The Big Valborg Bender Week

Feels like I haven't written in here for weeks upon weeks everyone! Time is slipping away faster than I can grab it and document it all down here in this blog with only less than a month until my studies end here in Sweden. My bad, everyone! As I'm sure you are all wondering, yes I am alive and well! And yes I do study very hard! In fact, just to prove it - I'll take a photo on my webcam. (I just woke up from a nap so my hair's a lil fuzzy). See, I have a University jumper on, therefore I must be a student who studies hard!

So, as the weather has started to get warmer - there has been quite an increase in the amount of time spent outdoors pretty much doing nothing but sitting in the sun, picnics and BBQ's. In fact, as I speak - right now outside it is 14 degrees! The peak so far has been 19 degrees and that's quite incredible. Today the lowest the temperature has been is -1 degree. I guess, we can all agree that right now the weather is playing with us, and how! Nevertheless, it is officially Spring here and it was celebrated as anyone who has been cooped up with darkness, snow and cold for so many months would - with Valborg! For most of you, that probably doesn't mean so much to you. But damn - the Swedes definitely know how to celebrate complete with champagne, bonfires, music, bbqs, balloons, boats and much partying! Uppsala was more packed than I could have imagined. People travelled long and far to come here to our humble little city and the whole week leading up to Valborg... there was a real sense of excitement in the air! Here's a photo (I didn't take it) which shows how many people were in Ekonomikum park on Valborg. Ekonomikum is actually the park outside the building I go to school.

But as per usual, I'm going to wind back to the clocks a little to give you all a bit of an idea of what went down. The week before Valborg which was a Monday was fairly intense, like I said. Most people had a week-long bender in preparation. We went for a 6 day one, starting from Wednesday with parties, picnics, clubbing and events on every day. On one of the days, we had a lovely picnic in the park (same park as above but considerably more empty) and soaked up the sun but it was still quite cold and windy! There are plenty more picnics to come...

Not sure if I've mentioned yet, but as the weather has improved, we now bike everywhere! I ended up having to buy a better bike because the one I had really was just too ridiculous, small and pretty much killed me. I'v got a photo coming up of my bike. Oh and here is Mina on her mustang bicycle! What a beauty! I was talking about the bike... but yeah she's pretty cool too.

This photo demonstrates how windy it was

So yeah! Here is my new bike! Still quite small because I can't seem capable of riding anything bigger but it's a good bike and it has a nice basket and everything! I've been riding everywhere on it - it's been pretty freakin SHWEET! If you're wondering what happened to my old bike, I still have that too. I'm planning to sell both of them before I leave...

Anyway, another nice thing we did on the days leading up to Valborg was a big brunch in my newly "renovated" kitchen pot luck style! Everyone brought stuff to make for breakfast and then we feasted away like the hungry students that we were. As most people agreed, perfect hangover food!

Bal saves the day with freshly brewed coffee! We all celebrated!

Some awesome brunch-ee-mites!

Banana bread, potatoes, bacon, eggs, pancakes, fruit, breakfast enchiladas, juice, coffee, chocolate milk = BEST BRUNCH EVER

Highlight of the Brunch! Breakfast Enchiladas are amazzzzziiiinggggg

Some awesome friends =]

Sneaky shot from behind

Hannah has never eaten egg (she used to be allergic) That morning was a momentous occasion... she tried egg for the first time! Verdict: "It kinda doesn't taste like anything...."

Moving on! There was yet another picnic and this time we decided to give what the Swedes call a "BBQ" a go. Seriously, it is kinda ridiculous and kinda cool. I can't quite completely decide. Basically, they don't have BBQs. You just buy a disposable one at ICA which is a tin foil tray with some coal and a flammable sheet inside which you can light with a match and then grill things on it for like 20-30 minutes or so before it goes out. We were told you shouldn't really try cooking anything too thick like a steak on it. What a crazy concept right? This time, we decided to set up a little closer to home. In fact, we set up right behind our local ICA supermarket which is just down the hill from Flogsta. Brilliant plan! That way, if we needed any more supplies, we could just pop right in!

The Hill I walk down to go to ICA

Chilling in the sun... so nice!

The silly little "BBQ"

Candid shot?

Happy people celebrating Kvalborg (the day before Valborg)

Sweden has awesome clouds... this is the view towards ICA carpark and bus stop

Playing some Bocce Ball!

That night, we spent hours waiting in a line to go to Snerikes Nation to celebrate Kvalborg and danced the night away to come home to find that actually, Flogsta was playing host to an even bigger celebration - complete with a burning bed! Seriously. You would have seen nothing like this. Unfortunately, neither did I. I was at the time, still sick, and so chose to go home instead of checking this craziness out! (Biggest mistake of my life because it didn't repeat the next day as I was told) But here are some photos I stole from other people who were there!

Dancing on the bike racks of Flogsta

Wreaking havoc in Flogsta

That burning bed

Policeman supervising the party

Firetrucks and police watching the action ready to put the fire out if it got out of control

Drunk people jumping over the fire... smart people!

Yeah pretty wow right!??! Far out, just CRAZINESS! The party was super loud too. They had proper big concert speakers and were pumping music and being rowdy all night so I didn't really get that good a sleep in the end. Still, the plan for the big day - Valborg - was to get up at 7 in the morning and get our arses to town to sit by the river for a Champagne breakfast and the legendary "boat race" as was tradition for Valborg.

As we walked down the river looking for a nice spot to set up camp, we passed the starting line for the boat race and got to have a sneak peak of the boats! They were just so amazing. I could not believe that these had been carved out of that polystyrene foam stuff. Far out, Swedes really go all out. Here is a sneak peak but I'll put up some pics of them on the water too!

And here we are having breakfast by the river... my Norwegian friend, Solvi and her sister really went all out. The rest of us just had sandwiches...

It got crowded fairly quick!

Popping champagne to have with our breakky... there were corks and strawberries floating all down the river. Funny sight.

So at 9am there was meant to be a duck race. I was mainly holding out for this! Why? Well I had bought one of the little yellow rubber duckies and there was rumoured to be about 20,000 sold which would all be put into a water at the same time to go down the river with the first 30 ducks reaching the finish line winning prizes. Heck yes! Here is me and Mina with the ducks we bought.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the ducks were let out downstream of where we were sitting - starting at the "waterfall" where the boats all ended up doing epic stacks. So we were in the wrong spot in the end and I missed out on seeing all the little rubber duckies going down the river. I was pretty gutted :(

This is one of the little dips where the boats go down

Boats start warring on each other - water fight!

Fight!

Love this spongebob boat!

All in all there were probably around 50 boats which went down and so after that, the hype of the boats was a little over and so the next stop was off to the Ekonomikum park with the rest of the crowd to spend more time sitting around in the sun! But it was fairly packed so I didn't really stay too long there. The other reason why we didn't stay long at Ekonomikum was because we wanted to get right back into the queue for Snerikes Nation as they were hosting one of the "Champagnegallopes" - oh man! It looked so good and the line was bound to be long so by 1 we were in the line and it was not meant to start until 3. Why would we line up for 2 hours? Well, here is the teaser trailer for the event!

Boy was it worth the wait. It was incredi-FREAKING-unbelievable!!!! The second we walked in, we were completely soaked in champagne! We then bought more champagne and started to squirt everyone else. There was a mighty fine band playing probably the best playlist I could have asked for (inclusive of Blink 182, ACDC, Blur, and every other singalong song!) It was completely ridiculous and we all had the best time there! Best news too - the place let us in and started at 2 instead of 3 so we didn't even have to wait that long! Yes! Here are some of the best photos!

Best photo of the Day in my opinion! Yes... it was sorta planned but how cool is it?!

Cool photo hey?

So much champagne!

Confetti was blasted into the sky and falling onto us as we were soaked in champagne so we were covered

The whole place naturally smelt like champagne and all of our clothes were soaked. People had their shirts ripped off in the crowd too. It really was a crazy crazy few hours. Luckily, I survived it pretty much unscathed except for getting hit around and battered a lot and my shoes were pretty much ruined. Not just dirty but the heels almost torn off. My clothes stunk like champagne and my bag was soaked... my wallet still smells sorta like sour champagne. But damn! What an amazing way to spend an afternoon!

After that, we hobbled out of the place - managed to find a bus to take us home quicksticks as we were shivering from the cold and oh so wet from the champagne. We were all in terrible need of showers and a good nap. And Nap We Did! At 10, we ventured back out roaming Flogsta looking for a repeat of the party from last night to find that actually... everyone had continued napping and everyone was too dead to keep partying. I don't blame them. It had been a long day. We ended up just hanging out in Mina's corridor with some friends we picked up along the way while wandering Flogsta and had a "mini-party" before we all dragged ourselves to bed for a much-needed slumber! While this was happening, we completely forgot that actually - on Valborg at night - everyone had gone to Gamla Uppsala (the old town of Uppsala you know the one with the 3 Viking Hills) for the Giant Bonfire. YES ANOTHER BONFIRE. Clean forgot! But here's a photo of it (thank you Facebook)

The place was completely packed though and would have been very cool - there were also Fireworks!

And that just about completes my run down of what happened during the big week which was Valborg! Busy as crap. It was ballistic. Lots of fires and picnics like I said. And now, I can't stand the smell of Champagne! I still get whiffs of it on my stuff. Still, it was worth it! Valborg in Uppsala is EPIC. and Flogsta was trashed.