Lund is somewhat of a miserable place to be in during Sweden’s endless summer time. But columnist Paula Dubbink thinks that the Swedes need their long summer. How could they otherwise live so intensely during the terms?
Summer in Sweden is a magical thing. The sun is high up in the sky and the daylight is almost without end. Nature flourishes, schools and universities close for over two months. And Swedish students? They leave Lund. Apparently called back home by the lovely lakes and darks forests of their childhood or – less romantic – by a summer job or by their beloved parents that haven’t heard from them in ages they head northwards en masse.
This summer, I decided to stay in Sweden for about three weeks after this Great Exodus and booked my train home only at the end of June. Soon I started to count the days. Depressions seemed to hide around the empty corners, meaninglessness filled the streets and when I for the second day in a row ended up for a closed library door (“Very Limited Opening Hours Too Bad You’re Writing A Thesis”) I knew Lund was really not the place to be from early June to late August.
Why was I so surprised? Obviously, we have summer holidays at home as well and most students visit their home towns during this time. However, in my mini-sized country, students live at max three hours travel time away from their parents – in my case it was a mere 10 (!) kilometers. As soon as I felt like having some space for myself and eating pasta with ketchup from a bowl in front of the tv, I biked back to my student room. Simple as that.
In Sweden, summer student life is a vacuum, radically opposed to ‘normal’ student life. Most of my corridor mates travelled several hundred kilometers up and obviously didn’t come back for something as trivial as a forgotten sweater – or anything, actually. When I returned to Sweden halfway August, most of them still weren’t home and I seriously began to wonder whether they hadn’t gotten lost in their far-away non-Skåne parts of the country.
Obviously, they came back and within a few days it seemed like nothing had changed. My corridor organized a crayfish party for 26 persons, Malmö Nation had numerous volunteers handing out goodie bags to students – candy and a condom, thanks – and I had to book my place in the laundry cue again – the only thing that I didn’t miss during summer.
In my theory, Swedish students need their summers to save energy for the intensity of student life. Here nobody considers going home every weekend for some pampering by mum and dad, like many Dutch students do. Lund student life is a continuous stream of lectures, parties, performances, dinners, assignments and Swedish hugs. Which is more than enough to compensate for a boring summer.
