It was a mild early evening by the Fyris River. On its left bank, merry chatter spilt from a half-hidden courtyard. A gate clanked shut as three young women bid each other goodbye, one wheeling a bike.
This clandestine party was just a typical evening at Västgöta “nation”. Uppsala has 13 of these student organisations in which members can join clubs, borrow books and hang out at pubs. Sequestered within a building painted a shade of terracotta, and topped with a turret, Västgöta is one of the oldest.
Nations have been part of university life since the 17th century in this Swedish city, which is a 35-minute train journey north-west of Stockholm. They reminded me of the university’s collegiate system in Cambridge, where I grew up.
Shorts
Summer can be frustrating in my home city. Train-and-coachloads of tourists dawdle along the narrow, cobbled pavements of its dinky centre, snapping photos on King’s Parade and squeezing into Harry Potter souvenir shops. Around eight million visits are made to Cambridge each year, and most are by day-trippers. But Uppsala is an academic beauty of a different flavour. It measures visitor numbers by nights spent in holiday accommodation. With more than 700,000 overnight stays annually, about 80 per cent are booked by domestic tourists, and just 2.5 per cent by visitors from Britain.
