Ceasefire

So I’ll be blogging about Swedish Valborg soon, but currently have my hands full with several pressing essays and assignments. Rather than neglecting the blog for too long (the longer I leave it, the harder it is to get back into it), I thought I’d share this poem by Michael Longley, a current essay topic. Also, I really like it. It was written just before the 1994 IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland and published in The Irish Times days after the agreement was reached.

Ceasefire

I
Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the buidling.

II
Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

III
When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV
‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’

Spring festivities in Gamla Stan

Stockholm in Winter

Stockholm Syndrome

During my five months in Uppsala, I managed to make quite a few visits to Stockholm, and it is a city that I think I will always want to return to. I recently churned my way through Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which renewed my Scandinavian obsession and gave me pang to return to the streets mentioned and wander them for myself, stopping for the occasional thermos coffee and kanelbulle (cinnamon swirl) once again.

Like Uppsala, Stockholm’s seasons were pronounced, but as it was on the coast there was a different kind of flavour. In January, although Uppsala had a thicker layer of snow and a higher minus temperature, it was Stockholm that had the bone-chilling wind, making you feel physically in pain from the cold. This is, I think, caused by the astounding geographical layout of the city. It is made up of 14 islands in the mouth of Lake Mälaren and reaching into the Stockholm Archipelago, and linked together by various bridges.

My first visit to Stockholm was with two dear exchange friends, one from Lyon and one who I’d just met at this stage in Uppsala (and to her credit, suffered through Stockholm in a haze of jet lag). After fika in Gamla Stan, the magnificent Old Town Island, we did a brief bit of Museum touristing and then spent the rest of the afternoon in a quirky jazz bar. As well as hearing the delights of Thomas Buck McNasty, on tour from New York, my friend Debbie took the stage during improv: wowing the crowd and giving us a certain celebrity status for the rest of the night. Not realising that the last direct train back to Uppsala was at around midnight, we waited for what seemed like hours, eventually getting a slow train with a long stopover in a forgettable town, and arriving back in Uppsala tired, cold and grumpy well into the next morning.

After this, I had several visits to Stockholm as a result of needing to visit the Embassy of Azerbaijan to get a visa (the ensuing trip to this part of world will require another blog, or perhaps a book, to itself). The first time, in March I think, I mistakenly accepted a ride from an older Swedish man who turned out to be extremely socially awkward and plain creepy, spending the entire journey telling me about his failed internet relationships and desire to find a wife. When he asked me if I had plans for lunch, I lied something about meeting friends, jumped on the metro into the centre city and took myself to Fotografiska, Stockholm’s excellent photography museum, and one of my favourite places in the city. Not only does the museum have a great range of suburb rotating exhibitions, but the building itself is also beautiful, with magnificent views of the water and Gamla Stan from the café upstairs.

The next week, when my visa was ready to pick up, I took the train in and my friend Isa for company. We then spent a happy afternoon wandering around shops in SoFO (Stockholm’s answer to SoHO, on Sodermälm) and catching up on Uppsala gossip. The shopping in Stockholm is really something. While the minimalist Swedish designers are made for the very thin and the very rich, neither of which is conducive to the life of an exchange student, there is a great OpShop/Vintage scene and even the mainstream brands are a cut above what they are anywhere else. Sigh.

Thinking about it, there were quite a few other times that I had ‘transitional’ time to kill it Stockholm, which was always enjoyable. Coming back from Berlin in February, for example, my train at Stockholm Central was cancelled so I wandered around the frozen city and brought vintage clothes. Another time, coming back off the ferry to Finland, we stopped for a tired and hung-over breakfast in Gamla Stan before heading to class in Uppsala. The Jezebels (Australian) played an amazing free gig sometime in Spring, when the city comes to life just as Uppsala does, and I spent a weekend with my parents in May being a pure Stockholm tourist.

There were enough visits to get a sense of familiarity, at least with the area from the Train Station to SoFO, but I think there is still a lot for me to discover in Stockholm. I really hope that someday I’ll end up in a job that can support me living there, at least for a while, and preferably working for a cutting edge magazine like in Larsson’s novels.

IMG_1089

The Maas, Maastricht’s main river

Thinking about Libya in Maastricht

Continuing a (very slow) journey back into the past, one of the next things I was lucky enough to do was attend the European Model United Nations in Maastricht, The Netherlands. A German girl I knew vaguely from my student nation was organising the Uppsala delegation and having participated in the New Zealand equivalent once in Wellington when I was about 16, it seemed like rather a good bandwagon to jump on.

 

I had some misgivings about leaving Uppsala for almost 5 days in May, when University work was for once piling up and social times where a-plenty, but Maastricht was definitely a worthwhile adventure. I put my application in for a few different committees, but ended up as a judge on the International Criminal Court trying the case of Al-Saif Gaddafi, son of the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. I had no idea how the ICC worked, or what being a judge entailed, but it was a very interesting five days.

 

I was incredibly fortunate that one of my best friends in Uppsala was Belgian and studied in Maastricht, so I was able to stay in her apartment with her wonderful flatmate, who was also doing EuroMUN, and completely took me under her wing. When I wasn’t at the conference, or participating in the related social program (equally demanding) I had a lovely time hanging out at home or cycling around the very quaint Maastricht with Katharina. A beautiful Dutch city, in the wealthy south, set on a river and with a large student population and magnificent cobbled ‘old town’.

 

EuroMUN itself was in a large convention centre just outside of the city. The great thing about EuroMUN, unlike other MUN’s was that there really were people there from all over the world. While predominantly European, there were participants from South America, Africa, Asia, and (thanks to me) New Zealand. The mixture of nationalities playing a mixture of different nationalities, was rather nice. On the ICC, I was Judge Fatoumata Diarra, of Mali, and sat along side eight other judges examining a range of factual and not-so-factual evidence. We had actors playing the Defendant and a range of witnesses whose statements were based on articles found on the internet, and were also presented with a range of real video footage and reports by various NGO and inter-governmental bodies. If nothing else, I learnt a lot about the different dimensions of the Libyan situation.

 

Yet, the process of being a judge itself was fascinating. For most of the time, we had it very easy as the Prosecution and Defence slaved away over various tricky witnesses, yet we did get the opportunity to question these witnesses (a nod to the European inquisitorial system of justice) and on the final day, it took us about four hours to reach a consensus of Not Guilty on what I had assumed would be a relatively black and white issue. It felt like a real life (and less masculine) Twelve Angry Men. Eventually, those who thought that he was guilty realised that there was just not enough evidence to link him to the specific charges at hand, and he was let off. I think the process left all the judges feeling a little uncomfortable and it was food for thought on the ICC structure, and Criminal Justice in general.

Uppsala Gardens

Spring blossoms in Stockholm

The Swedish Spring

The more distance I have from Uppsala, the more I realise what a crazy bubble it really was. Living in Dunedin, New Zealand, for three and half years I thought I was used to a student city, but Uppsala really took things to a new level. It seems a bit strange to keep going in this reverse order as I have to go from spring to winter, but then again, it is September (spring) in New Zealand so it maybe it works out after all.

 

In Wellington, where I am from, the seasonal distinctions are rather slight – a ‘temperate’ climate, they say. It never gets very hot or very cold, and winter comprises three months of grey, rainy and alarmingly windy weather. When I moved to Dunedin I enjoyed seeing more pronounced changes over the course of the year: red leaves in autumn, unbearably (at the time, ha!) cold winter days, and then this magical spring when suddenly you realise that life wasn’t so bad after all, the extra thermal can be tentatively left at home, and magnificent pink blossoms make the world a much better place.

 

Spring in Uppsala was spring on steroids. While I missed the autumn as I was still in Lyon, winter was colder than anything I had experienced before: snow that stayed, months without positive temperature, and numbness in the extremities that took a good few hours to come back to normal. When it was winter, it was almost impossible to imagine that a world without snow existed and I completely forgot what warm temperatures felt like. So spring, when it did hit, was astounding.

 

After a few transitory weeks of slush and ice, the latter of which made walking or cycling anywhere without falling over almost impossible, the weather did start to get considerably warmer. Not hot, but it got above 10˚c which qualified as shorts and t-shirt weather in Uppsala. Stylishly cut-off designer denim shorts with white Chucks that is, or maybe some nicely fitting cropped pants and a denim jacket with a Ravenfjäll backpack. Anyway, at the same time, spring flowers that has been laying underneath mounds of snow for months started to blossom quite literally overnight, with an extra 2 centimetres of growth or so every day. Daffodils and blossoms went crazy, and instead of being worried about losing vision while cycling from a snowflake in the eye it was the rain of blossom leaves that were the major concern.

 

In a matter of weeks Uppsala was a completely different city, and you could really notice the difference in the local population, who looked genuinely happier and were noticeably friendlier than they had been during winter. As spring wore on there were a couple of 20˚c days in which everyone skipped class and cycled out to lake Malären, just out of Uppsala, although quite a long way on antique bikes with no gears and temperamental chains. The lake, which continues all the way to Stockholm and freezes over in winter (to be used for ice skating), was stunningly beautiful, and, coming from Kiwi waters, I was one of the few who considered it a perfectly adequate temperature to swim.

 

Another extreme change in spring was the increase in daylight hours. When I arrived in January it was pitch black at 3pm and light at around 9.30 (I think, although I was never really up early enough to know this first hand). From then, there was approximately 15 minutes of extra light per day. By the time I left, the sun was going down at around 11.30pm, when it in lingered in a red line on the horizon for a few hours and rose again around 2.30am. It was surreal. With the extra light and warmth all the student nations opened outdoor bars and rooftop parties became a bi-weekly occurrence. Cycling in groups felt like being in My Girl and I had twice the energy on a quarter of the sleep than during winter.

 

I am convinced that human hibernation, and the process of coming out of it, is a real phenomenon.