Few days ago, on Skype, a dear friend made fun of me, or more precisely, not only me, also the pictures I uploaded on Facebook. In her words, “if someone wanted to learn world history, they can do so just by looking at yali’s pictures”. When she was looking at them, she said, all she could find were buildings, old buildings, but no traces of me, no traces of anything fun, or in other words, no traces of me having fun. In my defense, I replied, “I WAS having fun!”- “With old buildings?” To save the face, I kept on explaining the historic value of those places, and how exciting it was to be in the same building where some royalty or celebrity had also been, but.., I knew I was losing it. I couldn’t stop her giggle. Okay, I did admit, I’m this strange person who gets amused over old, silly things. I would rather prefer some ancient calm little town than flashy fun-filled cities like Las Vegas, Miami or New York. After all, it’s who I am! See now, she’s an adorable friend who never gets tired of teasing me, whatever I say in my defense, but that’s not the point. The point is that everyone travels for different reasons, to discover different things, and everyone sees the world with quite different eyes.
Maybe I’m always in search of the past, the traces left behind.., though looking at the past is never considered a good thing. At least in the paper works, where you are constantly reminded and expected to have a visionary perspective, to look far into the future. The applications, personal statements, interviews overwhelm you with questions like, “what do you expect to gain from this experience?”; “how do you think it will benefit your future endeavours?” Not that I always give honest answers, no, not necessarily. Is that even possible? Maybe they too are aware of it, but still, it’s always, forward, forward, and forward, never looking back. But then, look at a little girl walking along the beach holding her dad’s hand, amused by the imprints her little feet left on the wet sand, she could not help looking back and getting excited. She does feel the hand that holds her tight and leads her along, and she knows that she is walking straight even though her eyes are fixed behind. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that a convincing reason to travel? But no, not to the selection committee, who wants cut and right, definite answers. So you give them what they want to hear. I am hoping to gain: 1, 2, and 3. Then the benefits will be, this, this, and this. That’s pretty much how things work. Yet, as you well know, life outside the paper works and procedures is simply awesome. You can always expect to find the unexpected.
The one word you keep hearing a lot in Sweden, especially when it comes to student life, is ‘Fika’. Literally, in Svenska (that is Swedish in Swedish!) fika means a break, maybe a coffee break, or any kind of break, a get-together. The word is used as a noun and also at times, as a verb, like “aren’t you fikaing?” Fikas are mostly organized by student nations (I’ll come to the nations later). And each nation has its fika on some specific day of the week, for example, Varmlands – the nation I am affiliated with – has fika every Sunday. They do on other days as well, but this Sunday fika is kinda special where they serve coffees, teas, and some really yummy snacks like brownies, cakes, freshly baked cookies, many other sweets and sandwiches too. There’s always a lot to choose. If you’re a sweets-loving person, then bingo!! Fika is your thing. I often end up with a sigh, not knowing what to choose. So fika, in a sense, is a small party/get-together, where you sit with some friends and have a nice chat over yummy, fresh snacks. What I love about the fika at the nations is that, everything is always cooked fresh at the nations by students, and they have the taste of a home-made snack/meal, not something you’d buy at some random coffee shop.
Now, getting back to the thing called nation. Student life in this small university town is nothing without the nations and the concept, from what I heard, is quite unique to Uppsala and no other parts of Sweden have them. When I say ‘nation’, it has nothing to do with its apparent meaning – it is not a political concept, and it doesn’t represent a country, or a group of people. It is, in a sense, an organization for students which I have never seen or heard before. It’s pretty much similar to student clubs, but way bigger than just a simple, small, student club. In itself, it’s a huge enterprise. There are altogether 13 nations here in Uppsala, each bearing the name of a province in Sweden, so you can guess, there are 13 provinces in Sweden. They’re outside the university body/administration, so university has no controls over them, and participation or membership is voluntary. It’s just for your social life, just for having fun. You can become a member of any nation, it does not matter, and you can always go to the events of any other nation, but you have to pay a little extra than the members. The amazing thing about nations is that, they are big enterprises with their own buildings, bars, restaurants, clubs, library, and so much more. They organize tons of events, including night clubs, gasks, balls, and tours around the country, not to mention the parties on special occasions like Christmas, New Year ’s Eve, or Valentine ’s Day. Since there are 13 nations in Uppsala, there’s always something going on. They even organize fun activities like mushroom picking in a nearby forest, or ‘pub crawl’ – something so famous, where you go (or crawl, which you’ll probably do after visiting 2 pubs) to all the pubs in all the nations and have something to drink at every place, in one night. Why would you do that? Don’t ask me! I’ve only been to ‘bearable’ events like, bbq party at Upplands Nation, Reccegask at Varmlands Nation, Mushroom picking at Savja organized by V-Dala Nation. Well, that’s a shame, I haven’t been to many, though I fika most often, at Varmlands or Kalmar. But sadly, I missed the ‘international cuisine’ at V-Dala, which is going on tonight. With all this being said, I also have to emphasize, that the student union is completely something else, not a part of the nations, and nations are not part of the student union, or the university clubs, they organize their own things too. So, there’s always a lot of things to do, and since this is a university town, there’s nothing much apart from the university and nations.
The nation I joined, Varmlands, was established 351 years ago, so quite old. In one of their old buildings, there is an ancient cellar from medieval times which they’re planning to renovate into a dance hall. How cool, dancing in a medieval cellar! Varmlands is already famous, and well known throughout Uppsala, for its Friday night club called ‘The state of mind’, with two dance floors. I can assure you that I didn’t know it earlier, when I was signing up for the membership, since I am no party girl. But when you’re in there already, I think there’s nothing wrong in checking out what’s going on, at least once in a while. (Yep, that’s how you make excuses!) Well, I’m not that a party type. But anyways, there was a reception at our nation to welcome new members. And during the welcome reception, we had a tour around the buildings and the 4 pubs of Varmlands (that’s right, 4 pubs, really, now you get the idea? And wait, one of them is a specialty cocktail bar!!), listened to the welcome speech of the curator, the secretary, the international officer, and then headed off to the main dinner hall. Dinner was modest, with complimentary alcohol of our choice, pasta and vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. We had the nation’s choir sing for us during the dinner, and we sang songs ourselves (there were songbooks on the tables, though most of them were in Swedish), while sitting, standing on the floor, and standing on the chairs. Yes, you sing songs standing on the chair! They said that’s the tradition, you sing the last song while standing on the chair! I wouldn’t have believed it, would’ve probably thought of it as some kind of prank if I hadn’t seen the nation’s curator climbing on his chair. Well, if that’s how they do it here in Sweden, hooray! We all climbed on our chairs, and I should mention that I was quite drunk and was wearing high heels, but still I managed to climb up and down rather safely. You think that’s hilarious, it was indeed very fun. And I’m hoping to introduce this tradition to my friends in Toronto pretty soon. Well, what’s the point of learning new things if you can’t apply it somewhere else?
There’s another event people always talk about - the gask. Gasks are formal dinners, fancy 3 course dinners with 3 course alcohols (champagne, wine, beer, snaps, Baileys or Swedish punch with dessert) , organized by the nations. In my guess, gask is not a Swedish term, it rather sounds French. At the beginning of the term, all the nations organize their reccegask (the newcomers’ gask) on the same day. These are very popular dinners organized only a few times during a semester and the tickets will be gone in no time. Tickets for the international gask, which will be in late October, were already sold out in the mid-August. They’re that popular. Fortunately, I was able to get into the reccegask at our nation, though not the international. It was a big event too. The dress code for the gask is strictly formal, ladies must wear cocktail dresses and guys, formal suit. At the reccegask, new members from all the nations, with nation flags (every nation has its own flag), walked in procession to the university main building, where we were addressed by the university chancellor and entertained by the university orchestra and the choir. Then, we all went to our nations for dinner. We were all assigned a place at the dinner tables, so we can’t choose where we sit, we have to find the place with our name tag. The seating was arranged like man-woman-man-woman. We were told that, the person next to us, is our lady/cavalier. So if I am a lady, my cavalier would be seated to my left, and for a guy, your lady will be seated to your right. It’s something similar to a date, rather a fancy one. I must say I had fun, there was a Belgian sitting to my left and a German sitting to my right. My cavalier, the Belgian guy, was CUTE. But his girl friend was sitting just in front of us. Too bad. Anyways, the fun part is, I’m not very used to people treating me like a ‘lady’. But, the guy next to me, like a gentleman, pulled out the chair for me, and adjusted it so I could comfortably sit down. Needless to say, we climbed on chairs at the gask too, to sing the last song, and he lent his arms to help me climb up and down. In any other occasion, I would’ve returned a frown which stands for, “Yo think I can’t climb a bloody chair?!” But no, not at the gask. I was enjoying a dreamy moment filled with lady-like thoughts and behaviours. Well, don't ask me, if climbing on a chair is a lady-like behaviour. It is, in Sweden. Oh, how fun! After all the performances, by the nation’s dance club, drama club and the choir, and after all the speeches were done (that of the curators, and the inspector – who is usually a professor at the university), the night continued at the “State of Mind”.
That’s the end of a beautiful fairy tale!
Wonderful piece of writing Yali..!
ReplyDelete