Anthology of Random Memories, Introduction and Notes
Three years ago, in my final year of high school, some of my friends went to a CEU open day. The first thing they mentioned when they came back wasn’t about classes or opportunities: it was students protesting outside, holding signs and demanding that the university break its contract with its housing partner. I carved the name into my memory: Zoom.
Later, after getting accepted and starting to look for housing in Vienna, an article in The Stand caught my attention. You might remember Eli’s piece in the June issue of 2024 titled “Zoom Housing: A student’s reality check.” I was hesitant about Zoom at first, but there was one good reason to go for it: my roommates wouldn’t just be random strangers, but fellow students from CEU. Ultimately I took the risk, and ended up as part of the last generation of CEU students to live there.
Some explanation: Zoom was, and probably still is, a small housing company operating two apartment buildings in Margareten: Siebenbrunnengasse 58 (also known as SBG) and Johannagasse 36. The apartments had one to three bedrooms with two beds each, plus a living room, kitchen, restroom, and bathroom. By the time I moved there, Johannagasse was already used only for Airbnb, while SBG had a few apartments for short-term stays, with around seven for CEU students. Siebenbrunnengasse 58 also had a small study room and gym, a laundry room, and a garden terrace, shared with an army of pigeons and mice.
The rent was out of proportion. In Zoom’s final year, each of us paid €525 per month. That might sound fine for the fifth district, but not for a shared room in a six-person apartment. For further information, see Eli’s article (Eli Celeste-Cohen, "Zoom Housing: A Student’s Reality Check," The Stand, June 2024, 4–5.). Altogether, our flat cost over three thousand euros per month. It feels difficult not to complain here, but let’s not stir things up right now.
It ended quietly. The contract with Zoom was not renewed by CEU. You could already sense the end in October 2024, when housing coordination sent out an email about a newly built dorm on Puchsbaumgasse 1 and when they updated the accommodation recommendations. All ties disappeared and now SBG can only be found on Booking.com. Zoom is over.
It wasn’t all bad. Most of my CEU friendships were formed through living at Zoom, and who knows have many friends we would have made otherwise. Living together with someone forms a fundamentally different bond than spending time with them on campus. Zoom used to be interwoven even tighter into undergraduate life: at the start of the BA program, living there was mandatory; later, it became just strongly recommended. It wasn’t just a place to live, it became a shared experience for four generations of students.
With this article, I’m trying to showcase the good things. People who lived there in completely different years can still bond instantly over Zoom and often do not realize that. Here are some short stories submitted anonymously by people who lived there, with some notes:
*
First of all, what, is Zoom over? What a tragedy, I will simply never have as nice a shower as I had when I lived in SBG... The landlord was by far the “best” member of the building. In our year, the landy was at war with our speakers, with very funny situations that would not hit that well written down. However, we also must commemorate the naked men, who made our year at SBG truly special with his naked shows every Thursday in the hotel on the other side.
Notes: I can confirm that the nudist couple were regulars for the entire CEU Zoom Generation. I can still see them smoking outside on a Spring morning.
*
They charged an apartment I was associated with over 3000 euros in damages at the end of the year for the counters being clogged from water around the sink; however, it was their own repairman's fault for not sealing it correctly. Then they charged an additional 500 for damage on doors that we found were there before moving in.
Notes: I choose to believe that they need to renovate the entire kitchen every year. Someone has to pay for it: CEU students must be extremely careless about washing the dishes, on average.
*
One of my roommates, G. owned a rice cooker. I don't know whether he bought it specifically for Zoom or brought it from home, but either way, it was at first not explicitly publicly available; in other words, he would be the only one to use it for several months.
Whenever G. made rice, he would leave it in the rice cooker for a short while. Usually, this wouldn't be too odd, as rice cookers have a designated “keep warm” mode, but on this rice cooker that either did not work at all or did not switch on automatically. Irrespective of how exactly the rice cooker was broken, the effect was that he always turned it off when not actively cooking rice. And yet, he kept the rice in it for usually a few days.
Until one time, G. neglected to either use or throw out the rice, or indeed to cook new rice (which would have required one of the two to happen first), for much longer than usual. How long exactly? Roughly a full month.
I had noticed the rice cooker on the living room floor (where it was kept) was full and that I hadn't seen my roommate touch it in a while, but I figured I must have simply not been present when he did. That is, I thought this way until another roommate, N., expressed his suspicion that the rice had been standing there for a month. As something of a joke test, he decided to open the lid and smell the rice—regretting his decision almost immediately as he jumped away from the month-old rotting rice. Neither of us wanted to take on the responsibility of throwing it out for (hopefully) obvious reasons, so we waited for G. to come home.
Another roommate, Z., arrived before him. We explained the situation, finding it pretty funny, and he decided to follow N. in smelling the rice—with much the same results as before. Finally, G. came home. And what followed was a several-minute-long theatre-like show between G. and Z. to smell the rice (who decided to sacrifice himself, bless his soul), attempting to throw out the trash, as me and N. stood at the open balcony door, keeping away from the smell and watching the whole thing. It began with both of them (G. and Z.) dressing up as if for a week in the desert, covering their mouths and noses especially. Then, Z. held a trash bag open, and G. was supposed to put the rice from the cooker into the bag. But as soon as this started, Z. (in his own, albeit paraphrased words) was so shocked by the horrible smell that he forgot what he was doing and dropped the trash bag to the floor. Thankfully, no rice was spilled on the floor (at least I think so?), but it still made for an extremely amusing experience to watch. What followed was poor coordination and some odd gesturing (as they couldn't talk well through the DIY masks) as G. was beginning to pour hot water and dish soap into the rice cooker in hopes of cleaning it. Additionally, Z. decided he might as well throw out the normal trash as well while he's at it, but this also only presented itself through gesturing, and having to walk past each other in the cramped kitchen space and very close to the trash bag. Ultimately, they managed to throw out the rice and clean the rice cooker, which we then continued to use for the rest of the year (and which G. uses still).
Notes: I will never be able to forget the variety of smells of rotting food after my year there. The worst part was usually the bottom of the fridge.
*
Once we were drinking with my roommate who was not from Hungary. We drank the same amount, two beers and one shot of palinka each, which I offered him, having brought some from home. The evening ends, I’m sleeping like a baby, then at 1 am I wake up to the sounds of him aggressively throwing up in the bathroom. Poor guy couldn’t handle the Hungarian spirit.
Notes: The number of times people closed themselves in the bathroom for half an hour after drinking that acetone-tasting Rakija from I-don’t-know where would be alarmingly high.
Context: My roommate was a lot older than me. Like a lot, a lot older, like literally more than twice my age. So, there was just a bunch of mismatches between the two of us, as we just came from seemingly two different worlds. And you could tell that he was not used to living with other people in this way, definitely not to sharing a room. But the funniest and worst example of this happened once when he was showering in the middle of the day and just... didn't close the door. Not didn't lock it—literally left it slightly open. Thinking back, not even slightly open, like maybe a quarter or third of the way. I wanted something from the kitchen, so I went there, but I didn't notice it yet. But on the way back, I thought, “Hm, it sounds like someone is showering.” So, I turned around, and through the door I saw his butt cheeks reflected in the mirror.
Notes: I remember checking the lock and knocking at least twice before opening every door. It could be pretty awkward if it wasn’t locked with the doors opening outside.
*
At Zoom, our landlord was a really unpleasant person. Don’t get me wrong, he was doing his job; but his way of communication was out of line. I remember there was a party where he felt the urge to intervene at 21:45. This is an important detail because according to Austrian law one is not allowed to be loud after 22:00. He thought he must stop the party 15 minutes earlier, following the logic that if we are loud now we will be loud later as well. Perhaps he was right. He came into the flat stating we should go to the city, and this is not a party district. Then the observant Austrian noticed a boombox. “This is not a machine, it’s a MONSTER,” he said. He also stated that he always finds the same people making trouble and noise, which was nonsense of an accusation. At that point, I have been caught by him for like the third time, every occasion with a different group of people, and each time he made the claim.
Notes: I can confirm that he wasn’t a fan of house parties and fire alarms. He really had a nice car though.
*
We lived on the fifth floor in apartment 9; it was a cozy living space, which we decorated with an old poster of Anker and a silk green drape hanging on the wall by the window. Every evening around 10:00, my roommate and I would run to the windows by the couch and close them. “It’s apartment six! Again!” We could smell the smoke of weed in our whole living room. We were both a bit paranoid; the other two thought it was hilarious and would laugh at us. For some reason, it has always stayed a memory of mine of those evenings we spent in our apartment together.
*
Thanks to everyone for their contribution.I can only hope that this article starts a conversation somewhat similar to this: Ah, apartment 2! Which room? Number 3? The one in the living room? Picture of Prater?
