A Year in Sweden: Adjusting to Sweden

This last week, I completed my Swedish language course. I feel like I have a better understanding of the language, but still not enough to have a good conversation or understand what people are saying around me. I am going to take a normal Swedish language course this semester and hopefully I will know Swedish well after the end of it. I have a certificate to prove that I completed the 2 week crash course in Swedish, which is pretty cool. Now I have something to put on my barren walls.

Last week was a little hectic because I had to figure out what course I am actually going to take. Things are not so easy here because you have to figure out what courses conflict with other courses by yourself. At UC Davis, things are a little more automated and it is impossible to sign up for a class that conflicts because it is an electronic process. In addition to this, I had to go around and have each teacher sign a piece of paper that allows me to take a class because I am an exchange student. Right now, I am signed up to take 2 engineering courses, 2 humanities classes, and 2 language classes (each of which lasts half the semester). My engineering classes are in the E building, or the Elektroteknik Datateknik building, because I am an electrical engineering major. I have about 50% more units than I am required to have so I am almost certainly going to drop some of these courses. I am just happy to have a finalized course list, and dropping a class should be much easier than trying to find one that doesn’t conflict.

Last week I finally bought a bike and a few more items to help me get settled here in Lund. I am getting more used to this country every day. Soon I will be following a regular course schedule and everything should be streamline. I know about the bus system now and where many important buildings are in town. It seems like I meet new people every day, and now that the school year is about to start, I should be meeting a lot of Swedes.

I have mostly been meeting international people. I started going to the nations, which are like fraternities but coed and much less exclusive. It seems that almost everyone joins a nation. I am trying to go to each of them at least once before a decide to join one, although it does not really matter because you can go to all of the nations just by joining one, but I think I will mostly be hanging out with the people in my own nation. So far I have been to Västgöta, Krischansta, and Lunds. Västgöta is my favorite one so far because they play music that I mostly like and it is not too crowded. I met a cool German girl there named Anna who is from Munich and who I have been hanging out with recently.

I have discovered some cool places like the LTH Studiecentrum which is like a library and café where engineering students can study. It is right next to where my engineering classes will be so it will be really convenient to study there in the future, especially on rainy days. I also saw the Lund Observatory, which stands out because it is a tower in the engineering area. There is a bronze bust of Tycho Brahe in front of the observatory, which I thought was pretty cool. Everything in Lund seems to have some sort of historical vibe to it, and I feel like I am discovering an old culture by finding out more about the town. But Lund is also very high tech, with start of the art research being conducted and modern corporations in a business park. So it is like a clash between the past and the present. I like technology but I also like the rustic feeling of the town, so Lund is a good place for me to be.

Yesterday was one of the nicest days since I have been in Scandinavia. I brought a sweatshirt with me to go downtown, but never needed it because it was so warm. There were a lot of live bands playing in downtown, and the streets were swarming with people. It was really a fun environment to be in. I walked down some of the streets and then decided to walk back to walk back to my dorm because the weather was so nice. I did my laundry for the first time in Sweden once I got back. You use a RF chip to gain access into a dorm building where the laundry machines are located in the basement. You have to book an appointment with a terminal on the wall, and you can choose what machines you want to use and at what time. Then you have to use the RF chip on your keychain to get into the hallway to get to the machines. It seems very high tech and high security for a laundry room. It is free to use the machines, and they are just as high tech as the booking system. Lund is a high tech town, but it surprised me to hear that wireless internet is not available for free in cafes, which is a luxury enjoyed in the United States. After I finished my laundry I met up with some American friends of mine for a BBQ in the courtyard in Delphi. Everyone is trying to use the good weather while it lasts for these sorts of events. The BBQs have been a great chance for me to meet people, most of which have been international. I have met several Germans, a Swiss guy, an Irishman named Mark, A Finnish guy named Antti, a Scottsman named Robert, and several others. It is comical how Mark acts like a stereotypical Irishman, and his accent is hilarious at times. He keeps asking me to join his rugby team comprised of exchange students but I am probably not going to at this point. He has already messed up his knee playing the sport here. It is ironic that I know four different people who have suffered knee injuries here in Lund. I am trying not to get injured here in Lund, because I already know some people who have been. I am also trying to shy away from my American friends because I feel like they always just hang out with each other rather than Europeans. Antti is becoming one of my better European friends here because we have similar interests and tastes in music. I feel as though I have connected better with the Europeans here, even though most of my Californian friends have been in Lund for the whole semester.

Tonight I met some more people on my corridor and we had a meeting to talk about some procedures for the semester or year. Most of the people on my corridor are Swedish and they always talk in Swedish unless they want you to know what they are saying. They like hanging out with each other so it can be a little hard to get to know them as well as I would like to, but they are otherwise very friendly, and we are going to have a corridor party soon, which should help everyone get to know each other better. We spent about an hour cleaning up the kitchen after the meeting, with everyone working at once. The Swedes seem to be crazy about cleaning; it was like they were trying to turn the kitchen into one of the model kitchens you would see on display at IKEA. I am used to living in a fraternity house, which is basically always dirty. Here, people were taking handles off of cabinets to clean them and move furniture out of the way to vacuum. They even have a recycling system with a bin for each type of recyclable material. This is a procedure that I wish my fraternity would adopt. I like living in such a clean environment, and making the adjustment to the communal expectation of cleanliness was not hard after the initial astonishment. I am starting to feel more like a Swede as I change my lifestyle and habits, and now I can even find most of what I am looking for in a grocery store, although there are some products I just do not recognize. With any luck I will become Swedish to the point where I will be a little shocked when I get back to the United States and am reintroduced to that lifestyle. Tomorrow is the first day of the real semester, and I am looking forward to the journey that awaits me this semester.