This is a slightly different post than most on my blog. Rather than being focused on technology, my career, or my hobbies, I’m hoping that this post can be useful to the very specific set of people looking to live at the WoKo property 98 Alte Landstrasse.
This property, now a student residence for ETH exchange students, was previously a retirement home. Unfortunately, few pictures of this property exist online. Hopefully, the ones included in this article can be useful to incoming exchange students, in deciding if they want to accept an offer at this location, or choose to look on the open market. I’m leaning towards more information rather than less.
Photos
The photos below show the rooms and shared spaces at 98 Alte Landstrasse. Click any photo to view a larger version.
Note that finding housing as a student in Zurich (typically a room in a flatshare, on sites like wgzimmer) can be quite hard. Flatshare rooms often receive upwards of 100 applicants. As an exchange student who is not able to meet the current occupants in person, convincing them to choose you can be quite difficult. Because of this, I chose to accept my offer at Alte Landstrasse.
Overall, I would say that this building is acceptable to live in. It is a bit outdated, with a number of minor annoyances and flaws, but nothing which makes it unlivable. The main annoyance is the price to quality ratio. You must rent your room by the semester (5 months). For one semester, my room cost roughly 5000 Swiss Francs.
Bedroom
I was offered room 102, which is at the south end of the building, facing south. The room is of a good size, and came pre-furnished with a desk, shelving unit, and bed. It also has two built in closets, as well as a half-bathroom (more on the bathroom below).
The quality of the furnishings was okay. They were the lowest end that Ikea offers, but in good condition. The bed was 90cm x 200cm, comparable to a twin sized bed in American sizing. There was definitely space for a larger mattress, which might have been nice.
The bedroom has three sets of curtains. Two somewhat sheer curtains on the inside of the window, which go along a maxi sized slider track. On the outside of the window are external rolling shutters, which can be lowered using a hand crank mechanism per window. I found it necessary to keep these shutters down at night, as I like a dark room to sleep in. Rolling them back up each morning took a decent amount of time.
Heating for the room is provided using in-floor-heating. There is no air conditioning, and air conditioners are forbidden. Heaters, fridges, stoves, kettles, and the like are also not allowed in the room, for fire safety reasons. There are three type J electrical sockets in the room – two by the desk and one by the bed. The building includes wifi, but being at the end of a concrete building, I did not get good wifi reception. I was also unable to get more than 2 bars of cellular reception in my room.
My main complaint regarding the bedroom is the cleanliness on move in. The dishware provided by the room had noticeable food stuck to it, the mattress had hair from a previous tenant, and one of the provided pillows was very yellowed. I highly recommend bringing your own pillow, and buying a mattress cover. You can also ask staff to replace your sheets – some people I talked reported that the ones provided on move-in were clearly stained.
Bathroom
Rooms have an included half-bath. There is a toilet, a sink, and a vanity. All of these function fairly well. There is also an electrical socket in the vanity.
Showers
There are two showers on each floor, shared by the approximately 15 units on each floor. The showers are okay. The water pressure is good at lower temperatures, but falls off at high temperatures. The paint on the showers is peeling, but the tiles themselves are in good condition. As someone who had to live in old Place Vanier in first year at UBC, I found the showers completely fine. Bring a caddy to carry soap back and forth, as well as flip flops.
Kitchen
As a converted retirement home, there is a single large commercial-style kitchen located in the building. Units do not have their own kitchens. This kitchen has 4 electric stoves, a few sinks, two microwaves, and half a dozen fridges. There are communal cooking utensils, such as pots, pans, cutting boards, and knives.
Each student gets one shelf in a fridge. Freezer space is first come first serve. There is also a pantry area, also first come first serve.
The kitchen is not sufficiently sized for each student to cook full sized meals every day. Eating at restaurants in Switzerland is also quite expensive (~20 francs). The best solution is likely to purchase ready made meals from the grocery stores right across the street from the residence. These are fairly affordable (~5 francs), pretty good quality, and can be prepared with much less hassle. You also can buy food at the mensa at ETH, where a meal will cost about 10 francs.
Other Shared Spaces
There are a few common spaces in the building. There is a room near the entrance where you can leave bikes, a common area for eating and relaxing on the couches, and a couple more empty rooms that could be nice to study in.
There is a shared laundry room, with two washers and two dryers. This is too few washers for the number of students in the building to use comfortably. In my year, there is a spreadsheet for reserving time slots. Expect to have to do laundry at strange times, in order to find slots.