No, it’s not what you think. I am not looking for a partner or two, which you obviously can in times of polyamorism. I am not looking for anything but when summer starts, several students begin looking for a place to live in Innsbruck. Been there, done that. Having experienced all kinds of oddities I have now been successful in finding my own flat.
Maybe this compilation of odd, weird, strange, seemingly impossible and hilarious stories helps all those people who get more and more frustrated because there are two very special aspects about finding a flat in Innsbruck.
Firstly, an Innsbruck apartment is at the high-end of the price scale a student can afford. Secondly, landlords and landladies try to make money out of everything.
With these disadvantageous preconditions, I was looking for a flat for the first time in summer 2010. Well actually September isn’t summer, but I was in Paris and was lazy afterwards. Time was pressing and so I moved into the first residence which I was able to find.
It was in a beautiful quarter with the chance for having a better life. The unofficial version is that I dwelt in a dorm with eight other people next to the railway tracks and behind a strip bar with probably some crack dealers.
After a year I decided to move out of this shabby ramshackle-hut. There, however, I became part of a team. With my now former flat mate I was again lost in the seemingly, endlessly deep swamp of the flat market in Innsbruck.
On this 2 month-trip from O-Dorf to Kranebitten and from Hötting to Amras I saw everything. Usually people think that they have seen a lot by their 20th birthday, but trust me, there is nothing that can be compared with that experience: A room with a double-bed for two singles, a dismantled toilet and a sink lying on the floor of a living room, a crumbling bathtub with festering yellow tiles, box-like rooms, fly-infested elevators and 30 square-metre rooms that proved to be 17 square-metres were all among those moments that made me tremble due to the lousy conditions.
Really magnificent flats seemed to be highly priced and unobtainable. During summer 2011 we were on the verge of moving home to our parents and no 21-year old really wants that. Despite experiencing stebacks we finally were successful finding a flat.
As we both were very different the whole flat-mate-thing didn’t go to well, so we both separated and went our own ways and I. I had to start looking for a flat again. This time I did not start in summer and I took the first flat that I found.
Three flats, three different stories. Yet there is no single story that said: “Give up!” or “It is impossible!”. Rather it should be contemplated as a story of success with the core message: “Go for it! You are only limited by people. Money. Time. Talent. And, oh yes, money. Especially if you want to live in Innsbruck.
Thomas-Florian Van Hörl
