Valborgs Day

Today is Valborg's Day, the last day of April. It's a particularly big deal in student towns in Sweden, of which Uppsala is one.

Traditionally, the day starts with a champagne breakfast, location non-specific. I had mine by the river, in anticipation of the rafting race, an event premiered by the engineering department in the 70's. Unfortunately, the crowd was large and the view was extremely limited so a large amount of the time I spent watching the crowd instead and debating whether the Germans behind us were serious about dumping us in the river to get a better viewing spot (they clearly didn't know we could see nothing too).

After the raft race, the students head to a large park and picnic for a few hours. More champagne is traditional.

At 3pm, the rector gives a speech from the library balcony. We went, listened to a song and watched white graduation caps being waved (including grannies who had graduated some years ago) and there was no speech. I wouldn't have understood it anyway...

The next excitement is the champagne gallop. Has a theme emerged yet? The students run to the nations, pay 100 Kr and party in the courtyards, spraying champagne everywhere. As expected, this leads to everyone being soaked and clothes being removed. It was 9 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, the reason everyone runs is that there is a maximum capacity and there are far more students attending than are able to go.... so naturally we didn't go.

I say we, because I spent the day with some exchange students I met through one of my Swedish class friends.

Watching all the festivities, particularly with foreign exchange students, made me feel even more of an outsider than I've felt here before.

I do not belong.

How much can we belong anywhere though? I did not belong in Manchester, or Derby, or Stockport or London.

Belonging or not though, I'm not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself.

There is a choir performance at the castle tonight and some of the people I was with today are going to listen. I popped down to the shop to get some sweets to share tonight and on the way out bumped into 2 of my neighbours here - 2 tall, cute Swedish guys. Yummy. Apart from a "hey!" we didn't actually speak, even during the elevator ride down to the front door.

Ah Swedes, how I loathe your lack of chit chat. I also loathe my own lack of it, but that's beside the point.

My champagne is still un-popped.

Birthday drinks?