I live in a house with five other students and like in most of the student apartments in Maastricht we do not have a living room. What does that mean for a shared flat? No hanging around together on the couch, watching TV, playing board games or spontaneously inviting a bunch of people.
When I first came here I was pretty disappointed about the lack of this aspect of living together. In Germany it is common not only to rent one single room but a whole apartment together with people you already know before. The community aspect is really emphasized there, whereas in Maastricht people often spend the time at home in their own 15 square metres and only run into their flatmates occasionally in the kitchen.
All in all, I am lucky though, as I have really nice flatmates and at least our kitchen is big enough to cook together and we have a garden. We started to have big dinners together regularly and to knock at each others rooms to say hi and check who is home. One just has to make a bit more of an effort to get to know each other. But the lack of a living room does not necessarily have to mean that you don’t live together.