direkt från lundagård (a long walk to sweden)

Seven journeys by long-distance bus, four by train, three by airplane, and one by trans-baltic ferry, this has been one long trip — for the most part, overland — to Lund. Geneve, Bratislava, Vienna, Krakow, Vilnius, Klaipeda, Riga, Tartu, Tallinn, Stockholm, Uppsala, Luleå, -- Lund.

In Tartu I felt almost established; I had my own place a few kilometers out from the city center, and when I came home late at night I'd knock on the window and the komandant would unlock the door and let me in, then I'd climb the five flights of stairs to my floor. One night the temperature dropped to 4 degrees C, and the sudden chill on my face reminded me that the seasons really are changing, that winter is coming and I'm really not prepared for that. It's funny to be on a trip and have the seasons change. (And by the time I came to Luleå and then to the Arctic, Nils and I were able to throw snowballs at each other.) It makes the journey seem longer. In Tartu I felt I was there exactly for the transition to autumn, the verdant, healthy trees turning golden almost as I watched.

In Stockholm I didn't yet have Nils' phone number, so I called Erik. Remember me? Can I stay at your place for a few days? I'm on my way. And a few hours later I was in Uppsala, the oldest Swedish university town. One of the "Oxford and Cambridge" of Sweden, Lund being the other. I had time left, I didn't quite feel like it was time yet to go down to Lund, and I had always wanted to visit Uppsala.

And in Uppsala I saw those things that reminded me of Lund, the little things that I had forgotten about, small quirks of Sweden. Erik lives in a korridor at Uppsala and I felt very much at home, as if I knew where everything was and how everything worked. Little things. Fire outside doorways in the dark northern night, beckoning streetgoers into some warm festivity. Vast seas of bicycles parked outside the train station, outside the university buildings. Cheap and good lunch at the Nation. Ärtsoppa och pannkakor for dinner on Thursdays. The need to squeegee the bathroom walls and floor after a shower. In Estonia things started to look a little bit more Scandinavian, but here, here I was close. And I feel a certain small envy, both personally -- for not being a student anymore, for not being a student in Sweden anymore -- but also generally, with the vague residual sense that American students are getting swindled out of something, that there's something about student life here that the Americans miss completely. Living in the co-ops after leaving Sweden the first time really mitigated that feeling, — no, that's an understatement; the co-ops rehabilitated Berkeley in my perception — but here it is, resurfacing.. there is something. No nations, no karneval, no sektions, no festlokal. Berkeley has much to offer that's not here, as well, of course, but I sure would like to see what would happen if we let loose a bunch of co-opers in Lund and then took them back to the states — what would be build in Berkeley then?

There is a hazard in returning, a danger to find that things aren't the same, that they never were that way, that perception mutates with physical absense, that people have moved on or forgotten, or that times have changed, and I was anxious for this. Are the Nations so great, is the coffee so strong? And then I was bumping into this rigid adherence to protocol that is infuriating when it works against you -- when I couldn't attend the tackfest thanking the Nation's hard workers at Krischansta since I RSVP'd a few days too late. And now, no ISIC card for me, lacking any convincing student documentation, no student discount, no entry to the Nations when all I want is a dinner of pea soup and crepes. A scolding of "those are not for free reading" when I'm a paragraph into "The Charming Outcome of the Cancun Trade Talks" in the Economist while waiting to get picked up from the train station. Let's write it off as a Stockholm phenomenon. But, still...

In Uppsala in the korridor kitchen I sat down at a pine table with a plate of place spaghetti noodles with butter, with saft to drink, with some books to read in the evening and with korridorkompisar around, and I realized that maybe that's what I really wanted all along.

Lund is almost like I never left, and maybe that's the hard part, since I have to leave all over again. I'm listed in the phone book. My account still works on the library computers. My old friends till live together, but now they've moved from the korridor to the most beautiful apartment you can imagine, direct in the city center. The Nation schedules are pretty much the same, still good dinner, dessert, liveband at Kalmar Nation on Tuesdays. Don't be late. The Scandinavian plane -- a silver-white seven-thirty-seven with a solid blue tail and red engines on which was served smoked salmon, potatoes in dill sauce, wholegrain bread, and of course coffee -- touched down at Sturup, waking me as I had drifted off to sleep, my head against the window, on the fifty minute flight from Stockholm. It was misty and grey at Sturup, a drizzly twilight, but that was OK. I rode the bus into Lund and through the fading light there was still the heavy traffic of bicycles on cobblestones with dynamo-driven headlights bright. This is the only place in the world I know of where you can buy saffron ice cream (from glasskulturen on stortorget), and it still tastes just as good -- I recommend it with a scoop of mango gellato too. But of course there is a difference — I catch myself thinking to call Anna or Christina to go to dinner somewhere.. but they are long gone from here.

In the day I went to my old falafelman for lunch, in Saluhallen at the "Burger Bar," I turned the corner and, yes, there he was. He did a complete double-take, recognizing me at once -- and, immediately, "I was so worried!" Hearing of the Hebrew University bombing, in which many of the victims were international students, he was sure that I was dead. He asked the Americans he met about me, but no one had any word...

At Kalmar Nation I met a bunch of international students. It must be the same here, year after year. There was even a guy from UCSB who had the same shirt and the same haircut as the UCSB kid out year, and then of course there's the pretentious law students, the bubbly valley girl, a bunch of san diegans and a canadian from waterloo.

I start a conversation with a very cute Swedish girl with a "hej.. hur är legät?" and it's going very well. At the end of the evening she and her friend make me promise to join them at VG-nation the next night, but then I show up and VG is full, but shortly later they show up, but they have stamps already and so they can just go in. I don't feel like fighting my way into VG, they don't seem interested, I go home. Somehow that seems like Sweden.

Well, The Cardigans play here on Tuesday, but I've got to be going, time to get going back to California.