When we think of home, we often think of it as the place we come from or where we were born. However, home can also be something we create over time. In Cardiff, home develops through the people we meet, the places we become familiar with and the memories we make. Perhaps, over time, this secondary home can even rival the places we originally came from.
Whether Cardiff is completely new to you or you’ve spent the last few years calling it home, September has a way of making us all feel like Freshers’ again. At the beginning of term, Cardiff becomes flooded with students hauling suitcases, frantically logging into the CU Wi-Fi and, of course, queuing along the Lidl bridge just to get into lectures.
For Cardiff returners, the city and campus stay reassuringly familiar. Greggs is still there, Bute Park continues to turn red and green, much like the infamous Welsh flag. The streets also remain the same, with the iconic Red Bull car parked outside. Yet the people around us change, friendships grow and our lives here become wider.
An indicator of somewhere being home is the instinctive ability to know the place like the back of your hand. In Cathays, where the streets seem to loop back to one another, navigation becomes a process of trial and error. Upon arrival, the campus section of the city acts as a tightknit zone, built around a Lidl, the Students’ Union and at least five perfect MiXR-accepting pubs. Slowly, the comfort of Cathays expands to the city centre, beautiful Bute, and wider Cardiff, as you explore Penarth and Cardiff Bay. Very quickly, you can leave the house without checking maps.
Perhaps the biggest change is the people. In first year, your flatmates, like siblings, are not people you necessarily choose to live with. You move into a flat with complete strangers and suddenly share a kitchen, bathroom and, if you’re lucky, a living room. Then there are people you meet through societies, your course, work, sport, or simply going to the pub. The people you initially meet because you happen to sit next to them become the people you see several times a week. A one-off pub trip becomes a tradition. A society becomes something you look forward to every week. These things seem small, yet together they make the city feel lived in. Walking through campus, you can soon spot the underpass and be hit with half-memories of YOLO.
One student told Gair Rhydd: “You don’t need a big group, you just need one person to make you feel like you have roots here, someone you can speak to.” Unlike home, where many relationships are pre-existing, Cardiff gives you the opportunity to create your own community. A trip to the pub with lecture friends or watching The Traitors with your flatmates can slowly build relationships that become part of everyday life.
This extends to the spaces we live in. First-year accommodation can feel like somewhere you live rather than somewhere that is yours: clean countertops, identical rooms and fire-escape blankets can feel strangely sterile. Moving into a house allows you to make a space your own. Parents decorate your home; at university, you make your own, bringing your own pieces and quirks into a space shared with friends. Snapchat group chats become iMessage chats; strangers become people whose lives intertwine with yours.
Cardiff is a home like all dysfunctional homes: you can still get lost, forget things, or queue for YOLO far earlier than necessary. You perhaps don’t realise it is home because it happens so gradually. But it is. It is your space, and you can make it your own. Maybe that is what makes Cardiff unique. It is a home that does not replace the one you came from but grows alongside it.