The cruel joke of waiting all winter for Lund’s finer weather is that everyone is gone once it’s here.
Follow Justin Chan’s lead and he’ll guarantee that your buddies backpacking through the Alps will wish they could trade places with you. Or more likely, just stop sniggering behind your back.
Wishing you had bought that ticket to Mallorca? Well, you can stop kicking yourself. Try this full-day regimen on for size.
Wake up early — though more likely stay up late — to watch the 4:30AM sunrise from Sankt Hans Hill.
Later, enjoy a picnic brunch in the botanical gardens with fresh fruit and vegetables from the Mårtenstorget produce market.
Have an authentic Fika (coffee break) at St. Jakob’s stone oven bakery and become a bona fide bread/coffee connoisseur.
Stop by Kulturen and the Sketches Museum to get your fill of Swedish history and pretentious art, then welcome the evening with a whole meter (!) of beer from the Austrian Rauhrackel pub.
Oh—and I do save the best for last—find time for an aerobics class at the Gerdahallen fitness center. Gals will appreciate it, guys will feel like this fella.
If you get stir-crazy, then get out with the absurdly inexpensive summer bus pass around Skåne. Believe it or not, and I know it’s difficult, but there’s more to just farms in this region.
Wade comfortably through the gentle waves of Lomma’s beach, or test your courage on the 11 meter cliff jumps into Dalby Stenbrott, a popular stone quarry-turned-awesome-swimming hole.
Ales Stenar (imagine a Swedish Stonehenge) sits on the idyllic Österlen coast.
The nearby island of Ven, which you can explore on a rented bike, is home to the astronomer Tycho Brahe’s observatory, though more importantly a famous whiskey bar!
Feeling more adventurous? By all means hike through the region to your heart’s content thanks to Allemansrätten, the Swedish law that permits unrestricted foot travel through virtually all the nation’s land. Fences, ha!
Wherever you travel to during the day, the student nations (check here for which ones and when) will warmly welcome you back to town in the evenings. Cheap food, cheap beer, a hot dance floor: what better place to celebrate/ lament your indulgent lifestyle than with students who are just as spoiled?
Finally, it bears asking why Lund being a sleepy summer town is perceived as a negative at all. Aren’t summers supposed to be lazy and carefree, a reprieve from the grinding routine of our normal lives? If you wanted responsibility, you would probably fast forward to the next 80 years of your life being married to a job and a mortgage.
But no, I’ll happily soak up the serene magnificence of a medieval town where the sun barely sets and the polished, green lawns of Stadsparken beckon invitingly for dozy bodies.
In case you didn’t know, being outdoors in Lund is rather hazardous to your health eight months of the year, so treat each looong day of blissful lounging as something truly precious.
2 Comments
Ramiro Medina
I’m moving to Lund next month, I’ll definitely pay attention to the advice you are giving here!