Valborg Weekend!

What's Valborg?
Valborg is one of the largest celebrations in Sweden, particularly in the university towns. Uppsala has the largest Valborg celebration of all of Sweden with as many as 100,000 people flooding into the city nearly doubling its size to celebrate the day. Valborg is a celebration of the arrival of spring that occurs every April 30th. Some of the events include a boat race down the River Fyris with students in teams of 4 braving the cold water in their creative homemade crafts. Many people have an early champagne breakfast while watching the boat race and then the celebration moves to the large park near the Ekonomikum university building where the entire field is filled with people picnicking and drinking. In the afternoon the nations open for the champagne gallop where the students run down the hill towards the nations to drink and spray champagne after listening to a brief speech by the university headmaster from the balcony of the university library. Attached is a link to more information on the history, traditions, and celebration of Valborg in Uppsala.
Links below:
Walpurgis (Valborg) Night - Wikipedia
More on Valborg

Thursday
First off, Happy 19th Birthday to my sis Kelsey!
This was the beginning of the Valborg weekend for many of us. Our friends who are a part of our Uppsala FC soccer group met played soccer in the afternoon at Ekeby. In the evening I Skyped with Scot who is the current director of the SCORE program at CU where I had worked as an energy auditor for the past two semesters and next year am going to be one of the coordinators for the program. After the Skype session discussing how the program will work next year I headed out to meet friends at Stockholms nation. We enjoyed the evening spring weather on the patio of the nation and then headed in as night came to enjoy their club night and the kick off of the Valborg festivities!

Friday
Before continuing the Valborg festivities Nick and I went to pay our rent for the last time, a kind of reminder of how fast time has gone by since I’ve been here, but I’m still looking forward to my last month and a half in Sweden! We hung out on the Ekonomikum field that is right next to our corridor and will be a central point for Valborg day celebrations.

Ekonomikum on Friday

After that we headed down to the river and sat on the boardwalk with Vince, Arjan and more of our exchange friends. The town was starting to be inundated in people arriving for the main event on Saturday and there was growing excitement and anticipation for the coming celebration. A large group of exchange students then headed to Snerikes nation to party for the night. We were there very early and upstairs there were tables set up for beer pong and flip cup, which was fun to see and play as nice reminder of parties back home.

Snerikes Pong and Flip Cup

Later a Swedish cover band played in one of the rooms and there were two other dance floors too. It was a great night out with good exchange friends. I called it a night around 12:30AM to get to sleep so I would be able to walk up at 8AM to catch all of the festivities during the actual day of Valborg.

Snerikes Dance Floor

Saturday
Happy Birthday to my Dad! (I’ll leave out which birthday it is)
The big day of Valborg! I headed down to the river to find a spot to watch the boat race. I met up with Ryan, Lukas, Arjan, Vince, Lloyd, and later Nick. It was tough to get a spot along the river to see the homemade Styrofoam boats go down the rapid in town even though we arrived over an hour before the race started at 10 AM.

Boats approaching the drop

The crowd trying to see the action, notice the parascopes

My friends Max and Thomas both were on boats for the race. Max’s team had a theme of The Simpsons and his team all went for a swim in the cold dirty water when their boat fell apart going down the rapid.

Max's Simpson's theme boat

Swimming after the boat fell apart in the rapid

Link to video of the boats in action and some great wipeouts: Max's boat at about the 19 minute mark Valborg Boat Run Video

We all then started the mass migration away from the river and downtown and to Ekonomikum Park. The park was absolutely packed with people sitting out eating and drinking. There were food vendors everywhere and a stage where DJs performed for the massive crowd.

Ekonomikum on Valborg

I bounced around running into friends and bought a hot dog for lunch before Nick and I met up with our corridor mate Lovisa and her group of friends, many of whom were visiting from the south of Sweden. Nick, Lovisa, Amanda and I headed towards town around 2 to go to a champagne gallop.

With Amanda and Lovisa at Varmlands champagne gallop

We eventually went to Varmlands nation where champagne was being generously sprayed and consumed in the backyard to the sounds of a great DJ. We met up with Katie, Dawn, Lauren, and David and all ended up soaked in champagne and water. Video to give you an idea of what the champagne gallop is like:

 After the champagne gallop we headed back to our corridor that was full of visitors of Lovisa and John as well as other revelers. I took a much need nap before walking up and showering to get the stickiness and crispy-ness of the champagne out of my hair. For the rest of the night we just hung out in the corridor with Lovisa and her friends all exhausted and going to sleep rather early after a long amazing day.

Sunday
Today the whole town is quiet and recovering from the past few days. The fields outside our corridor are littered with trash and our corridor is in great need of a good thorough cleaning. I start my Swedish Literature class this Thursday and only have one assignment left each in my 3 other classes. I can’t believe this is my last full month in Sweden, but I’m looking forward to making the most of it with my great friends and the amazing weather!

Until next time!
Jesse