When you land in Tallinn for Erasmus or as a full-time student of TLU, one can say the first exposure of TLU and Tallinn is your dormitory. The dorms are located at Karu 17 which is next to the university and also close to the city center. The location makes it more convenient for the students to explore the Old Town and the wonders of Tallinn’s night life. Each dorm has two rooms in it and one room is shared by two students. You share a single attached kitchen with two dorms (4 rooms) which are separated by a kitchen in between - one side is for the male students sharing two rooms and the other side is for the female students. The kitchen has all the basic utensils like a microwave. The rooms are spacious and very well maintained with weekly cleaning of the rooms provided by the management. They provide bed linens and pillow covers plus the room heaters are an essentials. Furthermore, it has laundry rooms on the 3rd floor and you can use the laundry room by booking your time on the sheet that is taped on the door of the laundry room. I’ll share my experiences as a tenant of Karu 17. It is my third semester in TLU and words cannot describe the experiences I had with having secret late night parties in the dorms to birthday celebrations, daily night hangouts with the flat mates to endless talking about each other’s experiences and listening to their stories.
One of the highlights of my experience that I particularly liked was, for example, the dinner we arranged in the dorms. We had a Potluck dinner where we asked every student to make one of their traditional dishes. It was a memorable night as we all shared stories about our country, what is the culture and stereotypes etc.
The picture is from Dec’19. In this picture we have students from Pakistan, Spain, Italy, Greece, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkey.
Another of my cherished moments was the first birthday I had in Tallinn which was made special by a surprise from my friends. Unfortunately, I cannot share the whole video but it was very special for me. It had only been one and a half months away from home and the winter nights were upon us. Home sickness was also there but a good night spent with your closest friends on your birthday night made it a night to remember.
To conclude, coming to a completely different country to study and to experience something challenging and different outside your comfort zone is indeed a challenge but what we can do in this situation is to at least enjoy the little moments we have during this time. These are memories that you take back to your home and if you are lucky you’ll make some lifelong friends.
Written by Syed Asghar Abbas