Pied-à-terre

EM columnist Giselle is about to say goodbye – not only to her Rotterdam student life, but also to her room at home.

I was looking for the right wallpaper, and if you want to choose wallpaper with care, you need to be able to leaf through wallpaper sample books. Specialist shops with wallpaper sample books are becoming increasingly rare, so I took the tram to Hillegersberg, where I got help lifting the heavy books onto the table. Wallpaper books have a specific smell. They smell faintly sour, a bit like chemically treated paper and a bit like the smell that can come from a sewing machine.

I was looking for the right wallpaper for my old room in my parents’ house. They are opposed to any form of stagnation, and together we are turning my room into a second guest room where you can also do yoga. Now that I have not lived there for four years, it is time to give a new life to the room where the things and clothes I no longer pay any attention to are lying.

When I moved out, I was nervous. I was afraid I would become lonely and that I would not manage to do everything on my own. My mother reassured me by suggesting that we would simply call my student room a pied-à-terre. A foothold in Rotterdam for spending the night, but my home was still with my parents.

Now that I am five rooms further on, home has started to shift. Or rather to double, because I say, ‘I’m going home’, whether I am going to my parents or to Rotterdam. I also have not slept in my old room for a long time; I sleep in my brother’s old room, which was renovated earlier and now has a more comfortable bed.

That is how I ended up in Hillegersberg. For my new old room, I was looking for wallpaper with enough detail that you can look at it for a long time and keep discovering something new, but not so much detail that it seems to come to life when you are trying to sleep. In the end I chose a wallpaper inspired by 17th century still lifes. A grey-blue background, with flowers, blackberries and a stray butterfly. It is a textile wallpaper with a leather-like texture.

I ordered three rolls and then went for a short walk through Hillegersberg. Flags were hanging from the houses, with small bags attached to the flagpoles, to celebrate the secondary school pupils who had passed their exams. For the first time in all my time in Rotterdam, I took a tram all the way from the end to the beginning, from the Burgemeester van Kempensingel to the Heemraadsplein, from Hillegersberg to the Nieuwe Westen. On the way I thought of the pupils who had passed their exams and would probably soon be leaving home. I hope that wherever they end up, they find solid ground under their feet.