This is a second story from our blog series about local archive material we have collected so far. Stories from Zagreb, Rijeka, Madrid, Belgrade and Podgorica are collected under the title Memory blog.
Jelka Žurga, in her 70s nowadays, doesn’t feel well. In the midst of pandemic she misses her daily activities as an active retired woman and spends her days recollecting and sorting out her memories. The fondest ones, as she remembers, are from the period when she was a student of Faculty of Economics and Business in the University of Zagreb, back in early 1970s.
She was the resident of student hall “Stjepan Radić” near the river Sava and hence called then, as it still is, simply the “Hall at Sava”. Beside attending classes at the other end of the town, she spent most of her days on the campus. There was a student restaurant there, library, places to study and places to have parties, and even a place to sunbathe on the top of the roof of the dormitories.
She recalls that the common kitchen was usually used by everybody, instead of eating out. Celebration of birthdays (that four birthday that each resident could have, some even maybe more, she holds dearly to her heart), New Year parties or simply every day parties shrouded in than widely accepted cigarette smoke are moments that she’ll never have after in her life again in that context.
Living in the student hall is indeed a special period in persons’ life. Some of her friends, as she tells us, even got married in the hall and they were allowed to live in a room together, even with their baby, until they’ve graduated. Jelka remembers her friends from students’ days and wishes everybody such an amazing experience.
Jelka lended photographs from her private collections for the THEY: LIVE project digital archive so these days are remembered in an archive, researched in the historical discourse and interpreted through artistic lenses. We are thankful and respectful. If anybody from photographs recognizes himself or herself, communicate with us please, let us know how you feel about those days, preserved and presented collected memories in photographs.