Doors and dancing

Fika, pre-parties that start really early and lectures that start one quarter past the hour. Lund is a weird city, but Mo Kudeki is starting to feel at home.

Three weeks ago, I left behind my small college town in the Midwestern United States for Lund, a small collegetown in Skåne.

One week ago, a friend back home, noting my absence, asked me to summarize my impressions of Lund so far in one sentence.  It was around 10 PM on a Wednesday night, so of course this conversation occurred during the tail-end of that night’s pre-party, just as we were about to head out to a nation.  My answer?

“You have to dance a lot, and wholesale jerseys you are always wrong Wir when you have to guess how to open a door.”

“I feel like you have to dance a lot,” my friend responded.

Yes, admittedly I quite enjoy dancing, so it is partially by choice.  However, it would require considerable effort by any new international student NOT to dance at least several times cheap jerseys a week since arrival day.

Dancing in America requires international rounding up a group post-3 of usually unenthusiastic friends and shuffling them off to a club where 85 percent of the songs are indistinguishable rap music, and the dancefloor is either awkwardly crowded or awkwardly empty.  Checking cheap mlb jerseys your coat costs extra.  You dance on a Friday or a Saturday, never a Wednesday.  You don’t actually need to know how to dance either, “grinding” is the only form of dance.  Robyn is never, Sexy ever played.

And when you’re leaving a dance club in America, you never get trapped by a door that you can’t figure out how to open.

Really, what is it with the doors here?  Swedes probably have no trouble with them at all, but my foreign intuition and over two decades of experience with doors is utterly useless here in Sweden.

Doors look as if they should be pushed when they must be pulled.  They look as if they should be pulled when they must be pushed.  Worst of all, about half of all doors have an extra trick to them which usually Corso requires two hands – twisting a knob and pushing (oh wait, pulling!) or turning one small handle up while pushing the door handle down.  Sometimes there people” is a magical button with a picture of a key on it over on the wall somewhere, and the punishment for forgetting to push the button is an alarm going off as if you’ve just robbed a bank.  Oops.  And don’t worry, the irony of “tryck” being the word for “push” has not been lost on us international students.  It’s as if all the doors Market on Sweden conspired to play a practical joke Recap on us.

Aside from door frustration, however, it’s actually surprising how much we (new) international students have adjusted to in just three short weeks.  We’re now experts on rules and conventions of Lund’s well-organized but somewhat complex party scene, plus have a little wisdom on life in general in Lund:

We know what “nations” are and even joined one (statistically, probably VGs).

We’ve been to a korridor party or five.

We know that it’s a bad idea to show up late (after 8 PM) to a pre-party, and that you must always bring your own drinks.

We know what Swedes mean by “fika,” “sittning,” and “skål”.

We know Duck Sauce and Shakira will play a combined total of 10 times per evening out at a club.

We expect to spend a lot of time standing in lines.

We now leave our shoes outside of our rooms.

We know Tunavägen and Tornavägen are not the same road.

We go to class 15 minutes past the hour.

We expect the sun to come out only once every 10 days.

Some of the best parties we go to are on Tuesdays.

Our nations cards are the most precious pieces of plastic we own.

Good luck learning Swedish, but at least our English will improve (even us native speakers).

We (sort of) know how to find Lundaböcker downtown, and that we have to physically go there to buy tickets to everything, despite the existence of the internet.

So congratulations!  We’ve settled in.  There’s a lot left to learn, and the subtler culture shock is still to come.

But for now, have a great fourth weekend in Lund, and maybe check out a new nation – if you can figure out how to open the door.