I spent five months in Sweden as an exchange student from January to June 1996. For the amount of time that I lived there, however, I saw relatively little of the country, which was a bit disappointing. In any case, I got to be an exchange student in Uppsala, which is a student town just north of Stockholm (about 45 minutes on the train), and got to have a lot of fun in the process.

The place I lived in was called Flogsta, a little suburb south of the centre of Uppsala where there stand sixteen large monstrosities of Sixties utilitarian architecture, in which students live. If you live in Flogsta it means that you have been in Uppsala for a rather short time, and have not had the opportunity to move somewhere else, as there is a waiting list for everything in Sweden. Even the waiting list for Flogsta is about one thousand people long. In Flogsta you live on a "corridor" with eleven other students and share a kitchen and a TV room. They are usually a bit grotty, often with dirty dishes and the like lying around, and the rooms are nothing special. But it really depends on the way you look at it. Despite the fact that Flogsta has the highest rate of suicide for all of Sweden, it can actually be quite a fun place. This is especially true if you happen to be one of the five hundred or so exchange students, many of whom roam the corridors of Flogsta. Besides the Swedes, you get to meet a lot of people from all over the world, although they tend to be either German or Dutch. People have corridor parties all the time, which tend to be rather seedy, but also enjoyable for the many cultural awakenings that occur.

Another great thing about Uppsala as a student town is the student Nations. The concept of the Nations was copied from the Universities of Renaissance Italy (before the country became united politically and linguistically), where students would form groups based on the region they originated from. The same concept stands, although to a much lesser extent, in Uppsala, where anyone is free to join whatever nation they choose. There are twelve student Nations in Uppsala, which have a nation house each, running pubs and clubs and sporting events, as well as the relatively cheap (this is Sweden we're talking about) lunches. Deciding to be very adventurous, I chose to join the smallest nation - Gothenberg's Nation, and was the only exchange student to do so. It was quite strange to be the only non-Swedish speaker among a whole bunch of Swedes, but you only do these things once, so you might as well go the whole hog. As a result of my immersion in the Swedish culture I discovered a few aspects of the Swedish character.

On the whole, Swedes are friendly, sincere and honest people. They tend to get a bit of a hard time from people who complain that they are very closed off, which is also true. This seems to be more true of Swedish males than females, however. An interesting thing I noticed at Gothenberg's Nation was that while most of the guys, with some exceptions, were not all that outgoing, it was the girls that seem to shower you with attention. Then again maybe it was just my permanently giving off the impression of being a lost and confused foreigner that did it...

Another interesting event which occurs in Uppsala is called Valborg, which is also known as Walpurgis Night, and is held on the 29th April every year. It is a day when Swedish students drink virtually from the time that they wake up until late that night (having stood in long queues at the state-owned and expensive Systembolaget, the only place, besides restaurants, allowed to sell full-strength alcoholic beverages). Following a champagne breakfast in the morning, everyone gathers in the centre of town to watch the boat race down the Fyris, the river that runs through Uppsala. The boats are novelty boats and usually fall apart, leaving their crew to swim through the still icy-cold water into safety. Then everyone congregates in front of the Carolina Rediviva, the University Library, where the University officials stand on the balcony and wave their student hats (which look like sailors' hats) at the crowd, with the Students waving back. Following this rather quaint ritual everyone marches off to their student nation where they attend gasques, great extravaganzas of food, with several speeches and drinking songs (which Swedes are especially fond of) interspersed throughout the feast. Later that night people go off to student nations again and dance to tacky dance music, which happens to be a major export industry for Sweden.

I studied a course called "Peace and Conflict Studies", which was one of the courses offered in English for the many exchange students that come to Uppsala. It was interesting, although the literature we were supposed to read tended to give a strong impression of the Swedish preference for facts and figures over aesthetic qualities. But our class was great and we also got to go on a field trip to Slovenia, which was by far the highlight of the course.