Accomodation – Moving into an Apartment in Linköping instead of a Corridor

First of all: Congratulations to all the newly admitted students and welcome to Linköping! As you might have heard, one of the most important next steps is to start the process of finding accomodation here in Linköping. For that the easiest way is to register with Swedish housing companies such as Heimstaden or Studentbostader. Especially with Studentbostader it is advisable to register as soon as possible as they have a points and queue system. You get one point for every day you are registered, and the more points you have, the more chances you have of being selected for accommodation. For Heimstaden you just have to choose different offers you are interested in and be available for (online) viewing. Studentbostader and Heimstaden offer corridor rooms and apartments but from my experience you will find more offers for apartments with Heimstaden than with Studentbostader.

I moved here last August together with my boyfriend, who is also studying in Linköping. We have thought about moving in together before we decided to move to Linköping already but we were unsure once we decided to do our Master here. I was afraid that I wouldn’t meet as many people, if I don’t live in a corridor. In a corridor you share your kitchen (usually) with nine other students. This provides the opportunity to meet new friends very easily, which is from my point of view the biggest advantage of living in a corridor. But to me it also sounded quite complicated to share your kitchen with so many people, since you will only know who you are living with once you arrive. I heard both positive and negative stories from my friends who live in corridors. Some complain about hygiene and others found really close friends in their room mates. It is of course always possible to change accomodation, if you are unhappy with your living situation.

In the end I decided to look for an apartment, because I wanted to live with my boyfriend and also because I wanted some more space than just a corridor room. Especially for winter I already imagined that I will be at home quite a lot and I wanted to be able to have some space and use this space however I like without having to compromise with room mates. Since there is often simply the recommendation to move in a corridor, I wanted to outline the advantages of an own apartment here. I started looking for housing pretty much immediatly after I got the admission results. By expressing my interest in different offers from Heimstaden, I eventually got the opportunity to visit an apartment online. We got to see the apartment via a Teams Call and got lucky enough to be chosen for it. It was very scary to rent a place that I had never seen in reality, but luckily enough everything worked out fine and when we arrived we found exactly what we hoped for.

It is important to know, that there are no furnished apartements (at least from what I saw) available. The apartment I found with Heimstaden however still had quite great facilities already. We had a washing machine and a dryer already, a big warddrobe for all our clothes, a perfectly new kitchen and several shelfs in all rooms. This was immensly helpful especially since we were moving in from abroad. We brought other big furnitures with us from Germany by renting a moving truck and driving here for more than 14 hours. That was quite the adventure but still cheaper than buying all of the furniture new in Linköping. We arrived in July with our stuff and started to put everything up. Then we spent our first week mostly at IKEA where we bought a table for the kitchen and most importantly lights for the ceiling. There are also great second hand shops in and around Linköping, where you can find furniture for very good prices. Furthermore, the university has a secondhand store run by the association NAVITAS, which also has great offers.

The move was for sure a lot of work especially since we had to bring back the moving truck to our home town and come back again by car. I would still do it again and really enjoy living in my own apartment, since it gives you so much space to express yourself and truly feel at home. It is more expensive to live in an apartment than in a corridor room, but to me it is really worth it. Not only since my apartment is much more modern than the corridor rooms I know, but also since compared to where I come from the rent is still very low here. It made surviving the Swedish winter much cosier and is also a great place to have friends over, which I found btw also without living in a corridor, mainly thanks to the great welcome activities organised by the student associations at the beginning of the semester.