Valborg - Day in Uppsala

We woke up at about 6.30am, so that we could take the 8.25am bus to Uppsala. Uppsala, being a university town, is well-known to be one of the places where the biggest celebrations for Valborg takes place. There is a raft-making competition that is one of the main highlights for the day. After that, the rest of the celebrations for Uppsala consists mainly just partying, booze and dancing.

The amount of people in Uppsala is crazy. I have been to Uppsala in the winter before and it was like a ghost town compared to today. There were queues for the atm machines, toilets and the mobile phone network was forever busy.


On this day, you are supposed to start the day with a champange-breakfast, which is supposed to consist of traditional swedish porridge and champange. Dom has a Swedish classmate who stays in Uppsala, so we visit him before heading to the river. Turns out he's having a big party at his house and there's loads of people. He invites us to have some porridge.


The Swedish porridge is not like our Asian porridge made of rice. It's actually something like oats, the Quaker oats mom tried to make me eat for breakfast, telling me its healthy. Well, you eat it with some milk and lingonberry sauce.

I guess they have seen the competition so many times, they rather chill out and have fun at home, instead of squeezing with the crowd for a silly compeition. Makes sense... so we head off on our own.

After that at 10 am, we continue with the FORSRANNING. Almost everybody rushes to the Fyris river to get a good view of the competition. Basically, the students make their own rafts and test it on the river. The jury will give points for how the raft looks before and after the mini waterfall along this river.


Crowds by the river. You only can see bits of the river through the mass of people.


We heard its more exciting at the mini-waterfall, so we head upstream. There's even more people by the river there. Totally impossible to see a thing.

This is the mini-waterfall where the rafts will be tested! Basially, here is the ultimate test of the whole competition.

Some rafts approaching their ultimate test.

When a raft goes over the waterfall, the raft overturns, splits apart, parts fall off or some people fall off. These people are here to ensure safety. They have to jump into the water every now and then to put things right.

Initially, we were kind of late from the porridge and couldn't find a spot. We couldn't see anything and thought we were going to miss the whole show. Qiang, who wanted to get good shots, asked Jenley to sit on his shoulders to take photos! Luckily we met this clever, cute, old man who was nice enough to lend us the extra periscope he made. It really works! We had to rotate it among the 5 of us.


After a while, some people either thought it was over and left or got bored and left I dunno. But we moved in for a better view! Each raft has a number and a theme.





In action!


Think they are suposed to be having a picnic in the garden. Parts of their fence floating away


Pretty impressive.


This group of bunny girls had a funny name. Can't remember.. Something naughty I suppose.

Finally, I am right in front.

After this event you can eat a SILLUNCH in a nation or just have a nice picnic in the park, if the weather is fine. A Silllunch is basically have herrings (a popular kind of fish in Sweden) for lunch. The boys bought some kebab and then we all went to Netto to buy some groceries for lunch. I bought some chocolate and juice and packed a sandwich from home. Then with our chips, chocolates and drinks, we head to the grass plot near the Castle for lunch. It starts drizzling a bit and so we quickly finish our lunch and move off. You can see that the whole park is strewn with garbage.



Strawberry season is here! Many strawberry stalls everywhere.

Stalls along the streets selling snacks.



Picnic outside the castle.




Lots of balloons for sale everywhere.

After that, we wait in front of the Carolina Rediviva and at precisely three o'clock, this old guy (who I think is the headmaster for Uppsala university) gives the first wave and then everybody else follows to greet spring and bid farewell to winter by waving their white graduation caps.


Some music as we wait.

We waited and waited. People keep streaming onto the balcony.

Finally! bye to winter and hej spring!

Borrowing a student's hat.


All of a sudden, everyone is too busy partying to care about the environment. Funny... so much for being environmentally friendly Swedes.

After this the students just party all day in one of the Champagne galopps in the nations, but you have to be a student of Uppsala or purchase a student guest card to get in to the nations. Basically, the streets are filled with youngsters, many who are a bit high from liquor. First time in Sweden, I see people just finishing up their bottles and throwing it down on the street.



These are some pictures of what a Champagne galopp should be like. Its taken from someone else's page from previous years, since I didn't go to one myself. Hope the owner doesn't mind. I just wanted to show others what its like! Basically you just party and party and can get sprayed by Champagne.

Initially, we came to Uppsala mainly for the bonfire, because we heard and read that the biggest Valborg celebrations are in Uppsala. However, we realised that in a student university town, the bigggest celebrations probably just mean its the place where lots of students gather for drinks, parties and BBQs. Turns out there is no actual bonfire in Uppsala. We know there are actually many big bonfires in Stockholm, but we thought Uppsala would have the biggest. Turns out Stockholm is the place to be for bonfires which are propbably more popular with the older generations. We decide to head home and then to one of the bonfires in Stockholm.