Where We Live: Julie and Nathalie live together in a house with a koi pond and a sword in the bedroom

I make my way through a narrow alley towards the back of the house. My way ends in front of a door, painted a dark green. It leads into a simple yard, full of bikes, a few trash cans, a table, and some plastic chairs. A common outdoor space for many students in Enschede. Here I am greeted by Nathalie, who immediately invites me into their house. Today I am visiting her and her roommate Julie, two Creative Media & Game Technology students living together in a student house.

We continue to walk through a narrow, outdated kitchen into a dark hallway, covered with carpet. A typical sight in student houses. Julie's room is on the ground floor. She likes to show her personality through decor like posters or little figurines and collectibles from franchises like Star Wars, Assassins Creed, or Lord of The Rings. But also Formula 1 is an especially big interest of her.

Want to find out more about a certain object or area? Then you can explore the space further by hovering over the hotspots in the interactive images. They might reveal some interesting stories.

Julie has the luxury of being able to separate her sleeping space from general living since she has a combination of two smaller rooms that are connected. Since she often has trouble sleeping she must separate sleep and free time, so having the bed in a separate space makes it much easier for her to calm down, and she is very grateful for that. If she wouldn’t have this kind of space, she would be struggling a lot more.

Glancing through the window, Julie can look into the backyard. However, everyone who comes into the house, be it guests or roommates, can also look right back at her. This often gives her less privacy than her roommates have. In her bedroom is another window that faces the alleyway next to the house where the same problem of privacy occurs. That is why she mostly has a curtain covering that window. “It feels like you are a zoo animal.”

One of Julies priced possessions is her guitar. She bought her first electric guitar when she was 15. Receiving this specific guitar took around a whole year since it was customized. Additionally, it needed a few fixes to make it feel complete to her. Music plays a big role in her life. It is a way to escape and also to express herself. The wall behind her couch is customized with a mural inspired by the album “Trench” from Twenty One Pilots, which Julie is a big fan of. Once this wall was just white, but one day she said: ”Fuck it, I just start painting it!”

Besides sleeping, gaming, and playing guitar, Julie likes to admire her collection of LEGO. Especially one piece stands out. A blue and orange McLaren Formula 1 car. Of course, she is a huge Max Verstappen fan, but she might have something not every fan has in their collection. “I almost cried when I got it”, she says. 

After the 2021 world championship, she surprisingly received a package, that revealed to have a very special gift inside. A cloth piece of Max’s suit that he wore during the championship. “Wow, I guess I am an official fan now.” She remembers saying in that moment. Now she keeps this piece next to the racing car, combining two of her favorite things, LEGO and Formula 1.

I am impressed (and maybe a bit scared) when Julie shows me another priced possession. “Oh, I have a sword!” she says when I ask her if she has something in her room that was gifted to her. She pulls out a big, heavy, silver sword. “Sadly it is not sharp, since that is not allowed…otherwise it would be a weapon.”

When she was younger her grandpa got her into the Lord of the Rings movies. People who are familiar with the Trilogy might recognize this sword as Andúril. It was gifted to Julie on her 21^st birthday after answering her aunt's “What do you want?” question with “A sword I guess!”.
Anyhow, she is not only a big fan of the movies but also associates them with her grandpa.

Her Family plays an important role in her life, and she tries to visit them as much as possible during weekends and vacations. Pieces like the sword or her guitar show the memories and connections she has with her family and remind her of her home away from home.

To reach Nathalie’s room we walk through the dark hallway again and proceed up the stairs. Upon opening the door she reveals a quite spacious room where she has been living since the beginning of her study. The room is cluttered but not chaotic, Nathalie herself describes it as “organized chaos” where everything is alive and filled, but at the same time, there is a certain order kept and maintained.

I immediately notice her personality and interests shining through. Nathalie has divided her room into designated areas with the help of her furniture. It’s significant for her to separate living, sleeping, and working. She especially wants to avoid working in her room. For her, it is supposed to be a space for relaxation and creativity, a place where she can lay back. She often gets distracted by her personal things when she works at home and therefore prefers to work in school where there are lots of people and noise around. It helps her concentrate.

Like many other students, she wishes for more than just one room. Having more space could improve her daily life by a lot. Things like education, student finance, and the housing crisis, can often lead to similar problems for many fellow students who seek a better space. The results are that many struggle with the same problems as Nathalie: Not being able to separate work and living.

I find out that Nathalie also wishes for a real garden. Many student houses just have a plain backyard with stone flooring, and no grass or place for plants. Even though most students can’t really keep a garden alive, having some kind of nature around can often improve a person's living environment immensely. This also applies to Nathalie. Her favorite thing in her whole room are her pancake plants on the window sill next to her couch.

She keeps quite a few other plants in her room that she takes care of, and even propagates them herself. She says that she often misses the outside and the connection to nature. This is why she likes to bring nature inside in the form of house plants.

Besides plants, she also takes a huge interest in music and cinema. “I have a jar full of movie tickets…maybe around 60 or more. I think I never really counted them. Almost every movie I ever watched in the cinema is in there.” In the end, the estimated 60 turns into 90. The movies date back to as far as 2012. Probably almost everyone has at least one ticket from a movie they have watched in the cinema, be it years ago, or very recently. It is a simple memorabilia of shared experiences with friends or family, or even discovering your all-time favorite movie on the big screen. Now cinemas mainly offer digital tickets instead of printing them out. Like many other cinema enthusiasts, this also upsets Nathalie. Now it will be harder for her to collect new tickets.

One of her walls is clustered with posters that she once found for free at a record store. Originally she was looking for stickers to add to her collection. She likes the artwork of some posters. Other ones were just given to her, and another one she got for Julie because Nathalie knew that she liked a certain band.

Julie and Nathalie's home is a typical student house, with crumbling walls, gray and dusty paint, and an outdated kitchen. The showerhead in the bathroom was once being held by only shoelaces (the literal description of hanging on by a thread). A couple of months ago the basement, which usually serves as a hang-out spot, was flooded. At one point they thought of putting up swimming pool rules as a joke, and the loving name “Koi Pond” was gifted to the newly gained indoor oasis. Now this issue is luckily fixed, and the room can be used to hang out again.

Since there is no real living room, roommates are often open to hanging out in each other’s rooms and when someone has an open door, people are welcome to just walk in and have a chat. In general, the house is a very social and community-focused space, and most of them are good friends with each other, which makes it enjoyable to live there.

For both, this is a really important aspect. Living together with people you know and trust, people you can have fun with. This is often a privilege for students, so Julie and Nathalie highly value the community and bond inside their household. “If you want to, you never have to be alone in this house.”