Kalmar

Today was a relatively quiet one. After a fika for international students, we all headed to the main university building to a big fair where the Nations sell themselves to prospective members. After just a little persuading, I decided to join Kalmar, something which I'd been toying with for a while after hearing tales of the Balkan and techno themed club nights and ultra-liberal culture.

Despite not having the prettiest of houses it has a grand history, tracing its roots back to 1663 when it split from a larger nation. It has roughly thirteen hundred members and represents the coastal part of Småland, which boasts a proud naval tradition and is famed/gently mocked for its frugal and entrepreneurial people. IKEA's founder, who hails from one county over, called the locals "the Scotsmen of Sweden." Hmm.

Perhaps in an attempt to be as Scottish as possible, I dined at MAX, Sweden's amazing answer to McDonald's which prides itself on its hippy credentials. The burgers taste almost home-made, despite being almost certainly made in some god-awful factory.

The bus home was quiet, timely and not full of intimidating youths, which made a nice change from French public transport. Swedes have an innate fear of contact with strangers, which people often take for rudeness - if you say "hej" to someone you don't know on the street, they will usually blush and scurry away - but this means that nobody will ever glare at you, Montlucon-style, on a bus or train. I take perverse joy from sitting next to a Swede on the bus when there are still seats free elsewhere and feeling them immediately seize up with a kind of antisocial terror. It really happens; sometimes there is even a slight gasp. Try it.

I spent the evening at the Fyris, a little arthouse cinema tucked in the basement of a lovely apartment building. It shows a mix of indie movies from abroad and some more thoughtful current Swedish fare. I saw "Searching for Sugar Man," a Swedish documentary about a small-time American singer called Rodriguez who became bigger than Elvis is South Africa during the apartheid era, and only found out about his celebrity when he got a phonecall from a Cape Town music journalist telling him that he'd been a counter-cultural figurehead for twenty years. There was a very strong theme of wasted lives and lack of fulfilment, and I only hope that the film gains more exposure than poor Rodriguez managed.