The geography of Lund is pretty much like the geography of Champaign-Urbana: really flat. There is a slight hill to the town, where the university is north and up, and downtown is south and downhill (just like Santa Cruz, actually)… not a lot of good views.
But apparently, there is ONE hill. According to Wikipedia, it’s called Sankt Hans Hill. Of course, it’s fake (a former dump). My friend Philip showed me this place on Sunday, which was conveniently the only clear day this month, meaning we actually had a view!
Let’s check it out. Pretend you’re me, and we will face northish, and turn counterclockwise in a circle.
To the north, you can see a bunch of cute, middle-class houses with red roofs.
Turn west, and there’s wind turbines, and a train passing by every once in a while.
If you start facing southwest, you can actually see all the way to Malmö (okay, it’s not actually very far away) and its iconic Turning Torso.
Continuing, we can see the Lund Cathedral with the double-towers (our landmark, I suppose), which is where downtown starts.
Turning toward the east, we can see school. The LTH observatory is sort of the north end of campus, but since it’s the technical school that’s sorta home base for me.
And finally, turning once more and completing the circle, we see the most important landmark of them all….McDonalds. No, I haven’t been there.
It’s here if you want to find it! (the HILL, not McDonalds…come on now, guys)
Although the nations are the core of the Lund party scene, there is one other equally important form of party to understand: the Korridor Party. And finally, the “pre-party”, its customs, and its relationship to both nation parties and korridor parties.
Korridor Parties
Korridor parties are a result of the logistics of most Lund student housing. Almost every student lives in a “korridor,” which is a single hallway with rooms on either side (yes, a corridor) and a shared kitchen at the end. Korridors have somewhere between 8 and 15 rooms along them, and while everyone may not know one another, you at least run into almost everyone in the kitchen at some point. Kitchen duties are also divided up in some way – in my korridor, there are 2 kitchen bitches per week, who have to make sure the dishes are put away, trash is taken out, etc., and each person does this for 2 weeks throughout the semester.
So a korridor is in some sense a community. Sometimes, the korridor wants to throw a party, either as a group, or just because one or two people feel like having a party at their place. In that case, the kitchen becomes the party zone, since it has enough room to crowd and dance, and because it is accessible to everyone (if you partied in one person’s room, it may be unclear as to whether new people were invited). Most korridors seem to have a stereo system and a TV in their kitchen as well. Ours has a disco ball (super necessary). At least one person’s room (usually the host of the korridor party) leaves their room open so that guests can use their bathroom.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any fabulously wild korridor party pictures (though some of them can get pretty ridiculous), but here’s a very small one from a few weeks ago in Sparta B:
Because korridors are completely under the control of the residents, they can of course go much longer into the night than nations (which usually end around 2), at which point sometimes the party moves into one person’s room for chilling, dancing, etc. But korridor parties can also be incredibly short — 60 people piling into the kitchen, partying from 7-9 PM, and then vanishing. This usually happens when a korridor party is also a pre-party.
Pre-parties
Pre-parties are the Lund equivalent of pre-gaming, but they are a bit more formal than what we do in the US. Pre-parties can be held in a korridor or someone’s room depending on how large the group is — which can be anywhere from 3 to 60+ people. Afterwards, you usually head out to a nation (though sometimes you just go to a different korridor party). I suppose the original idea behind both practices is to drink before you go out to avoid expensive club drink prices. Here are the main differences I notice between pre-parties in Lund and the US:
• Unlike American pre-gaming, pre-parties usually have their own Facebook events
• EVERY party here has a set of pre-parties, whereas it is most certainly optional in the US
• The ending time of a pre-party is very definite. If you are going to VGs on Wednesday, the pre-party ends around 9:15 or 9:30, and everyone is GONE. Do NOT try to go to a pre-party at 9, people will give you weird looks. It’s usually a bit more challenging to kick everyone out of your place in the US.
• You are, on special occasions, allowed to pre-party for pubs, which is a little ridiculous since pubs start at 6 or 7. I think the earliest party I went to here started at 4:30. But since it’s Sweden, it was long past sundown, which is I suppose the international GO signal for party.
Korridor Party Locations
Most korridor parties seem to occur in the Sparta and Delphi residences, because they are very large, and have the kitchen/korridor style. There are occasionally korridor parties at Klostergården, but each resident has his/her own kitchens, so the korridors there tend not to be as social. Östra Torn residences are pretty much individual apartments, and there isn’t even really a korridor, and that covers all the residences I have been to personally. Sparta seems to have the most — you can sort of just wander around on any given Wednesday – Saturday night and find several korridor parties going on. We also have a lot of international students, who are some of the biggest korridor partiers.
Korridor Party Economics
People must bring their own drinks to all pre-parties, korridor parties, etc. (basically, anything that isn’t a nation). There are often snacks too, usually provided by the party-thrower. So the drink and food costs are minimized, but there is one cost that is externalized by the partygoers – cleanup. Nation parties cost more to go to, but you can effectively trash the nation and it’s up to the nation to clean up. If you throw a korridor party, it’s up to you, and usually, the last thing you feel like doing the morning after throwing a party is wading through a trashed kitchen to get to your Yoggi and Müsli.
Got my A machines in the table
Got my B machines in the drawer
but WHERE IS ERIC!??!
This weekend I made my first attempt at travel within Europe. The plan was to take a nice easy trip to Copenhagen, which is less than an hour away by train, see a Sleigh Bells concert, and spend Sunday exploring the city in daylight. It turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than we planned.
Part 1: Leaving Lund and Losing Eric
Alex, Josh, Eric, and I walked down to the Lund train station and bought train tickets. The train arrived when everyone except Alex and Eric had finished purchasing tickets, so they rushed through ticket purchase, and made their way over to the open doors where Josh and I were standing. The conductor’s bell was ringing, and Alex and Eric rushed towards the door. Alex made it on board – and then the doors closed, literally right in Eric’s face. It was a moment of comedic genius like I have never before seen in real life.
Josh tried to push the doors back open, I was pressing all the random colored buttons by the door, and Alex was running through the train to try and find the conductor. The train sat in place for about 10 seconds, we unable to get out, and Eric unable to get in, and just staring at each other and laughing uncontrollably (those of us inside the train, anyway).
We were pounding on the door and shouting “ERIC!!! ERIC!!!” and in general making a huge scene… the weird part was that everyone else in the train AND on the train platform was staring, and laughing uncontrollably too – audience-at-a-standup-comedy-show laughing too, no stifled chuckling here.
And when the train pulled away and we calmed down, we had to face the reality that Eric didn’t know exactly where we were going… and his phone had no minutes.
Survivors of the train incident
Crossing the water over to Copenhagen
Part 2: Accidental Eric Recovery
We hung out in the Copenhagen H station for about an hour, standing on various platforms, hoping to see Eric. No luck. Eventually, we went up to the McDonalds in the station to get Wifi and found some Facebook messages from Eric, that he had already arrived in Copenhagen, and a cab driver had screwed him over and taken him to the wrong place on purpose. Oops. We tried to come up with a game plan that would involve Eric taking a cab to meet us later and us paying the cab. We left the station…. and 15 minutes later ran into Eric on a street corner. Problem solved by telepathy!!
Part 3: Onto the concert
We found some food and got ready for the show. Sleigh Bells was playing at a venue called Loppen in the heart of Christiania, the hippie/druggie neighborhood in Copenhagen. There was lots of graffiti everywhere and your occasional trash-can fire, but we made it to the show without being offered drugs or being too sketched out, and everyone at the show was a college student from DTU or other Copenhagen schools anyway.
I have no clue what the opening band was called, but they were pretty good, and a lot like Sleigh Bells actually. The lead singer had a completely see-through shirt, but luckily my camera never decided to focus properly on her, so my photos amazingly turned out PG.
And finally… SLEIGH BELLS!
The show was rockin’ and Miss Sleigh Bells herself stood 3 feet in front of us the whole time, in her custom jersey and her white skull-covered nopants. The above picture is about the farthest she ever strayed.
Sleigh Bells’ noise pop grittiness was only enhanced by being right up in the action – so while their performance didn’t deviate much from the album versions, the album versions aren’t missing much – just the volume, the makeup, and the other 150 people jumping up and down with you and screaming, of course.
They waited until towards the end to play their best song (Rill Rill), but the entire show was sorta like being inside the last 30 seconds of the video for Infinity Guitars:
They ended their set promptly without encore, and then the house music turned back up and we kept dancing for an hour or so, met a bunch of random people, and finally left the club only to get lost for at least another hour on one of those great nighttime city adventures. The man with the dog who gave us directions but spoke no English may have been the best. I led our group to the train station McDonalds again that we had grown so fond of, where we way-past-midnight snacked with about 100 other Danes (the McDonalds was debatably more crowded than the show). I would comment on regional McDonalds differences, but I don’t really go to McDonalds in the US so I dunno. If I had to guess though, they probably don’t have Toblerone mcflurries in the US though (reported by Josh to not be very good, but I’m not sure I believe that).
Part 3: Rules of Copenhagen Architecture
The next day we explored Copenhagen by daylight. It’s gorgeous! Everything is so majestic and huge. We started by heading to Strøget, the big shopping street, and getting some danishes, coffee, and wifi at a hip looking cafe.
On the way, we discovered the rules of Copenhagen architecture:
1. Steeples everywhere.
2. When you can’t have a steeple, have a crown.
3. When in doubt, put horses or other creatures on the very top of whatever.
4. Lots of horse statues.
Rule 1 – You thought it’d be an alley, but no, steeple.
Rule 2
Rule 3
Rule 4
Onto the canals, also plentiful and quite nice.
I love these multi-colored buildings. So adorable.
Someone had a bad day.
But the boats are cool.
Seriously, it’s just a streetlight? Is this really necessary? Rule 3.
Part 4: The Little Mermaid
This is one of those Famous Copenhagen Things so we did it. It was okay, but full of tourists, and most importantly, the guidebooks leave out one key part of this experience… the giant factory in the background. See:
The version you see in guidebooks…
vs. what it’s treally like – groups of tourists standing in front, and giant factory.
Part 5: Carlsberg Brewery: Probably the best playgrounds in the world
We then crossed the city west on foot towards the Carlsberg Brewery. It was quite a long walk, but a good one to see a large chunk of the city. When we arrived at the brewery, we expected to find a visitors’ entrance or something of that sort. Instead what we found was a series of some of the most dangerous playgrounds I have ever seen, leading up to the entrance of the brewery.
It was as if they lured us in with pieces of candy on the ground. What kind of message they are trying to send us by putting this next to a brewery, I don’t really want to think about. Law suit waiting to happen?
Playground 1 was a forrest of ropes hanging from the ceiling that you tie yourself to make swings. MOST FUN THING POSSIBLY IN THE WORLD.
Playground 2 was tetherball, hammocks, and giant metal platforms on springs…
There was a third playground filled with square shaped bars to climb on, but they looked too cold to climb on. After all this, the brewery itself was a little underwhelming, though the kaffebar at the top did have foosball.
Afterwards we were pretty exhausted. We walked back to the train station and headed home, too tired to even carry on a conversation. Exploring cities is exhausting! This time, we made sure not to lose Eric.
Reflections on Denmark
It’s interesting how foreign Copenhagen felt, despite the fact that I’ve only been in Sweden a couple of weeks, and still know very little Swedish. But Danish is just different enough that I was once again disoriented (I’m now used to all the streets ending in “gatan” and “vägen”, not “gade”!). Also, some differences are attributable to small town vs. big city differences. Here’s what I noticed:
– Everything is REALLY EXPENSIVE in Copenhagen. People said Sweden would be expensive, but really it hasn’t been too bad. But we had to look long and hard to find ANY meals in Copenhagen less than $20. Even $40 seemed to be normal, non-fancy places. Probably Lund is just cheap because it’s a college town, but the difference was astounding.
– Drivers will kill you. In Lund, the cars all stop for you, the trucks stop for you, the buses even stop for you if you decide to step out in front of them in the middle of the street. Which is nice, since at home they stop around 50% of the time, so you have to do that awkward dance of figuring out if they are going to stop or not. If you’re in Lund, the answer is they WILL stop. If you’re in Copenhagen, they WILL kill you. We were almost killed at least like 10 times on this trip, when we had the right of way, but cars and buses just go out of their way to find and destroy you.
– The average Copenhagen resident has an average of 2.8 more piercings than the average Lund-er. There was a grunge factor that just isn’t there in Lund, where everyone is much more Scandinavian mainstream looking. I’m pretty sure Copenhagen had the first dreadlocks I’ve seen since arriving in Scandinavia.
– Even though Copenhagen is less than an hour away, a trip there can still be wild, crazy, and adventurous. Especially if you lose your friend and cannot communicate! Looking forward to attempting somewhere ACTUALLY adventurous and seeing what happens.
