Waking up to the sound of a drill in new student building

Near the entrance to the campus, next to the Bayle building, project developer Xior has built a new student apartment building. The eight-storey building consists of 259 rental studios varying from eighteen to thirty-two square metres for first-year international EUR students. The rooms cost between 600 and 690 euros inclusive.

The building was already fully booked in July and needed to be ready by 1 September. But as with many building projects, delays crept in. “All the rooms are more or less finished. We just need to put some finishing touches to the rooms on the ground floor,” says Robin Cremers, spokesperson for Xior. “The whole building should be finished by the end of September.”

New students have already moved into the finished parts of the building. However, they still have to navigate between construction workers and scaffolding to get to their rooms. The corridors haven’t yet been painted and there are still numbers pencilled onto the walls. From the suspended scaffolding, fearsome sounds reverberate through all the walls and when you go outside, you have to be careful that you don’t get run over by an excavator.

Dominik Filip from Slovakia is studying Finance and Investment at EUR. He’s happy enough with the room, but hates the noise, which often starts up at seven in the morning. Furthermore, there were lots of things missing from his furnished room. “I only got curtains yesterday. Until then, everyone waiting for the tram outside could enjoy a live show behind glass when I got dressed. The only thing missing were the red lights.”

James O’Donnell from Ireland is doing a master in Behavioural Economics at EUR. His toilet needs repairing, but apart from that he thinks it’s a fantastic building and he gets on well with other students on his floor. He often has his curtains shut because he lives on the so-called inner circle, the building’s inner garden. “You can easily see into your neighbour’s room, which means they can see you too.”

Giorgos Verros from Greece has the biggest room in the building and is also studying Behavioural Economics. For Verros, the university system in the Netherlands takes some getting used to. “In Greece it’s totally different. However, the way in which building projects are managed is much more similar to the Greek system. We were promised that some minor adjustments would be made after 1 September. But,” he laughs, “in Greek we simply call this a γιαπί, a construction site.”

In consultation with EUR, the new building on campus is exclusively intended for new international EUR students. This group often has difficulties in finding a room in Rotterdam by themselves.