The GoGlobal Blog

Tag: Jonkoping

Walpurgis (Valborg) night

Walpurgis (Valborg) night

April 30th (trettionde fjärde) marks, from what I believe, one of the two major holidays in Sweden. It is called Walpurgis Night or Valborg night/festival. Walpurgis Night entails dancing, drinking, bonfires, and maybe an occasional accordion player. The celebrations are in honor of St. Walpurga who was a missionary, converting pagan affiliated Germans to Christianity during the 700s. She took over as abbess of the double monastery of Heidenheim am Hahnenkamm in Bavaria.

May 1st (forstä femte) marks a day off of work for most Swedes and doubles as International Worker’s Day. This is also commonly known as May Day. Protesters occupied some streets of downtown Jönköping. My friend went and said they were from the far left and far right parties of the Swedish political spectrum.


I was in my Swedish language course when my friend asked if I was going to the Valborg festival in Jönköping. I completely forgot tonight and tomorrow were holidays. Usually, if I head to the city I plan to spend the whole day there. I absolutely love commutes (I know fight me) but I do not like to commute back home after commuting to my destination not long before. For this instance, I had my school bag and was not prepared to be outside all day and run around from apartment to apartment. Students at my uni were partying on the “quad” and then going apartment hopping until the clubs at night. I bit the bullet and went home with the intention of coming back to the city later to ride my new beautiful 1970ish bike around with a friend.

Actual is rarely similar to what is predicted. Pass that down to your kids, friends. My inside source told me that the bonfire was not happening in Jönköping, but in a town between the area I live in, Tenhult, and the city. Peep my earlier post about Huskvarna. My legs were eager to get turning so my house mate, Vivek (peep my 2nd post), and I went off to Huskvarna. We met up with two of his friends, and thats when the adventure began.

Vivek and i saw the flames a-blazing from the train. After 20 minutes finding a meeting place with his friends, the flames and smoke disappeared. We asked locals where to find the bonfire (yes, Swedish people do talk and actually love to help out. Do not believe everything on the Internet). We climbed, and rode, the paved hills of Huskvarna until we hit the stairway to heaven. Unfortunately, my rusty stallion became obsolete here. We walked up maybe 200 steps until we arrived at our destination. There was an aging boy/girl scout building on the left, the embers of the once beautiful flames straight ahead, and about 5 booths lining the dirt path up the hill to the right. It was 9pm. This is the point where I make another crucial point about Swedish society. Everything, except bars and clubs, close around 6pm so be prepared. The journey back was also quite the adventure. The rain picked back up and we missed our train by 5 minutes. The next train got delayed 45 minutes so we had to wait an hour and a half at the station, since everything was closed.

Alas, it was not a bad experience. The fire was still hot when we got there. The rain was not too bad. The booths had candy, a lottery, and cotton candy. The scouts’ building had a homemade desert feast benefiting the scouts. The remaining people were still smiling, and running so that was great to see. Vivek told me a lot about his religion. About the various gods and also how most families have a temple just for them. I also had time to listen to a nutrition podcast that I left a while ago. And play a really cool game on my phone.

When one door closes, another one opens. For lack of better phrases I am going to stick with that one.

 

Pizza and Immigration

Pizza and Immigration

‘It is a privilege to be a resident of Sweden where people are respected regardless of religion, belief, colour, appearance and nationality,’

The idea for this post came from pizza. I love pizza and I guess residents of Sweden do to! It seems that on most corners you will find a pizzeria with a family name on the sign. I have tried about 4 places in Jonkoping and Tenhult. The style of pizza is definitely different from Chicago pizza. Your order is almost always a full thin-crust pizza and is not meant to be shared. Also, every pizzeria has about 30 combinations where some are radically different from anything I have ever seen before. I tried a pizza once that had marinara, bananas (common topping), pineapple, paprika and roasted peanuts… I was the only one who liked it.

I looked up and noticed who was serving me this delicious compilation and not once was it a native-born Swede. One pizzeria owner was interested in my English and we had a conversation about our origins (while he recommended the kebab pizza, kebab being one of the most common foods in restaurants). He told me how he migrated from Iraq to Sweden 27 years ago and opened his pizzeria doors 21 years ago.

Angelo: Do you like living in Sweden?

The owner: No, I miss home too much (long pause). You know, it is the motherland. How could I want to be elsewhere?

And if you read my last blog post, you would know why inside I was like “aww man why does everyone have to go breaking my heart?”

A lot of pizzerias are owned by immigrants mostly form Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Chilean and Iraq. They immigrated their “motherlands” in times of political turmoil. Many Chileans came during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet during the period 1973-1990. The Iran-Iraq war brought many from both countries avoiding a war they did not believe in. They were able to do so according to the Geneva Convention which granted many residence permits to Sweden.

‘I am proud to be part of a country that gives shelter to those in need.’

Sweden also became an asylum for many Syrians during the war zone that is occurring in Syria. Sweden has granted permanent residence permits to all Syrians and led to Syrians being the largest immigrant group in Sweden. Every fourth immigrant is from Syria.

The current situation is that every sixth person was not born in Sweden. Sweden has become an asylum for the right reasons. It is amazing to be able to see the diversity everywhere I look. It is not a new sight for me considering Loyola is similar with diversity, but still beautiful to understand.

The task for Sweden now is integrating refugees into all aspects of Swedish society. From the testimonies of refugees, it looks like all Swedes are excitedly willing to accept the challenge.

Thanks for reading and HEJDA (GOODBYE)!
Angelo

quotes came from this website:

Sweden and migration