Lauren and Ella kept chatting about the night before, with big chunks of hamburger in their mouths. They spoke fast about excursions they were going on and said that the university had too little focus on sports and that the town was too windy.

‘Have you found a place to live yet?’ Ella asked.

‘No.’

‘We’re seeing some places tomorrow. If you like you can borrow our newspaper,’ she said and handed me the classified section, dappled with coffee stains and crossings-out.

All the students at the hostel were trying to find permanent accommodation. I spent the next three days in and out of phone boxes, scheduling meetings and visiting numerous flat shares. Mostly they were in apartment blocks, or big two-floored terraces further from the town centre. They were home to neurotic students or hippies with marijuana plants in the back garden. I ran into the Canadians again and again in different apartments. They were confident and tanned and made the tenants laugh. Next to them I felt sombre and pale – The serious Norwegian, Lauren joked. I walked like a ghost through the rooms in house after house, while the visits weaved together in my head, becoming an endless braid of faces, corridors, and small, unfurnished rooms with plaster rosettes around the ceiling lights.

A group of art students who lived in one of the big terrace houses decided to turn their open day into a party. On the balcony a boy with bushy hair and a leather jacket read beat poetry, another served lukewarm punch, and downstairs in the kitchen a girl played guitar and sang Ani DiFranco in a shaky voice. She was wearing a bandana and her legs were unshaven.

‘Are you vegan?’ she asked after she had stopped singing. I shook my head.

‘It doesn’t matter if you’re not. But you should try.’ I nodded. The girl with the bandana shrugged and began a new song.

In between my interviews I sat on park benches and waited for time to pass, alongside homeless people drinking cider from cheap two-litre bottles. They didn’t ask why I didn’t have furniture or how old I was or why my English was so good.

‘You’re young, aren’t you,’ said an older lady sat next to me. That was all. She opened a can of raspberry vodka and didn’t look at me again. Her mascara was running down her cheeks.