Top to bottom: Wessel, Anouk and Joost. Photo Guy Ackermans House: The Crooked House
Residents: Anouk Verstappen (22, Master’s in Nutrition and Health), Wessel van der Meer (21, Soil, Water, Atmosphere), Joost van der Lee (20, Biology), Thomas Kloezeman (21, Master’s in Management, Economics and Consumer Studies) en Yvonne Lemlijn (22, Nutrition and Health).
The Crooked House is for SSR-W students. You don’t apply for it: you live here by invitation.
Unique because: the house is wonky
Wessel: ‘There was a castle just down the road once. Our house is so crooked because it was built on the old castle moat, which caused it to subside. It was built in 1902 and it became a student house in 1975. You can feel that it’s crooked when you walk around the house. It’s really weird to start with, but you get used to it. Upstairs there’s a room in which you can’t put an office chair on wheels because it would just roll to the lower side of the house. It can be quite handy if you’ve drunk a bit too much because it compensates…’
If you’ve drunk a bit too much it compensates
Anouk: ‘But we wouldn’t know anything about that, haha. Nothing is level here. We had a glazier and an odd-job man here not long ago. They were so amazed: everything had to be custom-made. It’s nice living here and we sometimes call ourselves “the little family”. A bit cutesy, perhaps, but we do a lot of stuff together. The agreement is that we only cook one meal a day and you join in if you can.’
Everything in our house has a story and we pass it on orally to the new residents
Joost: ‘The history of this building will never get lost: everything in our house has a story and we pass it on orally to the new residents. For example, there are hundreds of photos of blonde children on the wall in the hall. Hung there once by a resident whose girlfriend worked as a photographer at Ouwehands Zoo. She went abroad for six months and she put these photos up to scare off any potential one-night stands. That turns out not to work very well, haha. Also, one of the photos is upside down and two of them are identical. Anyone who doesn’t live here who can find all three gets a bottle of Beerenburg – our house tipple.
