Valborg was on Sunday, this big holiday celebrated all over Sweden by lighting bonfires and singing songs. Except in Uppsala, where the student town goes completely nuts and everyone roams the streets from dawn till dawn drinking and partying away. I've never seen anything like this in my life; so much alcohol, so many bottles littering the streets, such hedonistic indulgence, and all of it totally sanctioned by the municipality. To give you an idea on just how much alcohol is involved here let me quote a statistic: 25% of Systembolaget's (the Swedish government run liquor monopoly) annual sales happen the week before Valborg. 25% consumed on a single day. I did not drink nearly as much as all the Swedes claimed I inevitably would, which is good cuz I really like being able to remember all the things that happened and also not ending up in one of the ambulances we heard running through town all that day.

So here's a quick rundown of how this day plays out if you really want to enjoy it all: First you wake up nice and early and head on down to the Fyrisån so you can get a good spot for the forsränningen, an event where University students construct floats/rafts out of Styrofoam and balsa wood and float them down the river and try to survive the two waterfalls, the 2nd of which is bigger and more difficult than the first. Unfortunately we didn't see the 2nd one, but we did have a rather nice view at the 1st where we saw the weaker floats get obliterated. Also, during this time, one traditionally has champagne and strawberries for breakfast, known as the champagnefrukost, but time and space restrictions made us opt out of that one.
After the float race we headed back to Feifei's place so she and her friends could change for this semiformal lunch thing where all the Swedes have to wear their high school graduation caps. These little white caps btw are the cutest things in the world; damn stylish too, if our graduation caps looked like that I'd probably wear mine more often. The lunch was all Swedish food, which was great because aside from holidays the Swedes never eat the stuff. The Swedes don't seem fond of their traditional food, which is strange cuz I like it, but I'll save that analysis for another day. The main reason for having those little caps is that the Dean of Uppsala University gives a speech at the top of the hill at the main library, the Carolina Rediviva, where immediately after the speech the students fling their hats in the air (collecting them afterwards, presumably) then running down the hill in great haste to get to a nation for the champagnegalopp.
After the lunch we went back and changed clothes again to something we didn't mind getting drenched in champagne, then proceeded to a nation, Göteborg. And just as expected there was a lot of champagne going around with people shaking it up and spraying it on one another. There were champagne puddles on the ground and the air was so humidified with it you might get tipsy just breathing there. Aside from the obvious consequence of being really sticky afterwards, being sprayed was rather refreshing since it was so hot inside the building.

We went home to change once more, and afterwards we went to a barbeque and a corridor party, as is tradition. That was really fun, and people complimented me on my Swedish, specifically my lack of an American accent. That really made my day. There was one really obnoxiously drunk Swede who didn't seem to understand any English and was a total jackass. After that we went to an after party at one of the nations, but that sucked so we ended up going home. On the way back we surveyed the damage wrought by the day. A grassy field on the way back home was totally covered in garbage, it literally looked like a landfill. Amazingly though, I biked by there late the next day and it was almost cleaned up, though it was less miraculous when I saw the small army of garbage men cleaning it all, or the fact that just beyond where the garbage men stood was still a solid field of garbage.

All said, a wonderful time was had by all and it was a great introduction to Valborg. I've got to come back some time. Hot damn.