The time has come, the Walrus said...
Actually, the time has long since passed. It has been two weeks since I last wrote something here, and I have to apologise to all you vicarious travellers for not writing anything sooner. I'm still debating in my head the best way to use this blog: should I try to have a “weekly diary” of happenings, or would a series of shorter posts on particular topics like 'The Nations' or 'Swedish Food' be more interesting? Or perhaps a mix of both? One thing I have decided is that I will write shorter posts from now on, in the interests of perhaps getting them up more frequently.
This evening will mark the end of four full weeks in Uppsala, and almost eight weeks since I left Melbourne. Terminal one at Tullamarine seems impossibly far away and long ago...even arriving in Uppsala feels like a distant memory. Each evening as I cross off a day on the little hand-scribbled calendar on my desk, I am reminded of how little time I have here, and feel a renewed commitment to my number one rule for being on exchange: say 'Yes'. So this post will be about a few of the things I've said 'yes' to in the last few weeks, and some of the wonderful moments I've encountered along the way.
One thing I have little difficulty saying 'yes' to is Fika – that wonderful Swedish word for sharing coffee and cake with friends. Older people in Sweden have an almost religious commitment to the daily schedule of meals – Breakfast, Fika, Lunch, Fika, Dinner – while younger people will Fika (yes, it's also a verb) at just about any time: I myself had midnight Fika with some of my corridor-mates just a few days ago, and last Saturday I had a little over three hours of back-to-back Fika before waddling back to my corridor filled with kladdkaka (incredibly dense chocolate cake), snikertårta (a sort of peanut & chocolate slice), blueberry pie and chokladbullar (something like a rum ball sans rum). Getting into the true spirit of Fika, I've also made couple of things myself – namely a huge batch of choc-chip & cornflake biscuits and a large chocolate brownie cake (that's brownie made in a cake tin because our kitchen has no slice tins: very thick and not really cooked in the middle...my corridor-mates approved.)
Mmmm...Fika...
And where in Uppsala can one sit Fika-ing in the sunshine for over three hours without spending a fortune? Why, at a nation of course! When my temporary student ID expired on the 31st of August, I had to make a decision: which of the 13 nations would be my home away from my home away from home this semester?* In the end, the choice was easy: the first nation I ever visited had won my heart from the beginning, and so I have nailed my colours to the pointy spire of the orange 17th century castle that is Västgöta Nation – universally known as “VG”. And I don't think I've made a better decision since arriving in Uppsala...except perhaps making the brownie cake, but it's a close call. I think I might do a whole post on why VG is awesome, because there's quite a lot to cover, but I will mention two things: Reccemottagning and Manskören.
A reccemottagning is the nation's reception (mottagning) for recentiors (freshmen), and VG held its reccemottagning last Saturday afternoon and evening. We began at 3pm, gathering in the nation's top-floor library to hear speeches. First up was the nation's Inspektor, a Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages by the delightful name of Lars-Gunnar Larsson, a charming old gentlemen resplendent in leather-elbowed tweed and overgrown grey Colonel-Sanders-esque facial hair, who addressed us in Swedish, English and German before conceding defeat after just a few words of Polish... Next to speak was the wildly be-dreadlocked Förste Kurator (aka 1Q) Adam, followed by the second and third curators Hanna and Sebastian; the Kuratorer are the nation's semi-permanent student managers. Fun fact: all three have red hair...
After the speeches were done, we were divided into groups and, lead by a 'father' (in my case Cara, one of the International Secretaries), we spent several hours touring the nation taking part in various games in an effort to win points for our team: from song-guessing contests with the Mixed Choir to “guess the beer” taste tests with the Bar Masters, from charades with the Theatre Group to drinking games with the Pub Managers, from Chokladbullar-rolling in the Fika kitchen to being questioned on the nation's history by the Aldermen in the medieval cellar, we were put through our paces...and for the most part found severely wanting. We shone in only two places: Matt, our 5-foot-nothing American, rolled an astonishing 28 Chocolate Balls in two minutes (that's one every 4 seconds!!), and when the newspaper editors asked us to write a story, we shot to glory with the surreal tale of a depressed Roof-Beaver (they live on rooves...what of it?) named Karl Gustav John Linné and his quest for hearty bacon soup.
Drinking games with the sexmästare.
The Aldermen in their cellar.
Exhausted from our trials, we were paired up boy-girl with strangers (by means of magazine pictures that had been cut in half) before piling into the nation's main hall for a sexa, an informal dinner. The Swedes, however, have a slightly different take on “informal”. We sat at three long tables covered by white table cloths, with the three kuratorer (in full tuxedoes, or traditional costume in Hanna's case) sitting at a high table at the end of the room. We were served two courses: salmon in a white sauce on pasta, and then enormous banana splits dripping with merengue and chocolate sauce for desert.
All the while we were plied with alcohol, and I must say the Swedes have elevated mixing one's drinks to an art-form. Before entering, we could have champagne or cocktails, and on sitting down we were immediately given a choice of beer or cider, and a glass of one of several choices of snaps (I had a very strong, very sour white spirit which I was told was called something like “ohr-yah”...no idea how to spell it...it packed a punch though). The main course was also accompanied by red wine, and with dessert we were given coffee-cup-sized glasses of punsch – which is not our 'punch' but rather a strong, sickly-sweet, amber-coloured liqueur made from the South-Asian spirit Arrack and god knows what else...
The drinking was slowed at least a little by the requirements of protocol, which my lovely partner Klara was kind enough to help me through. Speeches were given at regular intervals by a variety of the nations' ämbetsmän, announcing the winners of the day's contests. Before each person rose to speak, our attention would be called one of the ämbetsma banging a short rhythm on the floor with the nations's ceremonial mace. There were performances from the nation's choirs (the mixed choir's rendition of “Fix You” by Coldplay brought a tear to the eye of even Jonas, my diehard metal-head corridor-mate) and speeches by the kuratorer and the Aldermen (who declared the entire cohort of recentiorer unfit to join the nation, until 'persuaded' to relent by 1Q in exchange for a bottle of punsch), but perhaps the most quintessentially Swedish thing was the singing.
Every ten minutes or so throughout the evening, the mace would bang on the floor and the Sånganförare (song foreman) would rise and lead us in a drinking song from the Västgöta Nation Sångbok...and the Swedes knew them all, and sang along cheerfully before raising their glasses in the recognised pattern (partner, neighbour, ahead, Skål!) and sipping their snaps. It was all completely delightful, genuinely Swedish and heaps of fun :-) After clearing the plates, and then the table to make room for a dance floor, we danced until 1am (late when you start drinking at 6!!) before drunkenly wheeling our bicycles back to Flogsta in the crisp September night.
After hearing their wonderful work at the reccemottagning, how could I say anything but 'yes' to the Västgöta Manskör or male voice choir. Rehearsing for three hours every Sunday night, these thirty or so young men make some of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard – it is simply a joy to be able to sit among them and join in their singing. That said, it is also quite challenging; they are singing at a very high level and I have to work hard to keep up. Of course, they also sing a lot of repertoire in Swedish (which is great pronunciation practice for me) as well as English, German, French, Finnish and Estonian. I take some small comfort from knowing that most of the Swedes find those last two hard also! And on top of the singing, the rehearsals are conducted entirely in Swedish...which is REALLY testing me. So far I know 'page', 'system', 'bar', 'slower', 'faster' and 'longer phrases'...thank goodness at least that 'mezzoforte' is still 'mezzoforte'!! The choir is also a tad bizarre at times, on the verge of some kind of strange secret society. For one thing, they all have secret “choir names” that they reveal only to members...our conductor is “Mjao”, my section leader is “Unsymmetrical Åke” and one of the 2nd Basses introduced himself to me as “Tutten” which translates as “the boob”...
One final thing which I had great difficulty in saying 'yes' to was not murdering the man who promised two weeks ago to sell me a bicycle. After at least four fruitless visits over the space of two weeks, I turned up ready to give old Geppetto (as we have named him) a piece of my mind...but it didn't work. As soon as I started to speak, he grab the bike and literally ran down the stairs into his basement shop, and by the time I had followed him down the bike was up on a hoist and he was sawing away merrily at the rusted-out D-lock with an angle grinder. In the space of less than 10 minutes, while he busily worked away greasing and sanding and oiling and wrenching, he had me laughing along with his jokes, listening to his stories about bikes and odd customers, talking about Swedish Politics (“All is going to shit here...they make us like America!”) and of course answering his questions about Australia.
Bits of bike hurtled about the tiny workroom as he played rubbish-bin basketball with the rusted-through parts that he pulled off my bike-to-be; before rummaging in cupboards and boxes (and a storeroom which was like the Elephant's Graveyard of bicycles) for replacement parts, talking all the while in his endearingly-broken, heavily-accented English (“I read for 9 years in school...but that was 40 years ago.”). By the time he was done, the bike had a new chain, new gears, new rear brakes, new wheels, tires and tubes, new lights and reflectors and, of course, a brand new bell. But before I left, he proudly showed off the cans of Surströmming (that's fermented herring, a Swedish delicacy that is not especially delicate) he had ordered and was storing in the crowded little office: “Tomorrow I have my one day off for this year. I go in my car to up North of here, and I will eat this with my friend. It is very nice, you must try before you go home!”
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*Home = Melbourne; Home away from home = Flogsta; Home away from home away from home = a Nation.
PS: MAX is the Swedish equivalent of MacDonalds, only better. I only put it in the title in order to preserve the rhythm of the line...sorry about that.
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Ben will return in Åttakisse...
Are we going to see the bike???
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