My accomodation adventure in Istanbul

The exchange at Koc University is my third exchange so far. However, it is the first one that I had to plan and organize myself . Finding an accommodation was one of the many things that had to be thought of. Before coming to Istanbul, I asked a few people that attended Koc University in the past, about whether staying in the dorms that the university provides or finding a place downtown. They recommended to stay downtown because in that way I would be able to learn more about the city life. After a lot of research, I found a 5-room apartment that looked pretty decent, corresponded to my budget and had a metro line just around the corner. When I arrived at the apartment, it did not really look like the pictures I had seen on the internet. It was also very crowded. There were 7 people in a 5-room apartment and that is also how it looked like. Nobody did the dishes for several days, the bathroom was always dirty, it smelled bad in the whole apartment and the general atmosphere was just not very familiar. For the first 3 weeks I did not even know all the people I was living with. When we encountered in the hallway they just ignored and passed me instead of introducing themselves. I tried to talk to some of them about the general tidiness of the place a few times but without any success. I was very unsatisfied and frustrated about my housing situation so that I started looking for new places. I checked out a few, but they did not meet my expectations. After 2 months of living in that apartment, a friend that I met at Koc informed me that there was a room available in his apartment. Within one week I decided to move to my friend’s place and arranged everything with the new landlord. Since my decision was quite spontaneous, unfortunately I had some issues with my old landlord for example getting my deposit back. The whole moving process was quite time consuming, tiring and stressful, but totally worth it. With the help of my mentor and my friends from exchange I was able to get out of this trouble and started living in a better apartment.

Overall, if any exchange student decides to live downtown Istanbul, I advise to not engage in any kind of financial agreements without having actually visited the place and met the people living there. You can easily book an Airbnb for the first 2 weeks for instance, and then go see the room-advertisements that are online in person.