I want to have a fresh start here - at EMIS, at KTH, in Kista, in Stockholm, in Sweden. Therefore I need to get it all out, and then continue with much more pleasant things and ignore the shitty ones.

It might seem “funny”, but I’m complaining about KTH after just 2 weeks.. That’s says a lot about their induction.

I do admit from the start that this is my experience, and that maybe I was just really really out of luck.

Dorms

The first wall that I hit was called “dorms”. I remember picking up the key around 1pm, on Friday the 15th, from the Valhallvägen Campus.

I remember it was so nice, yet so weird. I was practically rushed into signing the housing contract. It was nice that it all went quickly, it was weird because I think I was entitled to read the contract first and then sign in. Not with girls though - they were nicely invited to read, they were explained about this and that, about Internet, etc. Equality my ass!

Arrived at the dorms, and saw the room. At that moment it was just not cleaned, and didn’t seem like such a big job. And I also wanted to keep my spirits up, so I just took photos, looked at the view that I will have during my future stay there. I also ignored the fact that I had no key to the main entrance of the dorms (actually I had one - they have a magnetic key, but they don’t tell you, and it is so old that I easily mistook it for a trinklet).

On Saturday I met with Trevor, and he was ok to come give me a hand with cleaning the place. Of course, he saw it.. and I take it that by not saying anything, he had the same impression - it’s not clean, but nothing we cannot fix in a couple of hours. Bought stuff from COOP, from ICA.. spent like 70€ in an hour on just the stupid tools and chemicals we needed.

We started with the kitchen cabinets… I think after an hour and a half we were still cleaning them. The only difference was that he gave up and he was just washing them, while I was close to the outcome of a sand jet blower. During 4-5 hours.. Trevor washed some of the cabinets, some drawers and mopped the floor. In that time, all I could do was scrubb 2 cabinets to the level where I could say “It’s now clean” - and believe me it’s not that I was requiring that it’s good to eat directly from it.

On Sunday I was back at the place, on my own. I clean some more. On Monday the same.

On Tuesday I was all day long at Rita, in Västra Skogen, sleeping. It was probably the worst days ever in terms of “I’m not sick, but I just don’t want to live”.

The following days, I was mostly living at Rita, where I had the peace of mind, the Internet and the cooking tools, and I was going to my dorms as if I was going to a construction yard.

And slowly… very slowly actually, it came to a halt yesterday when I managed to clean my oven as well. And with that there’s just the small entrance hall that needs to be cleaned by Gaya.

So.. it took 2 weeks to have the place clean and liveable!

My conclusion is that I need to thank to K Gulbinas, or Roche, or Ludwik Victor.. or to all three for not cleaning the place.. ever! I had Gulbinas as a door tag, Roche as a mailbox tag and Ludwik is still on the tenants’ chart! And let’s not forget KTH whcih was supposed to charge up to 300€ the previous tenant for not leaving the room clean! Not “in order”, not “with nothing broken”, but clean! Scrubbing and not seeing the difference, or collecting a wig of the floor, or cleaning pure carbon from the oven, or cleaning oil, food or wax off of a number of places… is just disgusting and demeaning!

And for all that.. I got a 500kr discount on my first rent… 50€.

But the filthy place was not all.. no, no..

The cherry on the cake came two days ago when I found out that there’s a screw missing from my door locker. I wonder if that’s something I didn’t notice, or happened during my stay there.

The mailbox problem was something unique as well. So I first got a key to none of the mailboxes there, on Friday the 15th.. then I was redirected to my the dorms’ care-taker on Monday… then I called him, only to find out on Thursday that he is not in charge of me, since I’m renting from Svenska Bostäder through KTH, so I must talk to KTH.. then on Friday the 22nd, I was given another key that should work, and a map in order to know which is my mailbox (they are not numbered, not anything - you’re supposed to guess!)… and amazingly it did work.

Then I tagged my mailbox.. but it wasn’t until Thursday the 28th that the mailman noticed my name, and registered me in the Post Office system. And in all this time, practically KTH managed to make the post office return two envelopes to Skatteverket, to stall me from getting a bank account and ID card, and if it wasn’t for Dmitry (aka “the inside man”) telling me my personnummer, I would have been fucked up a little bit more. Thank you, KoTeHå!

Then there’s the lack of signs towards the garbage dump.. which lead to having people put their trash in the public bins..

Then there’s the laundry room.. which has no instructions on how to book yourself for doing the laundry..

Then there’s no “keep the entrance doors closed”… plus the mailman always locks it open with the bench, although he usually just needs to enter once to put all the mail in our mailboxes..

It’s almost like no man’s land!