This summer it will be time to leave Lund after two years of studies. The small town grows on you and so the only appropriate way to say goodbye for columnist Katherina Riesner is to tell this place how much it meant and how dearly it will be missed.
Dear Lund,
When we met, it was love at first sight. Remember, back then in August 2013, I visited you, we hung out for a couple of days and there was hope and lots of potential for a happy future relationship. So a year later, I left my old life for you and came to Sweden and you looked just as fun-filled and crazy as I remembered.
In the first few weeks we spent together I fell madly in love with you and your tiny cobblestoned streets. We went dancing and we partied together and I didn’t even mind that I had to ride my bike for you every day, something I used to detest with all my heart. So I thought it was going to be all fun, all the time for the two of us. But eventually the daily life set in. We had moved in together, a strong commitment.
Still, I think it was good that we made this promise to each other. It made me grow as a person, I got more confident and independent and it allowed me to appreciate even your dark, gloomy characteristics that you had hidden until our first winter. You showed me the importance of coffee and candy in depressing times. You taught me patience and endurance with your long, grey, windy winter months.
We’ve been together for almost two years now and have seen the best and worst sides of each other. I’ve learnt that you can be shifty – sunshine and birdsongs one minute, rain and hail the next – you can be too loud on the weekends or too quiet and small during the week. I wanted to change you at first but now I have come to realize that you cannot be changed and that I have to love you exactly the way you are with all your crazy students, nation life, spex, sittnings and formal balls.
You’ve been good to me these last few months, showing me only your best features. But even though we were a good fit the past two years, we are not a perfect match. Maybe no place is or will ever be a perfect match but it is too early for me to settle down. I will never forget the memories we made and the people I met thanks to you. I hope we can stay friends.
I love you Lund.
Yours, Kat
