September 7
Just got back from the ‘Novice Pub’ dinner at the Helsingkrona Nation. I might have explained the whole nation bit earlier, but I’ll do it again briefly here. There are 13 ‘nations’ at Lund which serve as the social hubs for the students. They have their own pubs and nightclubs, and offer lunch or dinner for cheap prices. They also organize sports, activities, theater productions, photo clubs, etc. You are required to join a nation because that is how you get your student ID card and pay the university or faculty fees. You can choose to be involved in a nation, or not at all and just get the card from them. Even though you are a member of one nation, you can still go to activities and events hosted by other nations. We don’t have anything quite like it back in the States. Tonight was an event for all the first-year students. I ran into a girl while entering the nation and we got to talking and sort of just stuck together for the rest of the evening. It turned out that My (that’s her name, and it’s not pronounced like ‘my’) had lived in Hickory, NC for 8 months last year, so it was an interesting connection for sure. She is also politically active so it was nice to see that as well (besides being tall, blonde, and beautiful like Swedes have a greater chance of being). I also met the guy that was getting involved with the Helsingkrona website so I’m gonna attend the meetings, learn more about PHP, and help maintain the English webpage. One tends to pick up a lot of cultural perspectives during dinners such as this (it was the first time I was surrounded entirely by Swedes). My said that she couldn’t understand the whole fad with the Atkins diet that she saw while in the States. People would ask her “wow you eat potatoes and bread…how do you stay so thin?” She said that Americans are more open and friendlier too than Swedes. She said that she met a guy selling shirts at the supermarket or someone else at a gym, but in Sweden such a thing is unheard of. Many times Americans would strike up conversations while waiting in line or on a bus, but in not so in Sweden. She brought back some of this openness to Sweden, though, and she likes it. She also noticed that Americans tend to naturally speak louder while talking than people from other cultures. She said she began to do that too. After reflecting on conversations I’ve had with my corridor mates, I’m realizing that the observation is indeed true. It was a fun night.
Yesterday, a bunch of us in the corridor happened to congregate for dinner at the same time so we had a nice conversation there too, this time more on food actually then shifted to cars as we guys began drooling over the new Bugatti. I decided to post some things I learned from that:
- You can spend over a 100 euros for one meal at a very nice restaurant in France. One corridor mate spent 200 euros for a dinner…not including wine.
- Germans are extremely price conscious. They will tend to look at price over quality, and the idea of spending that kind of money for a meal is incomprehensible. You probably won’t find meals costing over 30 euros at German restaurants.
- At very nice French restaurants (where reservations are usually required), women are given different menus that have all the prices removed. This is to allow them to pick whatever they choose without fretting over the cost of the dish.
- I am probably the youngest person in my corridor, at age 20. We have many 23 year olds, 21 year olds, and Lishuang is 25! Helene has her birthday on 15 September, and Christian’s birthday is at the end of October.
- When drinking German Weißbier (white beer), you usually have to drink it out of a special glass or else it will taste horrible.
- Most of the corridor is now avoiding Swedish bread because it is too sweet. More and more we have started to buy our bread at the Saluhallen Market in Mortenstorget. I asked for a loaf of ‘German’ bread and it’s great.
- Laure and I shared a pot to boil spaghetti noodles and she prefers to put the noodles in the boiling water without breaking them in half. When eating the spaghetti, I began to cut the noodles to make it a bit practical. This was quickly pointed out to me by Helene, who told me that you should never cut noodles. This was affirmed by Christian, who told me that two Italian guys started to get really agitated when British tourists at the next table over started cutting pasta.
- The Fanta brand was created for the German market because of some problem with the Coke brand. Germans wanted the caffeine of Coke but prefered the taste of Fanta, so spezie was formed, in which you mix Fanta and Coke.
- Bugatti has created a 1 million euro car that has a 1001 horsepower engine. It can go over 230 mph.
- Volkswagen is apparently said to oversee Porche, Bugatti, Audi, and Lamborghini, just to name a few.
I better get to bed. Digital Communications lecture at 12.
