Life in Sweden

Class:
I had my first (and only) class yesterday, Milestones in Swedish History I. About 12 of us show up for registration and introduction and an hour later we’re out of there. Aside from Trevor, Sara, and Cory, I will never see the people in that class again. I say this because that was our only class meeting. Seriously. The class runs for four weeks (the semester is broken into 4 parts with one class for each part) and we have one 3 page paper due each week on an assigned reading. That’s it. I write 3 pages on 100 pages of reading and email it to my teacher. Trevor and I figure we can finish everything in two weeks which leaves a hell of a lot of free time for the next two weeks. I’m becoming a big fan of how they set up their schedules here.

Swedish work schedules/breaks:
Does anyone actually work in Sweden? It’s crazy, everything is closed down by 6, at the latest. Aside from the pubs and Ålidhem grocery everything just shuts down (I might just be bitter since I stopped by the computer store to grab a cable and they had closed 10 minutes beforehand). Even in the student office, every time I’ve been in there, I’ve had to wait because the person I need to see is on coffee break or their posted hours are only 13:00-15:00 for the entire day. Must be nice, granted, I can’t complain for the amount of work I’ve had to do so far.

Swedish Parties:
It must be the lack of sunlight, because come 6:00pm, everyone heads to the pub. Yesterday was the kickoff to the mentor program and our group headed to NH (Nationer Hous pub) by 6pm and we ended up staying until they kicked us out again at 1am. It wasn’t bad (they turn in a dance club at about 9 every night) but I just don’t know if I can handle going out this much, physically, mentally, or financially. Madison is good practice and all, but I don’t think it can compare. There is usually a pre-party starting around 6 or 7 where everyone that has gone to System Bolagot (government liquor store) brings their alcohol and gets a head start (this saves money for when you actually go to the pub and spend 10x the money for a weaker drink). After this it’s on to the pub where you usually spend the rest of the night. All in all, it’s about 7 to 8 hours of partying…and this happens 4-5 nights a week. Swedes are hardcore.

Grocery Shopping:
Have you ever had that feeling where you’re completely out of place and have no idea what you’re doing? That’s me in a Swedish grocery store. As I’ve mentioned before, even finding milk the first time is not as easy as you might think (don’t worry, I’ve got that part covered now). I think I ended up getting loads of pasta and not much else just because it was in a plastic bag and I could see it. You put me in an aisle with boxes and I’m done for. I can’t believe how hard it is (imagine taking the words off of everything in the store and you can only go by the picture and the type of container). I know it’ll get better with practice, but food is a bit expensive and I’d prefer to just not make those mistakes (I’m still reeling over those 2 liters of soured milk that I bought, seriously what do you do with soured milk??). They do have some pretty fancy equipment that makes shopping much more efficient. There are these scanners where you swipe your food as you put it into grocery bags in your cart and then when you check out they just download the info from the scanner and you swipe your card. This is all hypothesis however since I couldn’t read a word of the directions and didn’t actually try the system. (I really can’t wait for my Swedish language class to start) I also have to throw in that I love the way they price everything here. Things may be expensive, but at least the price you see is the price you pay since it takes into account all of the taxes and leaves out that psychological take a penny off and put it at $.99 crap. If a price tag says a shirt is 100 kroner, you pay 100 kroner. It just makes sense….stupid American nonsensical pricing scheme.

Mentor Program:
Turns out there are about 260 international students this semester. Last night was the start of the mentor program and most of these students are in the program. The program matches up international students with a Swedish ‘mentor’ (another university student) which is supposed to let you better get into the Swedish culture. The students and mentors are also put into groups of 10-15 (there are 17? groups in all) that put together events and random outings. I ended up in group 5 (which also happened to be the group Trevor was assigned to). There are about 12 of us in the group and we have a team building thing scheduled for Saturday (good thing too because I can’t remember half the people’s names) and of course drinking afterwards. Anyway, the organizer showed a slide show of last semester’s activities and it looks like it should be a lot of fun. I will sadly miss the trip to St. Petersburg with everyone since I’ll be traveling through Europe during the month of April but I’ll live. This should work out pretty well though since a lot of people in my group tend to like the outdoors and I’ll have some people to help get some of the trips I want to do off the ground. I’ll keep you updated on the program when things start moving.