?) so we just moved in right away.
Advantages and disadvantages
We have two levels so it doesn’t feel like an ordinary average-sized 2-room apartment, there is also a 20sqm private terrace with a grill which is such a nice thing to have in the city centre. During the last 2 months we spent in self-isolation, the apartment also proved to be a great home office. The only thing I dislike about my current place of living is the fact that the closest supermarket is pretty small and I cannot wait for a bigger one to open somewhere in the area.
The size of the place also turned out to be just right: it is not too big for the maintenance to be a problem and not too small for two people with a strong need for personal space to co-exist.
Furniture and decor
It was furnished, so I only had to buy minor equipment and decor. I ordered a few things from Jysk and got some decorations and kitchen stuff at Kaubamaja and Stockmann.
