By Claudia Watson, 2022/23 Global Opportunities Competition shortlister, who studied abroad in Sweden
What no one tells you when you go on a year abroad, is just how hard it is to leave. It’s not like waving goodbye to a friend after class, or even leaving your parents behind for another semester at university. Nothing compares to the heartbreak of looking into someone’s eyes, a friend who has become more like family, and not knowing when, or even if, you’ll see them again.
Unfortunately for my taxi driver, I came to this grim realisation as he drove me to Arlanda airport, crying unashamedly into the seatbelt, as my best friends got smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. I wish I could say I truly took in my last look at Uppsala, but it’s hard to see when you can’t stop crying.
Uppsala does, and always will, feel like home to me.
What I’ve come to realise is that ‘home’ is not defined by a legal address, the length of time you have spent somewhere, or even where you were born. It’s any place where you feel safe, loved, and comfortable enough to be completely yourself. Its somewhere to long for, somewhere worth missing.
In our last few weeks abroad, my friend Izzy told me she had been compiling a list of all the little things she would miss about Uppsala. Feeling sentimental, I decided to do the same, and as I was writing, I realised that it was all of these little things put together, which made Uppsala feel like home.
Now that I’m back in England, with my Swedish life feeling devastatingly far away, it seems that my list is only getting longer.
The first thing I wrote down was how much I would miss the sunsets over Flogsta. As much as I loved it, Flogsta itself was not the most aesthetically pleasing place, but catch it at sunset, and you would happily stick it on a postcard (or a calendar, which we did.) Even on the coldest winter days, when the sun set at two o’clock in the afternoon, you couldn’t help but stop for a moment to admire the breath-taking pink sky. If we were really lucky, these sunsets would be replaced by the northern lights. Seeing them was just as special every time, and well worth climbing to the highest points in Uppsala, even for the briefest glimpse.
I knew I would miss the way voices carried from one side of Flogsta to the other. Whenever I opened my bedroom window, I could hear my friends chatting and laughing from somewhere nearby. Most of our plans were made by shouting from high up rooms down to the ground below, sharing the location of pres, and debating which bus we should take. I always knew which of my friends was talking, as their voice carried clear as day into my room. Now that I’ve left, I miss all the noise.
On the subject of my window, of course my list mentioned the view. When sat at my desk, it felt as though my flat had been built in the middle of a forest. I could see no other buildings, just the trees, which meant that my room experienced every season to the fullest. On quiet mornings, I would watch deer pad their way across the grass, and red squirrels scale the trunks. It was a far cry from the streets of Hyde Park.
I wrote about the sense of accomplishment we all felt when we made it into the club. Lining up for over an hour in temperatures well below freezing always seemed to make for a great night out, with all of us determined to make the most of it and forget about our frostbitten fingers. The playlist wasn’t important, and nobody cared that it was only half nine. Everybody was there to have a good time, and we always did.
Even before I left, I knew how much I would miss Güntherska’s cinnamon buns and the Ofvandahls blueberry pie. The Swedish tradition of Fika became a beloved part of my daily routine, and I had committed to memory a list of the best spots in the city. Despite its best efforts, England’s attempts to emulate the Swedish delicacies don’t even come close. Going for a coffee is not the same as going for Fika. I can’t explain it, you had to be there.
Nobody is more surprised about this than me, but high up on my list, I wrote about how much I would miss cycling. We would ride into town in packs, shouting over the buzzing of our wheels, and wobbling on our dangerously cheap bikes. These rides were social events, a chance to catch up on the way to the club and debrief on the way to class the next morning. When summer came, we would bike over to the lake, barrelling down the country roads, giddy at the novelty of a warm day. In these moments, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmingly grateful for the life I was living, and the people I was sharing it with. Bike rides were some of my happiest memories in Uppsala, even the times where I fell off…
Yet, whilst all these little things made me love Uppsala, what really made it ‘home’, were the friends I made over there.
These friends saw me through homesickness, grief, and the daily highs and lows of studying abroad. We ate together, travelled together, and leant on one another as we acclimatised to our new surroundings. We stayed up for hours talking about where we’d come from and our lives before Sweden, and as time went on, we spoke about the lessons we had learnt during our time in Uppsala. I believe that people come into your life just when you need them to. My friends made my year abroad, but they also helped bring me back to myself.
I arrived in Sweden lacking in my usual confidence, missing my spark, and unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. Thanks to my friends, I left bolder, happier, and with a stronger sense of self and purpose than I could ever have imagined. Each of them possess qualities I admire, and strive to emulate, namely; kindness, spontaneity, a fierce desire to see the world, and to spread love wherever they go. They are what made this year special.
They are what made Uppsala home.
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