Written by Usisipho
28 Apr 2018
Student housing in Sweden often includes shared kitchens and common areas. As such, spending time cooking together and hanging out can be a fun part of student life!
moreIf you end up staying in student housing, you’ll find that most places have shared kitchens, while others have built-in kitchenettes. Shared kitchens or common areas are usually great for a few reasons!
Common areas are normally shared between floors / corridors, depending on the size of the apartment block. People in the corridor usually share the space, a number of stoves, ovens and some even share cutlery, crockery and utensils. Sharing in this way has some advantages. You often have access to a much wider range of cooking equipment than you would if you’d buy it own your own. You also get to share cooking tips, tricks and recipes with other people!
Common areas most often focused around a kitchen. But, there’s also often other features like dining tables, balconies, bar areas, couches, televisions and even pool tables. This makes common rooms an awesome place to socialise and get to know other students.
A big part of the social life in student apartment is dinner get-togethers. You can invite some friends over, decide what to cook and spend the evening together cooking and playing games. My favourite part of this is experiencing all kinds of foods and cultures. I’ve gone to different dinner nights where we’ve cooked everything from Bangladeshi style chicken curry with basmati rice, to enchiladas, to four varied pizzas, to a prawn curry with noodles (if you can’t tell, yes, I really like curry).
When dinner is done (and everyone is full and sleepy…) we’ll often do some activity afterwards. This will depend on what you and your friends like. We’ll usually do something like card or board games; some crowd favourites include Coup and Settlers of Catan! Maybe watch the football, mid-week Champions League is always a good bet. Or, we may just have a light meal and head out to the city for an afterwork, especially on a Friday.
Wondering what afterwork is? Check out Anita’s afterwork post here.
Curious about student life in Sweden? Send me an email at usisipho.studyinsweden [at] gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!
