Living in Lund: Gylleholm

N.B: This entry is a part of a series of student accommodation reviews directed at new students looking for apartments in Lund. Lund(on) Times is not affiliated with AF Bostäder, LU Accommodation or any other apartment rental service. More visual material may be added in the future. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Gylleholm is one of the smallest complexes in the AFB has to offer. Resting right between Ulrikedal and Parentesen, the location bears all the amenities and drawbacks of southern Lund. What Gylleholm can offer is nothing particularly unique, but it just may be the ultimate hideaway while still retaining a somewhat central location in town.

A former resident of Gylleholm, Therese, was kind enough to provide us with some brief insight as to how life was in her studio apartment:

"I lived in Gylleholm for almost one year. I only considered Gylleholm as a place to stay, since I wanted to stay in a one room apartment and not in a corridor-room. So at the time, when I was looking for a place to stay, this was the best option for me. It seemed to be a nice apartment and I liked the location, and it is the only AFB apartment I've stayed in. It was a bit small but it worked for me. A good place for one person to stay at."

With only 48 apartments in a space roughly the size of two tennis courts, Gylleholm gives new meaning to the phrase "secluded student living". Yet with Parentesen right next door, noise pollution might shatter this ideal. Therese says this was not really a problem though:

"The area was calm and quite, but sometimes you could hear the parties from Parentesen. But it wasn't that bad and it never bothered me."

Much like in other single apartment complexes, interaction with neighbors was limited.

"I did not have any contact with my neighbors since I hardly ever met them," Therese recalls the level of social cohesion. "All apartments have their own entrances as opposed to corridors, so I actually almost never met my neighbors. But a friend of mine also stayed there too, so we hung out of course." 

As most people living in single apartments, Therese was mainly happy to not have to live in a corridor. Other problems were negligible. 

"There wasn't anything that was really bad but it got a little bit cold during winter. But maybe I have myself to blame since I never complained about it. Maybe they could've turned up the heat or something. The location was definitely the best feature."

The room had a floor surface of 22.3m² and cost about 3,900 SEK per month. However, Therese believes the current rent must be up to 4,000 SEK already. Unfortunately, Therese had no photos of her former apartment, but we can assume it is pretty similar to the rest of the rooms AFB has to offer.

Click here for AFB's information on Gylleholm. Location on map.

Living in Lund: Studentlyckan

N.B: This entry is a part of a series of student accommodation reviews directed at new students looking for apartments in Lund. Lund(on) Times is not affiliated with AF Bostäder, LU Accommodation or any other apartment rental service. More visual material may be added in the future. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Pros	Cons
+ Quiet and peaceful	- Hard to secure a place; no furniture
+ Own kitchen, shower, bathroom with a tub (extremely spacious)	- Relatively expensive (~5,400sek/month + electricity)
+ Close to town (location on map)	- Far from campus, larger supermarkets
+ Small convenience store next to it	- Ugly on the exterior

Click here for AFB's information on Studentlyckan

Single bedroom apartments seem to have a mixed reputation and penetration across the world. However, Nordic nations embrace them and consider them a taken-for-granted mode of inhabiting an urban center. They are most popular among young couples in the middle of their studies or at the beginning of a burgeoning career. Studentlyckan is definitely known as the couples' apartment block. "It is the romanticized image of living in Lund: you start here in a corridor, then you find a partner and eventually move together to Studentlyckan," Rebecca, a now graduated student laughs when asked about the apartment complex's reputation. She lived in the apartment with her boyfriend for a year, after living by herself for 1½ years.
"Queuing here takes a while longer. Studentlyckan and Ulrikedal were our main options because of the most space for the best price and an okay location."

Figure 22. The large spacious bedroom has plenty of closet space, and even a tiny balcony. The romance is shattered by the sheer ugliness of the post-Soviet exterior of the Studentlyckan apartments.

Located in southern Lund, just beyond Ulrikedal and Parentesen, Studentlyckan is probably the most secluded and quietest apartment block in the AFB catalogue. The apartment boasts a large living room, a small kitchen, a spacious bedroom, more than enough closet space, and even a bathtub in the bathroom.
"This is just one layout though. I have seen other room configurations in the building too. Some of the apartments have their 'living room' as another bedroom," Rebecca says. "It's good for both couples and friends. There is another apartment layout in the building where the bedroom is the same size without the balcony. All of them have plenty of closet space and a big kitchen though. The bathroom is really big too, and the bathtub is pure luxury."

Figure 23. There is indeed a bathtub!

Of course, the price strikes you as very high, comparing it to the corridor rooms available. Yet as Rebecca points out, between two people it can be even more affordable in the long run. As an exception to corridor rooms, she paid for her own electricity too.
"We have a company called Kraftringen, which is probably the most common one for AFB residents.”
The level of seclusion might even be too much for someone. While the complex is away from the city, clubs and noisy corridors, Studentlyckan lies right on the other end of the noise spectrum even regarding regular conversation.
"I see a lot of my neighbors, but I do not talk to them," Rebecca admits. In true Nordic interaction, exchange is kept to a minimum in the staircase and yard area. Not much happens in terms of communal activity, although the green area in the center of the buildings serves as a good picnic area during summer.
"Especially during summer and spring, you can just look out and see your friends," Rebecca recalls about the residents utilizing the green area. "I can just call down to them, and join them outside. It would be pretty easy to organize something bigger too, but BBQ's are the typical events going on here."

Figure 24 & 25. The amount of kitchen counter for two people is more than in a kitchen deemed spacious enough for 10 people.

All in all, Rebecca is completely satisfied with her life in Studentlyckan. The only complaints that comes to mind are minor cosmetic ones.

“I think the appearance of the buildings is depressing, especially during winter time. It is really nice and cozy inside but every time I look out the window I am appalled. The kitchen counters are also very low, which is a bad thing for a tall person like myself. Also it can get cold during winters and hot during summers, but that’s not really a problem.”
When given a choice between corridors and single apartments, Rebecca's choice is clear:
"I got a feeling of the corridor life, and I can say it really depends on the other people there. I think its a general trend that people who have studied for longer end up in apartments like this. You even have some families with children here. You also do get parties, but none of the excess corridor noise. Personally, I enjoy this type of accommodation more than a corridor." 

Figure 26. All of the furniture belongs to the resident. 

Living in Lund: Dammhagen (Preview)

N.B: This entry is a part of a series of student accommodation reviews directed at new students looking for apartments in Lund. Lund(on) Times is not affiliated with AF Bostäder, LU Accommodation or any other apartment rental service. More visual material may be added in the future. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Dammhagen (pronounced Doom-haagan according to certain Stockholmers of my corridor) is the newest addition to the AFB lineup of Lund student accommodation. Completed last month, the new building filled up quickly with new tenants and has since become a bustling block of student life comparable to its neighbors Smålands Nation and Parentesen. As it is a building still growing its soul from the hopes and dreams of the students dwelling within, it would be redundant to review the apartments based on peoples' living experiences there. Yet yours truly got a chance to go check out the Dammhagen Gårdsfest for your benefit. Video and photo material is scarce but hopefully this will provide a sneak peak for people looking to rent an apartment there next fall.

Figure 17. They served hot dogs for the open day visitors . +1 for AFB.

Dammhagen features a variety of room layouts for single, double or three bedroom apartments. The open days last January featured a single and a double bedroom for display. The single bedroom layout was an exciting one: the bedroom space was a pavilion/balcony/terrace (nobody agrees on what to call this in English) above the kitchen and living room space. There is a large window bringing in plenty of natural light (or the wandering gazes of pedestrians on the street) and creates an even more spacious feeling in the already large room.

Figure 18. The bedroom pavilion also has the most storage space I've seen for an AFB apartment.

The kitchen surface is large enough for many people to cook all at once. Dinner parties in this kind of layout are a must. I'm certain the social space is larger than in many corridor common rooms. As for the living room by itself (which I neglected to take a picture of), one can easily fit a small dining table and other furniture to create a cozy environment. Even with the large window, I would not expect the space to get too cold even during the winter. Yet, again, I'm talking after experiencing Scottish devotion to uninsulated granite blocks. Others might disagree with the coldness factor. The bathroom is, yes you guessed it, extremely spacious for just one person. If you would take out the bathroom walls, you could fit a jacuzzi there perfectly.

Figure 19. Kitchen surfaces (living room behind the photographer) and bathroom sink (shower behind photographer). Photographer is probably an overly charitable description of my skills with a smartphone camera.

The two bedroom apartment is not quite as big on space as the single bedroom I saw. A more conservative kitchen serves as the apartment living room at the same time and does not have a window. This apartment probably looked smaller than it actually was in contrast to the single apartment. The bedrooms are not quite as big as in AFB corridors, but you will not be pressed for space. You can fit a nice amount of furniture for yourself, along with a dining table into the kitchen. The toilet and shower is a shared one in this unit and doesn't quite have the same airport terminal feeling of spaciousness as the previous one did. However, what more do you honestly need in a flat? In this blogger's opinion, the single room was a bit excessive anyway.

Figure 20. A two bedroom apartment bedroom in all its Nordic interior designing beauty.

Dammhagen strikes me as a new kind of student apartment. Many people I have talked to in Lund have been completely averse to living in corridor apartments due to no guarantee on noise levels or general cleanliness. The Millenials seem to be rejecting the Hollywood portrayal of the frathouse as the ultimate student experience and prefer to have their own space with their own things to withdraw to. This is supported by the queues for other single or double apartments on AFB's website: they are twice or three times as long as the ones for certain corridor rooms. So who knows, maybe Dammhagen is not going to be the last building to feature such spacious rooms. If space, quiet and peace is what you're after, then consider looking at this apartment block upon moving to Lund (no guarantee on the noise pollution from Smålands and Parentesen).

Figure 21. The laundry room in the basement and the view of wintery southern Lund from the top floor fire escape.

For AFB's information on Dammhagen, click here.

Living in Lund: Parentesen

N.B: This entry is a part of a series of student accommodation reviews directed at new students looking for apartments in Lund. Lund(on) Times is not affiliated with AF Bostäder, LU Accommodation or any other apartment rental service. More visual material may be added in the future. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Pros	Cons
+ Social, active student life	- Loud, noisy, can be overwhelming
+ Affordable (~2,900 SEK per month)	- Shared kitchens & showers
+ Spaces open up quickly	- Many unfurnished rooms
+ Close to southern campus, town, nations (location on map)	- Far away from northern campus, large supermarkets

Click here for AFB's information on Parentesen.

The apartment I painstakingly acquired for myself at the beginning of the 2014 Fall semester has all in all delivered extremely comfortable living conditions. Then again, having experienced the level of dilapidation defining Scottish infrastructure, my standards were alarmingly low last autumn. Fortunately, hot water, insulation, and double glazed windows are taken for granted in this part of Europe. Good thing for me, as I can focus on describing more relevant things in terms of practical living.

Figure 14. Interior of the room (what a transformation). Approximately 17m² not including bathroom.

The choice for corridor sizes in Parentesen is 10 or 19 people altogether. Each corridor has rooms facing the courtyard (noise hazard alert) and the outer arc. As far as I know, its hard to tell during the application process which way you will be facing. With 18 others living with you, Parentesen is one of the most densely populated AFB buildings there is, yet the rooms are around the same size as in the larger apartment complexes (see upcoming reviews on Delfi and Sparta). The space is surprisingly adaptable, and can comfortably fit a double bed, desk, sofa and even a TV. The personal bathrooms are cramped but they serve their purpose. A few rooms have their own shower, but most residents have to share the two communal showers on each side of the corridor. So even with a large amount of people to share the common areas with, you can create your own peaceful (quiet not guaranteed) corner away from your studies and social obligations.

Figure 15. The corridor itself, and the bathroom. Paired for unclear reasons.

The communal living room is large and spacious. With furniture pointed towards the TV, the homelike atmosphere in the lounge area is guaranteed. Not withstanding the ground floor corridors, all Parentesen lounges are divided between two opposing corridors on the same floor. Residents from each side have a small kitchen space to cook in. Believe me when I say small. Even with the divide putting 9-10 people on each side, cooking with just three other people at the same time is already uncomfortable. However, since people in their early 20's are still waiting to discover their functional daily rhythm, there are not too many times when you have three people going hungry at once.

Figure 16. The kitchen and living room (top photos). The balcony and view of the courtyard (lower photos).

The Parentesen community among the Swedes is a tight one. Many people over their years here have found friends across hallways, other floors, and different blocks entirely. I mention this because the rotation of international students is fast and unforgiving. However, this is another advantage for new applicants. Spaces open up every semester, meaning that this will probably be one of your best bets for student accommodation.

Parentesen is known as one of the party centrals of Lund student life for a good reason. During the Freshers week (Swedish: novischveckan; Finnish: fuksiviikko) in September and January, there is a guaranteed chance of loud pre-, regular, and after parties for every night of the week. The open grass area in the middle is an ideal place for summertime beers and hanging out. Furthermore, Parentesen has an annual spring brännboll (a softball-like sport that is essentially a drinking game) tournament which has been going on since the 1970s. Each corridor forms a team to compete against the other corridors in a festival of unadulterated sports and merriment. The winners win the privilege of organizing next years tournament, while the losers have to deal with the mess produced during the several days of alcohol fueled pseudo-sports. Pictures of this event can be found on the Brännboll på Parentesen -FB page.

For the young and young-minded students looking for an affordable room where they are close to the action, Parentesen is an excellent choice. Especially if you do not mind a bit of a mess indoors or outdoors and are willing to pick up after others every now and then, this is a good place to move into to start living your new student life. Everything can happen here. It is the magic of Södra Esplanaden and the grace of the local law enforcement that creates the conditions for this veritable Neverland of AFB accomodation to exist. 

Living in Lund Introduction Pt.2: The Perceived Connection between Apartment Hunting and Gambling

Following my experiences in Scotland, which you can read in Part 1 of this introduction, I thought private student accommodation companies were at least a portion of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I lived the last 3 years of my undergrad degree in private housing owned by members of the public with far more success than the sad run I had with Unite housing. So one can understand my reluctance to return to a mode of living requiring shared kitchens and having a large company be responsible for the paint on my walls. Still, my choices were as limited as my patience for the entire process.

AF Bostäder (AFB) is not quite the type of housing company you'd run into in the UK. They only operate in Lund, and according to their Twitter page they rent out around 6,000 apartments to students. This is by far the best chance for many people to get a place to live in Lund itself. Just as long as you endure the first hurdles of bureaucratic nonsense and waiting in desperation to hear any good news at all.

Getting to know AFB

Beginning your journey into living with AFB usually begins with a notification telling you the system signup is not open for you yet. Probably to give new potential residents a more equal footing in the application process, the AFB internet team does not open up the new applicant accounts until the first week of July. This would make sense, unless the system would be inherently based on a stringent "first come, first served" -principle.

The website at first does not even specify that you need to put your name down for specific open apartments. In fact, the term "lottery" is so pervasive on the site that you kinda feel like giving up immediately. I don't know about the average Swedish applicant, but I have yet to win in a lottery draw. In fact, "the lottery" conjures up images of once in a life time, life changing events that you only see on the news. I would have been more assured of my chances if it had been called the "Crash a Plane and Get Struck by Lightening the Same Day" -housing allocation principle. Furthermore, most lottery winners do not manage to hold onto their newly acquired wealth and usually end up poorer than they started. So what was I to make of this phrasing? Do they wish to convey the image that your time studying will actually destroy your life completely? But I digress....

Fortunately, calling the process a lottery is a complete misnomer. Your chances of getting a flat are apparently determined by when you signed up into the AFB system. As this became apparent, I was all ready to settle for flat hunting in Malmö, Stockholm, or a daily commute from Helsinki. Once I signed up for the system, the July "lottery" had been going on for a few days, meaning there were dozens, if not hundreds of people who had priority over me. Yet with a week of ticking boxes and trying to figure out what life choices I had made to deserve this ordeal, my queue numbers began to improve and after a week and a half I signed my contract online. Yes, they do all their paper work with online forms and it could not be easier for the client. Thus I can find it in my heart to forgive these wonderful people for their blatant misuse of the word "lottery", and the moments of hysterical panic.

So how does it work?

Figure 13. The AFB website lottery screen. GREEN CIRCLE: "N" denotes priority for new clients. BLUE OVAL: Top date is when apartment opened up for queuing, bottom date is the date when apartment will be offered to the first person in the queue. RED ARROW: In this column, you will find numbers showing your position in the queue and amount of people in the queue all in all.

You can queue for three apartments at once, and your queue number might change over time quite a bit. Usually it will grow as people jump in front of you especially for the single room apartments and cheaper corridor rooms. Yet as the people who signed up before you manage to secure apartments for themselves, your chances will improve too. The best bet is to check AFB.se when they open up the new application round for the upcoming semester, then fill in your application early that morning to get going right from the start.

As a complementary service, they arrange frequent online chat sessions to address tenants' problems directly. You do not even have to drag yourself to their HQ or incur criminally high phone bills by dialing in from abroad. What is severely lacking on the other hand is the amount of available pictures or testimonials of these apartments. To help this situation, Lund(on) Times will dedicate a portion of its content (okay, probably all of it seeing how active I am with blogging to begin with) to reviewing and interviewing the AFB student apartments across town. As long as nobody files an injunction against me, I will bring you cellphone quality photos from the apartments and surrounding areas, along interview testimonials from individuals living in them currently. Hopefully this will prove as a useful service, and more importantly a much needed resuscitation for this overreaching piece of amateur journalism...

Living in Lund Introduction Pt.1: Soul Shattering Scottish Student Accommodation

If there is any aspect about Sweden that makes Scotland appear like a wounded baby deer being mugged at knife point on the streets of Glasgow, its the overall infrastructure of student accommodation. The state of housing in the UK even by the UK's own standards is beyond atrocious: mold grows in places mold has not been known to grow in, boilers exist only to burn gas without heating water, and double glazed windows are considered a luxury. Stuff like this can be overlooked however. What is harder to ignore is a hostile housing corporation that is hellbent on ripping off its own customers they are forcing to live in these inhospitable conditions.

The money grubbing Scrooge McDucks I stayed with during my first year in Scotland go by the name of Unite Students (they've adopted this name more recently). Not an entirely mislabeled organization, since anyone who has lived in their houses have united in protest over their experience of not experiencing a proper tenant-landlord relationship. The building I stayed in myself had been in service for 2-3 years, yet you could not tell by looking at it. The interior of the building resembled a barracks constructed with the work ethic of the Red Army (the Red Army of 1939, not the later incarnations that actually did some damage). Never mind the nightly sex noises, you could feel people walking on the floor above you. Insulation was a thing of fantasy, which was especially bad since the winter I stayed there was one when temperatures dropped to -10 in December. The only heating unit was an electric radiator which switched itself off automatically after 10 minutes. You would think this would be a massive issue when sleeping, yet with the constant 4am fire alarms you were awake half the night anyway.

Figure 12. The Heart of Darkness if you ask me... (Source: biznet.org.uk)

We had frequent flat inspections due to the overabundance of 17 year olds living on their own for the first time. However, this did not mean we had staff available to us when we actually needed them. Take for example the time the fuse blew out in my room. For normal houses you would not even consider this an issue. Neither did I in Unite housing, until I discovered the fusebox was behind a locked wall panel. No biggie, I just called the office (4pm on a Friday). They did not pick up so I walked to the reception in our building, which turned out to be closed (still 4pm on a Friday). I went to their website and learned that minor issues like this had to be reported online anyway. I filled out the online form and further learned that repairs were not done over the weekend. I waited 3 days without power or lights before a repair man came the following Monday. A repair man for a job that I could have done 72 hours earlier if only my flat was not baby proofed.

The bureaucratic side of Unite Students was one big exhibit for why the human race is doomed to extinction this century. After I had checked out and started looking for a new flat in town, Unite announced they wished to garnish my deposit for repainting my room; a job they valued at £70. First of all, there was nothing to repaint in the first place. Secondly, I hope it was one hell of a paint job, because me and my three flatmates were charged £15 each for repainting our communal areas which actually needed repainting. Raging, I went online again (I had long given up on their phone and reception services at this point) to find out which way I could complain the loudest. Turns out there was only one way to complain about deposit refunds: via snail mail to their head office. Probably not surprising since they seemed to have a hard time picking up the phone anyway. Nevertheless, if there is a better way of discouraging Millenials from getting in touch with a private company, I have yet to run into it.
N.B. Upon trying to find evidence of this system on their website, I've learned that the company has begun/been forced to work with Mydeposits Scotland. This is a company that holds the deposits of all people who rent their domicile in Scotland to prevent fraud like the one I have just described. And yes, you stay in touch with them online, not with pen and paper.

For many of you, the initial reaction might be to dismiss this rant, as it has the characteristics of a reactionary adolescent outburst. Still, when the rent is £127 per week, you move in expecting the standard stuff like repair services and heating to be in working order. A large part of this misallocation of rental funds was a result of misinformation or unavailable info. A case I have found to be true in Lund too. However, Lund student accommodation has all the redeeming qualities to make up for this discrepancy. A discrepancy I want Lund(on) Times to help patch up; I will elaborate on this in Part 2 of this introduction...

Lund Comedy Festival

Figure 11. The magnificent Bill Bailey drew a crowd

In a complete departure from what most international students do on a Friday night, the Finnish Committee spent money on something else except alcohol and joined a bunch of middle aged Swedes to watch a middle aged English comedian.

The Lund Comedy Festival is a world renowned event. The top line of Swedish stand-up, along with a few foreign headliners gather to this tiny university town for an extended weekend of recording new laugh tracks.

The show we headed for was Bill Bailey's 110 minute stand-up extravaganza. It was in fact his second time in Lund, as he was a big hit at last years festival. The British orator discussed things primarily relating to Britain, with some more global pop-culture thrown in here and there, and of course the mandatory jokes written specifically for the local audience. More than once I laughed with tears in my eyes, wondering if this is a way I could actually die in then bring it on.

The act had me thinking of why the Finnish stand-up scene is so unremarkable even to us Finns. Sure some big names come around to Helsinki every now and then, but the Finnish comedians themselves are unknown even on a national level. The moment you think Sweden and Finland have almost indistinguishable cultural preferences, you realize you might be a bit too comfortable with thinking the Nordic countries are completely harmonious.

Surprisingly enough a tiny town such as Lund boasts plenty of cultural events in the calendar. Probably no small thanks to an aging rich population, and an active student scene. Not many places this size can boast internationally renowned headliners for a comedy festival. Then again, I believe it might be one of the biggest festivals in the country. Can't help but be happy for finding a place like this.