Beth Sunderland lives only a ten-minute bike ride from the city centre, but it feels like a completely different world. The garden looks out over an orchard and farmland. From her attic room on the other side of the house, she can see sheep grazing. “They’re my alarm clock”, she laughs.
The idyllic setting makes up for the small room. Its size wasn’t specified in the contract, but based on some big steps, it looks to be roughly 8 m2. “I’m used to small rooms. I study in Perth, where I live on campus, and those rooms are not that big either. Besides, I feel like I should spend as little time as possible at home as an exchange student.”
And it’s not like she had a lot of choice. “There were heaps of rooms available when I first checked it out in April. I thought it’d be fine, but there were almost none left when I looked again in June.” The other options were living in Belgium (“I didn’t know if my visa would allow that”) or a shared room in the Guesthouse. “That’s not for me. I’m a very sociable person, but it’s important for me to have a space that is mine alone, no matter how small.”
Landlord and neighbour
Before moving in, she had already gotten to know her housemates a little. “Our landlord had shared our phone numbers, so we’d already talked in the group chat.” They now cook, study, eat and laugh together in their large kitchen, which is the common area of the house. The only drawback is that it shares a wall with the landlord, who lives next door. “We just talk, but because there are five of us, the noise travels well. He complained about it. We’re more mindful of it now.” It took some getting used to living right next door to her landlord, she says. “But it does make it more personal, and he’s very nice. He told me where I could buy a bike and his dog Ice Cream comes along when he brings us the mail, which is great. I miss my dogs.”
Not made of sugar
Maastricht was not her first choice. “I first considered going to Germany, but they didn’t teach the minor I wanted to take in English. Ireland didn’t make the cut because I wanted to learn another language.” She laughs. “And so I ended up in Maastricht, where everyone speaks English. I know how to order coffee and say thank you in Dutch. My housemate taught me ‘ik ben niet van suiker’, ‘I’m not made of sugar’, when I had to cycle through the rain. I bought a book to translate – I thought it would help me pick up some words and sentence structures.” She takes the book, Zielverstand by Wiel Kusters, from her bedside table. “I bought this because it has wide margins for taking notes, but then my Dutch friends told me it’s a volume of poetry with made-up words. Ah well. I can still learn from it.”
Affirmations
The room came furnished, so the personal touch is in the details. Sunderland has covered one wall with photos and another with posters and quotes (“I’m the queen of affirmations”). One says, “Look at the stars, but remember that the spark is within you”; another simply says, “Be fearless”. Her favourite – “My existence isn’t about how attractive you find me” – hangs beneath the mirror. “I take it everywhere I go. It reminds me that looking pretty is nice, but not important. It’s not your job in life to be attractive. It’s your job to be kind to others.”
The photos show her partying with friends and hiking with family near her hometown of Kununurra, in northwestern Australia. “It’s a tiny town, a three-hour drive from the nearest airport. There are four of us. My dad is a farmer, my mother is a chaplain, and my sister studies medicine. We don’t talk heaps, but I regularly check in to let them know I’m still alive.”
Shaving you head
Printing the photos was one of the first things she did when she came here. “After all, I ditched them all to come here”, she jokes. Then, more seriously: “When you’re in a new place, meeting new people, doing new things, it’s easy to forget who your community is and where you came from.”
Fortunately, she can see some of her friends from Australia while she is here. “We weren’t allowed to leave the country for a long time because of the pandemic, so now every other person you meet in Europe is from Australia. I’m planning to visit a friend in Norway and some friends might visit me here.”
Another reminder of her life back home are the big, bold earrings on the cabinet against the wall with photos. “There’s this Be Brave and Shave event at Australian universities where people shave their heads to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation. Last year, a few hours before it started, I thought: why not? Everyone went ‘What?!’, ’cause I had pretty long hair. I raised about 800 Australian dollars in two hours. I bought the earrings to have something to frame my face.”