Columnist Jesper Lodin pens an enthusiastic love letter to both Lund and Scania as a whole in this week’s Culture Column.
Kinda scratching my head here, but have I regaled you with the tale of how I came to reside in Lund yet? I don’t think so. You see, though I’m about as Swedish as a regiment of moose cavalry humming “Knowing Me, Knowing You” on their way to paternity leave, I too am a Stranger in a Strange Land of sorts here in Scania.
I hail from the frigid Rome of Scandinavia known as Stockholm, a foreboding stronghold in the north where the most fun you get to have is watching the wooly mastodons roam in the distance as you chip away at the frozen tundra to try and unearth some arctic moss for sustenance while the encroaching glaciers obscure the final rays of the dying sun…
…or not, because as long as you don’t have to live there during the awful nuclear winter period from January to, uhm, May or so, Stockholm’s not so bad as far as annoyingly trendy Scandinavian capital cities go, and I had a generally happy upbringing there. However, after taking a few semesters worth of courses at Södertörn University, I realized that spending your student years in suburban Stockholm is about as much fun as having to use Microsoft Excel on your birthday, and promptly proceeded to enroll at Lund University.
Well, once I moved down here, my social life took off like Wily E. Coyote strapped to an ICBM, and my decision to relocate easily ranks as the single greatest choice I’ve made in my adult life. Now, I’ve naturally had my “ups” and “downs” ever since, but in my experience, the “downs” as a student in an exciting city like Lund are usually more akin to valleys in the alps than, like, an empty swimming pool in the Netherlands – still a pretty respectable height above sea level, you know.
As I let on a couple of columns back, I’m sort of through just being another Pez in the male Pez dispenser at nation clubs, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve sworn off my love of this city with its gently sloping elevation (hey, I lived my entire life in Stockholm on a mountain located on top of another mountain. I’ll take it), secluded Xanadu-esque courtyards and gorgeous emerald countryside. What more could a Stockholm expatriate want? They even have a surname called Jeppson down here! As in, potentially, Jeppe Jeppson. Wotta place!
Not that my imperial pedigree by itself ever impressed any florid, luscious Scanian ladies into taking off their aprons around here. I find that the locals mostly suck up to the more sizable Lannister Gothenburg contingent, a fact that shall not go unreported when I write my provincial travelogue for the benefit of the Senate, I assure you.
So, how’s about I cobble together some semblance of an ad-hoc point to all this blathering for you? Right. My geographic movements might have painted me as some sort of jive talkin’ blonde kidney stone slowly being passed by Sweden into the Öresund over the course of a decade or so, but I’ll say this: I think us students should try to be a bit more appreciative of our time here in Lund, this borderline utopian espresso splotch on the motley tablecloth that is southern Sweden. It won’t last, you know?
Of course, there’s a ton of valid reasons for feeling like crap even in Lund, of course, but as banal as it sounds, try to keep in mind that as a group, right here and right now, us students really are allowed to lead more comfortable, interesting and humorous lives than the majority of all organisms that have ever existed. So, you know, we really owe it to ourselves not to let more trivial problems, like feeling bogged down by homework or, err, seeing pictures of other people having trace amounts more fun than yourself on Instagram spoil what should in reality be a carefree series of halcyon days for most people.
Wow… That last part was pretty awful. Would you mind replacing it with Yoda’s speech from The Empire Strikes Back in your head?
