Eichkamp Information & FAQ

First, you need a MensaCard. This student ID (Campuscard) can be picked up at a distribution machine at your university, if you haven’t got yours yet.
Many of you already have one included into the student ID (participating universities at the moment: FU Berlin, HU Berlin, HTW, HWR, Beuth, Charité, ehb, ASH, KSHB).
If you study at a different university, you probably got a seperate MensaCard via postal mail, and if you didn’t, you can get one at any Mensa of studierendenWERK Berlin (nearest one is TU Mensa, Hardenbergstr.), check at which time it’s open!
You can also get one at the MensaTruck that is arriving usually once a week at Eichkamp (see more on https://stw.berlin)

Then you also have to top up your MensaCard (add credit to it). This usually only works by cash bills! You can top it up at the MensaTruck or at any studierendenWERK Mensa in Berlin.

With that prep out of the way go to the washing machine room in the basement of Haus 9 (it has a separate entrance). To the map

Follow the instructions displayed there (Load your clothes, up to 5kg. Select a program. Pay with the Mensa Card after selecting the machine with YOUR clothes. Go back to the machine and start the cycle. Remember to tmel).

Costs:

• Washing (2 to 3 EUR)
• drying (1 to 2 EUR)

per cycle/load depending on the temperature of the water or the length of the drying.
You don’t have to bring your own detergent, it is included in the price.

If you have any questions, you can contact your roommates, the tutors or the SV.

There are two ways to connect. First, there is eduroam Wi-Fi available at many places on the site. There you can just log in with your university account. How that works depends on your university or high school. Just check the configuration settings at your high school’s website. There is also a universal tool that should work for many universities: https://cat.eduroam.org/

The second way, which is highly recommended in terms of stability, reliability and speed, is to use your own router. Every room and WG should have a separate WAN-port, which you can use to connect to your own router’s WAN port. Normally it just works after you plug in the cable. Note that there is Gigabit internet available in Eichkamp (which is very fast!), so to get the most out of your connection, make sure to use a router that supports that, e.g. Asus RT-AC53 or Fritz!Box 4040.

The tutors are students who live in the dormitory and are here to help new residents and to organize events! They are employed by the STW and have consultation hours. If you want to know when they are, you can look at their door at house 15, in front of the postboxes! You can also reach the tutors via the email address tutor.eichkamp@stw.berlin.

There is also an extra tutor for the fitness room and the music room in the clubhouse. If you want to get access to the rooms, you can contact him via Telegram. Please join our Telegram group to find his contact, or contact eichkamp.sv@gmail.com if you don’t have Telegram.

The SV is the student self administration of the dormitory. The current SV was newly founded in November 2020. They consist of voluntary people living here, and they also can organize events, but can do even more than that, e.g. building up a bicycle workshop or running a bar. They also get access to some rooms, material and money to realize their ideas. If you are interested in volunteering for your dormitory, please contact us! We are always happy about new people joining us! You can contact the SV directly via email (eichkamp.sv@gmail.com) or via Instagram (@eichkampsv)

There are different administration instances at studierendenWERK Berlin.

Inventory managers:

Working directly in the dormitory. Contact them if something breaks in your community area or if you have problems with e.g. internet, washing machine room, key coins, water supply or heating. You can also come to their office during their working hours (back of house 15).

• 0151 166 00 291 (Herr Schlüter)
• 0151 170 12 051 (Frau Kalin)
• Email: wh.ek@stw.berlin

Tenant support:

If you need to clarify something about your personal contract, or your living conditions in the dormitory

• Frau Phillip (H.Philipp@stw.berlin)
• 030-93939-8284

InfoCenter Wohnen

If you have a general request about the Berlin dormitories or want to move within the dormitories

• 030 93939 8990
• wohnen@stw.berlin

Postal address of the bigger housing administration instance:

studierendenWERK Berlin
Abt. studentisches Wohnen
Franz-Mehring-Platz 3
10243 Berlin

The studierendenWERK tells everybody who is renting a single room (no WG) to pay Rundfunkbeitrag on their own. WGs only have to pay the Rundfunkbeitrag once.

However, the regulation that is stated in all publically available materials by the Beitragsservice (the authority who is responsible for collecting the Rundfunkbeitrag) is different: It says that only rooms, who are directly connected to a public corridor are considered as separate flats and have to pay Rundfunkbeitrag. If your room is not connected to a public corridor (and another door is in between), then you can share the Rundfunkbeitrag among everybody on your floor. This is the case in some houses in Eichkamp, but not in all. In this case, it is also recommended for the other flatmates that don’t pay the fee directly to register at Beitragsservice though and refer to the flatmate that already pays. This can avoid conflicts.

Btw: The Beitragsservice has no capacities to come and check every single door constellation (also confirmed by an employee from Beitragsservice), so it’s up to you and your flatmates how you want to handle the situation.

More on that: https://rundfunkbeitrag.de

If there is an emergency with water, heating, electricity, internet while the caretakers are out of office, you can call the emergency numbers that are displayed near the entrance of each house. Notice that if you call them in a situation that is not an emergency or the caretakers are available, you have to pay the service by yourself.

There is a phone number you can call to open the gate instantly. For security, we do not share the number here publically, but you can join our Telegram group. The number is linked in the group description. Additionally, if you own a private car, you can ask the caretakers for a chip card.

Notice that the gate opens inductively from the inside, so if you drag e.g. a magnetic bike over the area right behind the gate, it will open automatically. That also means, if you want to drive from inside to the outside, the gate always opens automatically without further chip cards, etc.

There is a special tutor for the fitness room and the music room in the clubhouse. You can contact him via Telegram. For that, please first join the Eichkamp Telegram group, you will find the subgroup for Fitness/Music and the tutor’s contact there. If you don’t have Telegram, write to eichkamp.sv@gmail.com and we will redirect you.

Please write to Khadim (tutor) the following things via DM:

• First and Last name
• Room number
• Coin number
• which keys you want to receive (fitness, music or both)

The key then needs to be activated, go to house 9 or house 10 and hold your key against the reader (a black square near the doorbells at the entrance), it could take couple attempts to activate your key. You know it’s activated when the beeping stops after 8-10 secs and then you have access for the next 24 hours, which means you have to activate the key every day you want to use the common room. The caretakers are working on a better system.

If th activation doesn’t work, try another house and if nothing works, please go to the Hausmeister.

Unfortunately, the big hall (table tennis room) is currently not usable due to the fact that furniture from another dormitory is stored there. We are very upset by this situation and try to find a solution as soon as possible.

We have a small garden between house 10 and 11 where people can plant their own plants, e.g. herbs, vegetables, chilis, and other things. Everything has to be maintained by the residents themselves. If you want to arrange a garden day or need tools (we have some), please use the Telegram group and join the respective Gardening subgroup afterwards :)

Your VO-Number (that one that starts with 761-…) always has to be mentioned in the address field, so that the postman knows where to put your letter or where to bring your parcel. This number includes our house number, your floor number and your room number, in that order.

“761” just stands for the Eichkamp dormitory in general. So for example: “761-05-03-01-0” would be the VO-No for house 5, floor 3 (the first floor ist floor 0), room 3, person 0. Alternatively, the parcel or letter can contain something as “Haus 5, Etage 3, Zimmer 1” or similar.

Often there are parcels lost or received by another person instead of the actual recipient. This is somehow annoying, but in many cases this just happens because the house number or VO number is missing. Unfortunately, there is no public parcel box in Eichkamp at the moment, where parcel services could just bring the packages if they do not find the receiving person. Because of strict regulations with Denkmalschutz and Brandschutz, this is unfortunately very difficult to implement. We are looking into alternatives currently to improve the situation.

If you find a letter in your postbox that is addressed to another person, you can either give it to the person directly or throw it in their postbox if you know them. If you don’t know them, you have to make sure it is sent back to the sender. To do so, just throw the letter into a postal box of Deutsche Post. If you want, you can write “Empfänger unbekannt” on the envelope before. If the letter was sent via some other carrier than Deutsche Post (e.g. pin Mail), you can give it back to the carrier. You are not allowed by law to open the letter or to throw it away!

If you received a parcel for another person you don’t know, please join the Eichkamp Telegram group and ask if the person can pick up the parcel from you.

The food truck is an offer by studierendenWERK Berlin and it usually stays once a week in Eichkamp dormitory, but this may change in the future. It arrives at 11am and leaves at 2:30pm. You can buy food here, freshly made and ready-to-eat, or cold meals that you can warm up later. Additionally, there are salads, desserts, cake, some drinks, and ice cream in summer. You can look up the menu at the STW website.

You can also get a new MensaCard here if you don’t have one yet, and you can top up your MensaCard with cash bills. At the truck, you can pay with MensaCard only to get the cheap student price, if you can only pay without MensaCard (Girocard, credit card or Google Pay) you have to pay the more expensive guest price.

At the moment, there is no place where everybody can print or scan things. Some people might have a private printer or scanner though. If you ask nicely in the Telegram group, maybe there is somebody who can help you out. Otherwise there are multiple options to print in the area:

• McPaper at Reichsstraße, near Theodor Heuss Platz
• Postbank at Soorstraße, near Theodor Heuss Platz
• digital-print-service at Kaiserdamm
• And more! Just search for “copyshop” in your maps application.

Currently, the SV and other people are trying to implement a printing and scanning service directly in Eichkamp.

The bar is a part of the clubhouse, located on the ground floor. It was introduced and run by our predecessor SV.

In summer 2021, we reopened the bar, first organizing outdoor events and later also indoor partys. Please check our Telegram channel (recommended) or https://eichkamp.rocks/events to have a look what is going on right now :)

Every house offers a bike storage room in the basement. Normally, every resident of the house has access to the room with their normal key for the front door. Just try out which door fits your key :)

Apart from commercial (and expensive) repair services, such as Zweirad-Stadler, there is a self-service bike repair workshop at TU Berlin, called unirad (http://unirad.blogsport.de/). Something similar also exists at HU Berlin, called hubSCHRAUBER (http://www.refrat.hu-berlin.de/hubschrauber/) and at FU Berlin, called FUrad (https://furad.de/)

Furthermore, the SV in Eichkamp wants to open the same kind of workshop directly in Eichkamp. The room and some tools are already there, because the workshop already existed in the past and was run by the old SV. Unfortunately, because of renovation of house 11 and 12, the rooms have to be used otherwise currently, so the project has to be postponed.

You probably noticed the stadium right in front of the dormitory, the Mommsenstadion. Only a few people know that you can just go inside and use the area to workout! It is usually open to the public from around 7:30 am to around 21:30 pm. The hours can slightly change sometimes. If there is an event, the stadium is obviously closed for the public.

If you want to do sports lessons, you can use the advantage of the TU sports centre being right next to the dorm! There are courses offered primarily for students of Berlin universities. They are usually very affordable for students. You can look up their course program online.

Close to the dormitory is also the Teufelsberg and the Drachenberg. The Teufelsberg is quite famous in Berlin and there is a big former listening device on top of it, now it’s mostly a ruin. Also there are some exhibitions or events sometimes, and sometimes you can get a drink. You have to pay a small entrance fee though. The Drachenberg is just a hill with a flat surface. You can go up to see the sunset, to have a great overview of the city, just to chill or to sled in winter.

If you looked around the dormitory grounds a little bit, you may have noticed that there is a special house right adjacent to the Eichkamp dormitory, the so-called Bonhoefferhaus at Marienburger Allee. It was the family home of the famous anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Today it is kind of a museum and there are sometimes guided tours. You can inform yourself about it online.

At Theodor-Heuss-Platz, there is a really big and spacious REWE and an Aldi. Another REWE (somewhat smaller, but really good though) is at S Grunewald with a seperate beverages store. The next EDEKA is at Königin-Elisabeth-Straße.

If you really need something urgently on Sunday, you can go to Ulrich at S Zoo. It is one of the only grocery stores in the area that opens on Sundays :)

Yes! There used to be the page http://eichkamp.net/ with lots of old photos. The SV got the ownership of the domain and intends to publish some of the historic material again in the near future. The web page was ran by old Eichkampers, where they collected some material about their time at Eichkamp. Some of them even made a book about the history, which is available here: https://files.eichkamp.rocks/chronik.pdf

Contact the SV or become a member and get involved :)
Our email is eichkamp.sv@gmail.com, and our Instagram is @eichkampsv.

We look forward to your ideas!