Even though this whole semester has seemed like celebrations and parties all round, there is now another cause for celebration! I just officially handed in my Final, Final Uni assessment about an hour ago and now am completely and utterly free to just chill out for the remainder of my time here in Sweden! Woot! I'm pretty stoked to not have any Uni work on my plate that I need to worry about. Even though studying was obviously what brought me here, I think that it's a given that here in Uppsala, it comes as a close second to having a ridiculously busy (but awesome) social life!
The last month and a bit, I've refrained from any travel in order to make the most of my time here in Sweden. This means that my blogs have also taken a bit of a drastic turn of late, not only in the frequency but also because it's hard to really find a focus to talk about. I mean, I don't really know what you guys want to know about. As such, I'm just going to wing it with this blog and maybe just ramble a little about a couple things. This time round, I'll talk about Flogsta! Mind, I may not get much of a chance to write much more from here on in, we will see. I'll really do my best! After this exchange, I'll be doing a pretty epic month and a half of backpacking around Europe so my adventure is far from over!
My Home: Flogsta
This is a really nice shot which I did not take sorry - I took from Facebook of some of Flogsta - I wish I could take a photo as epic as this! People who have lived on campus will probably be familiar with how ridiculous life is when you live in student accommodation such as this. One which is pretty much dedicated to partying. While there are many other great campuses, Flogsta is by far famous as the party one which causes the most mayhem. It still amazes me to this day how students can pretty much get away with anything here which they could never get away with in any other place. For example, you can put really sticky glue all up and down the stairways and not be held accountable because the "landlord" won't know who is responsible. For example, you can throw a couch out the window and not get in trouble because your not at someone's personal home...and while the people in the corridor might get mad, again, if the "landlord" doesn't know who did it - no one can really get in trouble. Or can they? Well recently, there was an attempt held by some International Students to hold the biggest Flogsta party complete with a DJ, giant speakers and a "Full Moon" theme. It got stopped pretty quickly by the police and the fire put out by the fire brigade, but the students managed to continue the party pretty much all night long changing from destination to destination - to a roof, then to a laundry room and then to random corridors. In all the commotion, some people broke into a corridor and threw everything in the corridor out the window! No Joke! I'm talking common room area: Fridges, Stoves, Tables, Couches, Microwaves, Toasters, Chairs etc. The mess was pretty incredible the next morning, here is just a tiny snapshot of a section of the mess.
So anyway, I actually am quite repulsed that students seem to think it's ok to throw other people's stuff out the window. Sure, it's actually pretty funny at the time but how annoying for all the students in the corridor who weren't part of it. Believe it or not, there are a good portion of people who live in Flogsta who mainly stay in their room and study. Imagine what happens when they wake up to find that everything they need to eat and all their food has been chucked out the window! Yeah, it sucks a bit. And actually - interestingly, Heimstaden finally took action!
7800 kr by the way is quite a hefty amount of money, just over $1000. I don't really know what is going to happen. It's a pretty hot topic at the moment around Flogsta with people arguing that the people who chucked it should come forward and pay it. It seems unfair for the people who live in the corridor to pay when they didn't do anything. Despite all this, Flogsta otherwise is a really a great place to live! I really do love living here. We have such a great community (except for certain vandalist people) and one thing that I find really interesting is how important Facebook is now to living in Uppsala. We have a "Flogsta Party Planning" group which we all are welcome to join to get updates and contribute in order to throw parties, know where the next corridor party is, or just know general gossip such as this Heimstaden Warning letter and that time when there was a homeless man who somehow had a key into all the corridors and was coming in and stealing things from everyone. Everyone worked together posting where he was last seen and giving updates on what was happening with the arrest in order to help to catch the guy. It's a similar case with the nations and their events - pretty much to summarise - if you don't have Facebook, it'd be close to impossible to know what is happening in Uppsala!
But going back to living in Flogsta... it's a pretty dirty, cheap and noisy place to live. There are always drunk people singing and making noise at early hours of the morning. A lot of people were unlucky enough to get noisy neighbours who play loud music. Some corridors have kitchens which are really just filthy because no one ever does their dishes. They've taken to just taking all the dishes in the sink, putting them in garbage bags and putting them on the balcony because no one will own up to cleaning them! Sometimes when you walk around, you need to be careful because people might be having an egg fight across buildings and they might fall on you.. or worse, people might throw a burning bed off the balcony (yes that's happened before).
But all things aside, I've managed to make some awesome friends here. It's so cool because we all live so close together in the same "street." I live in building 3 and my friend Amy who lives in building 2 can pretty much look right into my window from hers. Kelsey lives a couple floors above me. Mina and Manon live the furthest and even that is like a 2 minute walk to building 10. Hannah and Bal live in building 4 and 5 and Vikki lives in building 1. It's just so awesome because we can go and visit each other all the time. I was also really fortunate to have a corridor who has clean standards in the kitchen and common room. Each week, somebody is on kitchen duty (duly called "kitchen bitch") and we also have a "kitchen mummy" who is my friend Tommi, who has lived here the longest and so is kinda in charge and just does general maintenance like taking money to go buy detergent and paper towels. Everything works so well and most people who come to my kitchen say that it is one of the best stocked ones they have seen! I pretty much never run out of cutlery or plates! This is in contrast to going to some other kitchens where you'd be hard pressed to find a cup to drink out of (people just drink out of tupperware) and you need to bring cutlery with you!
LOL. N.B. the fact we are eating off paper plates here
It's really interesting to see the differences in "culture" between corridors. Some corridors, everyone is friends with everyone. One of my mates told me that she regularly has dinner and goes out to places with her corridor mates (mainly international students of course). The Swedish people living in each corridor really do just keep to themselves. Some corridors have a lack of communication completely, with people getting angry with each other and leaving notes!
Some corridors are really welcoming of new people and having some community in the corridor and hold like a meeting at the beginning of the semester to get to know each other doing things such as getting each person to draw another person and sticking all the pictures up on the board. Some hold regular meetings. My corridor isn't completely social, I met people just in the kitchen as I bumped into them cooking. Some I talk to and some I only really greet. We don't hold any meetings, the kitchen mummy just writes anything we need to know on the whiteboard which is not very often anyway. The "kitchen bitch" plan is stuck on the wall and usually people are pretty good at keeping the place clean. These last few weeks, I've gotten to know a few of my corridor mates a lot better which has been really cool! In particular, I've been hanging out with Tommi a bit more, and Elin - a new Swedish girl who just moved in about a month ago, as well as the New Zealand couple - Dave and Chanel who are the other international students who live here. It's been pretty cool... I think it's nice that we aren't all friends because it is hard to be friends and also live together in such close proximity. It's nice because we are all friendly with each other but get our own privacy! One time, someone didn't do their dishes for ages and one of the sinks started piling up really bad. At first, a nice friendly note was written on the white board asking the culprit to kindly clean it. After 2 weeks, nothing had happened... the pile was just getting bigger. I came home from Uni one time to find this hilarious note on the whiteboard!
Well anyway, there is a little bit about my corridor and my life in Flogsta! I hope it didn't bore you too much. I think it's pretty fascinating. It's fun to do, short term. I think that I'll really miss living so close to my friends like this. I'll also miss my giant room which my own bathroom - that is really quite cool. I won't miss my very uncomfortable chair which is like a plastic chair you'd sit in in kindergarten (except it's bigger). I can't wait to go home to my Moses (my soft IKEA wheely chair).
Another quick thing I wanted to add that I love about Flogsta is how many things happen here simultaneously. I have my group of friends and we might hang out in the kitchen, or in one of our rooms, or out in the sun outside on the grass. At one point in time, in one kitchen there could be a little dinner party and on the other side, just a guy sitting alone eating. Upstairs, there could be some people playing cards and on the other side, people getting blind drunk! When I was on the roof one time, I thought it was hilarious to see that looking into the kitchens of the building next to me, I could see two dinner parties happening right next to each other on the same floor and they looked like they were all part of the same one. It's the one 3 floors down. Every floor has two corridors on either side. Each window is a kitchen and there is a wall separating the two different corridors on each level. You can see that both kitchens are occupied by people sitting around the desk eating, but actually... it's two separate parties! So cool! (Yeah, also a bit creepy we can see it but still cool)
