Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 -
On Tuesday I went to V-Dala's welcome reception for new students (both Swedish and international) who had joined V-Dala. It began at 6 PM with an organization fair of sorts, with dinner following at 7:00. The organization fair seemed a bit odd. I'm used to organizations advertising themselves and actively trying to convince you to join at such events, but that was not the case here. Instead, you had to ask the questions about the organization, or the people staffing the organization's table would, in many cases, just look at you and not say anything. It didn't seem very friendly, and the Canadian, Germans, and Austrian I was with most of the evening agreed (I'd met the Germans and Austrian the week before at the pub crawl, as well as a Turk whom I also ate with at the welcome reception - it just so happened we had all joined V-Dala). But I signed up for notifications about events from several V-Dala organizations, including the international committee, cultural club, games club, and sports committee.
Though we were a bit disconcerted after the fairly unfriendly, impersonal events fair, the dinner was much better. It was semi-candlelight, with only sparse electric lighting, although no one was formally dressed. The food was good, rice and either chicken, carrot and (I think) mushroom soup, or a tomato-based chunky vegetable sauce, and wine was dispersed at a bottle per three people. Around nine-o-clock dessert came, a very good chocolate cake/brownie (kind of in between), as well as coffee and sugar cubes (for the coffee, not to eat in the manner of horses). I still don't like coffee, but it was better with milk than without as I had it my first day at Göteborgs. But the food was not the main event. That was the stage performances by several V-Dala organizations. The choir performed first, performing a few pieces in primarily A Capella style, followed by the band. The band said it was hard to describe exactly what type of music they perform, but to listen, and I agree that I can't put it easily in a common category. It was a brass band, with dancers, and the music reminded me of what I might expect with a '20s or '30s theme more than once, although perhaps it was actually more reminiscent of 1800s style - the dancers did perform the can-can at one point. But at other points the music had a midcentury Latin American feel to it. It certainly wasn't the more common jazz music.
The theatrical group, Spex, also performed at several points, including an act with multiple Julius Caesars with low lifespans, and a group of two penguins and one other bird. The latter was in Swedish, and while I was laughing watching the actors walk around birdlike and converse both in Swedish and bird sounds, with the non-penguin always seeming rather sad, the Swedes were really laughing, so it must have been even funnier knowing the Swedish. Once again I found myself wishing I knew Swedish - a fairly common thought. There were a few speakers as well, including the chaplain and V-Dala's inspector, who is an adult, V-Dala alum, and employee in charge of finances and generally keeping order. The latter had an especially good sense of humor, poking fun both at the tendencies of college students as well as himself and eliciting many laughs. Good news, though - for some reason he doesn't understand, the business world thinks it's good to have an Uppsala Universitet degree!
Overall it was a very good evening, and definitely worth coming to. There was enough time between the events on stage both to get to know the people around us better, and consume the food, and the event was clearly well-planned and well-executed. The quality of both the musical groups and the theatre group was high, and they'd be worth seeing perform in the future. The actual dinner part went without issue, as well. The overall feel was rather like that of a cabaret, with the dual focus on both stage performers, and dining and socializing. I didn't stay for the party after dinner, but I can say that V-Dala certainly knows how to put on a semi-formal dinner with onstage entertainment.
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