mokudekiru

Lund Universitet is a party school that has its act together.

In many ways, Lund is a lot like home: big school in a small college town, flat, technical/innovation focus (though not nearly as computery as home), lots of international students… but the way they’ve worked out the party scene is incredibly organized and, well, seems to work. Here’s a rundown, and key terminology for later when I’m referring to “party @ nation X” etc.

Nations

Nations are the core of Lund social life. Think of them as a cross between frats, and the Harry Potter house system. Instead of 4 houses, there’s 13, and you get to be the sorting hat. Each of them is named after some region of Sweden (Lunds, Malmö, Göteborg, etc.) Each has their own building, usually with some housing in it (for some, but definitely not all members of the nation) and an area or two to hold events, mostly pubs and clubs (see below). All of the nations are connected under one umbrella organization, Studentlund, affiliated with the school. Most importantly, if you join any ONE of the nations, you are allowed to go to parties of any other nation if you show your nations card (except one nation, Smålands, which apparently doesn’t play with others. People say they’re also the anarchist group. Anyway…)

It is vitally important to join a nation as soon as possible. For the first week of the semester, you can get into parties if you present an ID and your letter of acceptance, but after week 1, you have to show your student card, and a receipt that you’ve joined a nation, while you wait for your nation card to come in the mail.

This semester is certainly the first time I ran around on a Friday or Saturday night waving my university acceptance letter at bouncers.

Nations seem to be entirely student-run, despite their affiliation with the school. Some nations are really big – thousands of students – so I imagine running them is quite a bit of work. In fact, some students who are nation leaders even take off a year from classes JUST to run their nation (Whoa! That might have been helpful for running the ACM Conference or something…) Student workers are also the bartenders, DJs, servers, waiters, and cooks for all of the nation events.

The nations completely seem to run the nightlife of this town. Partially because of the by-students-for-students aspect of it, but also because the prices at nation events are much lower than going to “real” restaurants, bars, or clubs (I doubt there are any real clubs here besides nations, actually). Food at a pub goes for ~45 SEK ($7) whereas in a restaurant you’ll have a hard time finding a meal for less than twice that, with the exception of falafel & pizza (there’s pretty much a falafel/pizza place on every corner here) which aren’t that expensive. Drinks are also around 1/2 or 1/3 of the price as a normal cafe/restaurant.

Pubs

Pretty much every nation holds a pub at least once a week. You can come and eat food, and although there’s usually only 1 or 2 choices of what to eat, I think they tend to post what they’re serving online ahead of time. On Thursday at Sydskånska they had veggie or meat lasagna, for example, and on Friday at Kalmar the choices were Fish n’ Chips or Hamburgers. Sometimes there’s live music (especially at Sydskånska, since they are the music-themed nation) but the key element seems to be candlelit dinners with your friends. I’m skeptical of the safety of having a bunch of people drinking right next to candles, but it is kind of cozy.

Sydskånska’s pub on Thursday:

They had a DJ for the first part of the evening:

Then this girl on a keyboard started playing. She was pretty good. Think Swedish Regina or Kate Nash.

Kalmar nation’s pub on Friday with my Mentor Group:

Me included this time:

Clubs

Most, but not all nations hold clubs, often in the same room or a neighboring room to their clubs. There’s a bar or two, and of course djs and LOTS OF DANCING. There is a kinda steep cover, about 60 SEK, but coat check is free (and pretty much mandatory), and I have to say I appreciate not getting my coat stolen or freezing. Lights, dancing, mayhem. I think “Rules of Swedish Dancing” deserves its own post so stay tuned for that, but there is an AWFUL LOT OF DANCING here in Sweden. By the end of week 1, the bottom of my feet were sore from dancing, which has definitely never happened before.

Also, it is noteworthy that while clubs go on in nations (mostly), sometimes there are clubs for random parties in university buildings, such as the welcome party for exchange students which happened in Kårhuset (basically the Lund Technical University Students’ Union building).

Club @ the party I just mentioned:

Club at Helsingkrona nation yesterday (there was a looooong line to get into this one):

Sorry for slight blurriness:

Choosing a Nation

Everyone says it doesn’t matter what nation you join, because of the whole “member of one nation means you can party at all nations” rules. Thus, exchange students tend to be overwhelmed at the range of options. On the second or third day after arrival day, there was an open house in the Kårhuset building where each nation had a booth and could tell you why to join their awesome nation — basically the nations version of Quad Day at UIUC, plus a few other random non-nation student organizations.

I decided to join Sydskånska because they are the music-themed one, so each of their pubs, clubs, and events have a different style of music, so it seemed a bit less generic than the other nations to me. Additionally, it’s very close to my dorm (about a 5-7 minute walk). 90% of exchange students join Västgöta (or VG for short), for no other reason it seems other than that’s the one that all the exchange students join. They have a good club on Wednesday, but I didn’t see any particular reason to join it. Sydskånska people I talked to also seemed pretty cool, and their nation itself had more of the grungy parents’ unfinished basement sorta feel to it than some of the other nations.

My new nation home, Sydskånska, from the outside:

Nations’ Schedule

During the arrival nations “quad day” they also handed out the nation schedule. As you can see, the only sorta dead nights are Sunday and Monday. This school seems pretty seriously devoted to making sure that its students get their partying in.