In January 2011 Marita arrived in Uppsala, Sweden, for a semester of exchange. She enjoyed it. She enjoyed it a lot. She enjoyed it so much she's here for a year now. This is what she gets up to.
Valborg’d
So, some background on Valborg. Pay particular attention to the stuff about Uppsala.
Pardon the vague hyperbole, but yesterday was one of the best days of my life. It went a little something like this:
Was supposed to be up at 7 for a champagne breakfast down by the river, but owing to a rather big previous evening (Kvalborg) and a phone stupidly left on silent (and recently dropped in a glass of cider) I woke up fully dressed, with a vibrating pocket, at 8.15. Panicking slightly I jumped in the shower, threw my booze into a backpack and walked into town to try and find my mates. Coming into town was crazy. I knew Valborg was supposed to be a big deal but there were people everywhere, not just students, but old people and little kids and families. People were staking out spots next to the river to watch the boat races and I bumped into loads of friendos, many similarly hungover as yours truly. I met up with Lloyd, a friend who I like to describe as my bad influence, donned my Soviet party hat and cracked my first cider for the day. Didn’t actually manage to see much of the boat races, but I could hear the crowd reactions. Frustrating. After a while, and a few more drinks, we met up with some more people and walked to ekonomikum parken, the big grassy area outside the university’s Economics department. It was incredible. I’ve never seen so many people picnicking at once. Thousands of people, mainly students, squished together, getting their booze on, enjoying the sun when it decided to show itself. It was only 11am and I was already having a great day.
Ekonomikum. Crazy. (Nicked this photo from my friend Shereen)
Sooooo after a few more drinks we decided to work out what else to do for the afternoon. The champagnegalopp are events hosted by some of the nations, and basically involve buying champagne and spraying it all over your mates. Lloyd, me and another friend, Sten, decided we’d try and get into the galopp at Snerikes nation. The line was huuuuuuge, but after a bit of a wait (45 mins? I dunno) we paid our 100SEK entry fee and were stunned at what lay ahead. A few hundred people were running around, chasing each other with bottles of champagne and generally winning at life. We bought a few bottles and stood in the sun, drinking and inadvertently getting sprayed by everyone else. Soon we bumped into my Swedish buddy, Julia, who was horrified at how dry we were, grabbed our bottles and supersoaked us in champagne. From then on it was madness. A good proportion of our time at the galopp involved Lloyd and I standing there screaming, “WHAT IS THIS? WHAT. THE. FUCK?? WHAAAAAAAAAAT????” and grinning like idiots. I mean seriously, how fucking decadent is that? I couldn’t stop laughing. Even now, I can’t even convey how stupidly, retardedly awesome my afternoon was.
If I were smart I’d have taken a camera to capture the awesome then put the photo here. Instead you can just imagine a blonde retard saturated in champagne. Cool.
At this point we paused for food and tried to get vaguely warm. Lloyd and I collected our booze from his buddy’s house and decided to check out the barbecue that was nearby. It seemed to be winding down and we were freezing, so we walked to his place at Flogsta (the main student accommodation place where a big party was planned for the evening), feeling distinctly haggard. Here we found his corridor filled with out-of-towners killing time before the roof party. To try and dispel some of them we decided to stage a domestic, bursting out his room, screaming at each other, slamming doors. Holy shit, it was the second most fun thing I’d done all day. Seriously, very cathartic. Some more friends swung by and we moved up to the roof to check out the party. It wasn’t amazing, but I was in the mood to get my rave on. Within the crowd it became pretty easy to tell who was from Uppsala and who wasn’t, so I started introducing myself as Stella from Russia (my hat was the ultimate conversation starter) and just lying for the fun of it. Trying to head back inside was crazy, there were soooo many people trying to get up onto the roof, so I engaged bitch-mode and just pushed and yelled at people for the hell of it.
Raving on the roof (photo nicked from Lloyd)
So from here the evening kinda descends into a boozy haze and eating popcorn out of a massive shopping bag, then sleeping on the floor for 11 hours, but I regret absolutely nothing from yesterday. I spent too much money, I drank too much, I ate too little and I didn’t clean my teeth, but I’d do it all again tomorrow if I could.
That was my Valborg.
