Swedish summer is not around the corner, it has started already according to Paula Dubbink. It feels her with mixed feelings.
It is not to be denied: Swedish summer is back. Contrary to what you might have been told by Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerbyn or by your housemates, Swedish summer doesn’t start when the temperature finally reaches 25 degrees, or even 20. Neither does it start on Midsummer day or on the day that the strawberries in the shops have gotten an acceptable price.
In Lund, summer starts with all the closing-offs.
I’ll only name a few that popped up in my planner around this time. The last dinner with my cooking group: check. A thank-you fika for a small volunteering task: check. A beer with the theology students: on the planning for today. Group picture with my congregation: check. Last lessons for the year with my pupils: working on it.
Everything has to be closed off properly in Sweden and that’s how I like it. In my point of view, nothing is as bad as something fun that is cut off without a good ending. Better a tack too many than one too little. And better hugging a friend going back home twice than discovering that she has gone a day too late.
But while enjoying all the rounding-up activities in what probably is my last normal week until the end of August, I don’t know whether to bless or curse den svenska sommaren.
On the one hand I look forward to you, Swedish summer. I look forward to being out of the rhythm for a while, even if I might be studying and working a bit. I look forward to even more brightness – to waking up with light peeking around the curtains, thinking that it is 7 AM while it actually is 4 and I can sleep some more hours. Or maybe I can even sleep as long as I want, as it’s summer after all.
At the same time I hate you, Swedish summer.
Not only because you take most of my friends and housemates away and leave my Lund deserted, prey to the tourist floods. You have played that trick with me before, and as soon as one knows what to expect it can even be nice with no queues in the shops.
No, Swedish summer, at times I simply dislike you because you take away the daily life of fikas, lunches, study hours, Studentaftons, work and free-time, weekends and weekdays and all the other stuff that I normally just take for granted. You create a temporary limbo in Lund’s student life, in my life actually. And while it is nice to abide in this limbo for a while, sometimes I have the feeling that you don’t know any moderation.
I mean: Two And A Half Months – come ON!
Luckily I know your moods. By the end of August you’ll disappear and life here will resume as if nothing has happened.
And then I might suddenly start to long back for you.
