Traditions

This past Friday I went to a student play (to satisfy my thirst for theater mentioned previously). It was a vaudeville entirely written, directed and performed by students, very funny and entertaining as it involved lots of songs (and my Swedish is getting better and better by the day, so I can laugh at the right moments together with the rest of the crowd). I was surprised to find out that the "spex" as they are called are indeed a traditional feature of the Lundian student life since the 1700s or so. In those days and now, the plays made fun of university life, of politics and doubtlessly of professors...

In Lund everything seems to have a tradition, it must be one of the most conservative towns in the entire Scandinavia. The spex, the balls, the nations (student unions), the presence of one of the oldest and most sacred cathedrals, all point out to the preservation of the good old ways. It surprised me as I am most used to the revolutionary, irreverent student than to this keeper of memory. But in today's perpetually changing world, perhaps what is truly revolutionary is not to change at all...