Fika! and, crazy Swedish medical students

Thursday, January 20th -

There were two fikas this afternoon, but I had to do some laundry today (there's a post about laundry in Sweden), so I wasn't in time for the first one.  But I was in time for the second one, which was a "winter fika" at V-Dala Nation.  The full description reads,

"Winter-"fika" at V-Dala Nation.  Nothing is better than a nice "fika" (candles, friends cookies, "glögg") to warm you up during these dark times."

Well, it is dark times if you go the amount of sunlight.  I can't help thinking of the "dark times" like "Dark Ages" or "grim times" when reading that description, but that made me want to go more rather than less, even though it's been quite cheerful times so far.

And it turned out I liked this fika much better than the previous one.  Both the food and the drink were better.  Rather than rather hard, not-all-that-flavorful cookies, there were thinner,  and more flavorful - unfortunately I don't really know that much more about them.  Glögg is actually hot, spiced, red wine.  Much more palatable than coffee to me, with my one-point-makes-a-trend experience with both.  I also met the head of the V-Dala International Committee while I was there, a friendly French PhD student.  I think she's actually the head of the entire university's International Committee as well, although I didn't realize it at the time.  Probably a good thing, as it's always more difficult to be star-struck and easier to be natural when you don't realize someone is as important as they are.  At any rate, the event went well, and I've since received two more invitations from V-Dala's International Committee (ice skating and skiing).  I'm impressed by their International Committee and they seem quite friendly, so they are certainly one of the Nations I'll be considering joining.

After fika a large group of us went to Kalmar Nation's pub for dinner.  Amongst the group were Americans, Germans, Spaniards, Australians, and Austrians.  The menu was entirely in Swedish, but for the most part wasn't actually that difficult to figure out - a decent number of cognates with English in food areas plus one with French, and we could tell what most of the dishes basically were.  I ended up getting a pork and potatoes dish, which was tasty.  Many of us also got Swedish Rekorderlig cider, which I'd recommend.  It's apparently much more affordable in Sweden than Australia as well.

The conversation was good, but the real memorable entertainment were the Swedes.  There are a good number of new Swedish students here this week as well (called "nulls", translated to "zeros" during their first week due to their newness), and on this particular night the new Swedish medical students were doing a pub crawl.  By the end of the night, none of us had any doubt that Swedes weren't always reserved.  Very much the opposite in this case.  The Swedes were playing a game where they were all in a circle, with one person in the middle.  That person had to make romantic advances towards people in the circle until someone started laughing, and then that person was in the middle.  To be clear, these were not casual, formal romantic advances.  There was much physical contact, and while everyone remained clothed, it certainly would not have been permissible in a public places in the states.  Four or five groups of nulls came through, all playing this game.  It was a site to behold, and several times a particularly determined player-in-the-middle distracted us from our conversation.  The Europeans weren't quite as surprised as the Americans or Australians, but they certainly weren't expecting that, either.  Now when we come back in 10 years and have to go to the doctor's, we can tell the doctor we know what they did during their orientation week...

But all said, certainly another good evening, if eye-opening.  Kalmar is enjoyable as well.  I'm glad we won't be cut out from other Nations' events by joining one.