Second day in Lund (Lund #2)

by Daniel Hnyk

Today I started with the first lecture of SUSA course - the course of Swedish. It really worth the time. The teacher - "Kikki" - is really nice. The whole lesson was quite long - 3 hours. But with 15 minutes break every hour. Overall it was funny and I've met another people there (Korean and Portugal girl). All I can say in Swedish now is where I live, what I study, what's my name and we've covered alphabet letters. Swedish doesn't seem to hard to learn. It is kind of similar to English and German.

After the lesson we took the lunch in the canteen and I am probably not going to do that very often. Even thought it was delicious for the price, 70 SEK for a lunch is too much for me right now. For this price you get a beef steak with mashed potatoes. Salad is included with bread and butter. For a drink you can take free water.

Then we had a introduction meeting. It was 2 hours of general information about studying here. But they didn't forgot anything. The speakers covered:

  1. health - from the dentist to sexual diseases, even a psychology consultant came their
  2. studying - from attending the lectures to punishment for cheating
  3. fire brigade - a very funny talk from a fire fighter. The start of the talk? "OK, now some serious shit! Because shit happens when they hit the fan!" Everything from fire alarms to cooking.

  4. Patrick The Police Man - he mentioned how does it work here, what is and is not legal and so on. Few funny phrases:

    1. "Welcome to my town. Sorry - not all police man are so beautiful as I am."
    2. "If you miss the front and the back light, we give you a discount - the first is for 500 SEK and the second is 750 SEK"
    3. "On a non-tandem bike only one people is allowed. Once I've seen 7 people on single bike. Should I fine them? NO! 7 on a single bike? It's awesome. But since then, I let you without fine only if you are at least 8!"

  5. Studentlund - everything about student life here in Lund from student nations, unions, sport, music, help.

  6. and so on..

After this lecture I went back to my place to study for my final exams and take a dinner. In 18:30 there was an official meeting. We were welcomed by the Lund University Male Choir. They should be one of the best male choirs on this planet (at least in 2010 they were). After this warm up, there was a talk from the LU rector (I guess) with a great speech. He kindly welcomed us and described why is the LU one of the best universities in Lund. I will just mention his accent on strong research program and student's life. He emphasized that they are proud of having us here. The next speech was from the city chancellor. It was in the same style. He welcome in this great city where is a high standard of living, a good education, and which is the home city of many inventions (asthma inhaler, Bluetooth, tetra-pack). They call it here The city of ideas. He said that he wants that when we leave Lund, everybody could say, that he met someone different. It will teach us to look at people and ideas from different perspective. I guess it was related to current refugee crisis. The greatest sentence of his speech?

You are all citizens of Lund. I welcome you in our family.

Finally, there was another student mingling supported by big portions of cookies and juice, but it was again too crowded for me. Hence, I left with 4 girls to sit in front of the cathedral and spent an hour or so chatting about their life. No one of them have accommodation from LU accommodation so they had to find it on their own. Apparently, there are really crazy people out there when you want to find a room in Lund. They haven't just met scammers, but also some crazy people who rent only to males or Christians. Everybody wants to pay in advance (even thought no one should want that and we were explicitly warned by LU not to do that). They also have an offer like: I hope we could spend some weekends together so I could lower your rent. Disgusting. One of the landlord could accommodate the girl only during the week days. On weekend, she should have gone out, because his house serves as a church. Another guy rents a "house" and somehow forget to mention that it does not have walls inside, so it's basically one big room. Another woman wants to know when exactly you want to go to toilet or bathroom, so she could write it inside the contract. Crazy, crazy, crazy. They all pay at least about 3 500 SEK per month, 4000 SEK or even more. And it's not even in center or they have to share a room.

That's all for today. Tomorrow there is department meeting, so I will finally get my Learning Agreement and submit to the chosen courses.