A Crash Course in Valborg

• To be able to take part in the nation side of the Valborg events you need to be 18 or over and a university student
• If you are a student in Uppsala University or SLU you need to have a Student Nation membership;it does not matter which nation as long as it is of one of our 13 Uppsala nations and valid for this semester. Although some people use their phones to show their nation card, try not to do so this time as the organisers need to see the hard copy. If you are a student from another university you need to purchase the special ‘Valborg Student guest card’. This is nbsp;only considered valid with photo ID and student ID from your home university. The cost of the 1 week special ‘Valborg card’ is 200 Kr which you can pay in cash or by card at Kuratorskonventet office (for address and opening times see the column to the right).
• You need to have tickets for some events or be ready to wait in line However, in most cases you can buy these tickets in advance allowing you to nbsp;jump the line. For the champagne galopp there are no pre sale tickets for most nations, so you just show up at the door and pay in cash.
• Do not take drinks with you while in line (even if it is a 3 hour wait) as they will be immediately confiscated.
• If you are drunk you won’t be allowed in The guards are very strict about this and if you look like you have had a drink too many ,even if you have a ticket for an event, they will not let you in and you will end up at the back of a very long line (if you insist on trying again ).
• Cash cash cash cash cash cash cash cash. This is so important You need to bring cash to pay entry fees and also for payments inside the nations. Card transactions take a long time and the people working are already super busy with the massive crowds so transactions need to be as fast as possible (do not be like my grandma who takes out all the little coins with a massive line behind her or people will be very passive aggressive towards you ).
• ‘Varannan Vatten’ this is the motto you will hear over and over again during these days. This is a big campaign started a few years ago by Kuratorskonventet (the body which unites the 13 Uppsala nations), the local council and the health service which encourages people to drink lots of water. When alcohol is being served, water is always freely available. You will see lots of specially designed plastic bottles with this motto on them (which means ‘every other drink should be water’) so feel free to pick one up when you need it.
• Eat food When having intense parties for 3 or 4 days in a row it is always good to line your stomach. Luckily under Swedish law all alcohol selling venues also need to sell food,so as not to risk losing their alcohol license. This is also valid in nbsp;normal student clubs. For Valborg there should be a good range of choice with vegetarian and vegan options available (maybe not in all nations but most should have more than one option).
• Arrange a time and a place to meet with friends, as if you lose them you lose them Masses of people will be there so it is very easy to get separated and generally the nation wifi is over-used, so it is often impossible to connect to Internet to resolve this. In addition, the standard network coverage in Uppsala decreases according to the number of people using it, compromising the strength of mobile-phone signals (unless things have drastically changed recently).