From left to right: Bram, Gerben, Jelle (with cap), Hodor, Steven, Dirk. Photo: Guy Ackermans There are student houses and there are weird and wonderful student houses. In this column we visit the latter. This time: The Bullet.
House: The Bullet
Residents: Bram, other Bram, Bauke, Dirk, Gerben, Hodor, Jelle, Steven
Unique because: only Ceres guys live here
Jelle: ‘The house used to be in the Bergstraat, opposite the church. When the first down payment was made on the property, the decision was made, and that’s where the name De Kogel comes from.’ (There’s a Dutch saying about a bullet hitting the church, used when a decision is made, ed.)
Jelle: ‘Here at the dyke we have a large back garden, where we’ve always kept animals, actually. There on the wall hangs a photo of Frans the pig, who lived here for ten years.’
Gerben: ‘After that we had goats, but sadly they were moved to a petting zoo, so now we’re thinking of getting another pig. Or maybe two. We tend to follow the motto ‘if you want to do it, you’ll be able to do it’. So if you want something, it ought to be possible. We have a lot of freedom here. It means the living room can be quite a mess, but mostly there are a lot of good sides to it’.
Steven: ‘We don’t have a landlord, so we can do whatever we want. If we want to expand, we can. Okay, the municipality does have a say in things, of course.’
Jelle: ‘Because we own the building, we do most of the odd jobs ourselves. For example, Bram and I installed the heating in the attic together, although we had never done it before and had no idea how to do it. We managed it in the end.’
Jelle: ‘An important moment of the year is the Christmas dinner. Then we hand in all our saved-up beer crates to collect the deposit. How much we can spend depends on how much we have drunk. The first-years have to brew their own beer for the Christmas dinner, on a cooker like this one, without measuring the ingredients properly… And at Christmas comes the moment when we get to taste it. It has gone wrong every time for the past few years, actually.’
Hodor: ‘Every bottle was unique. Mine was really good though.’ Jelle: ‘He had made it and he is just too stubborn to admit that it was a failure.’
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