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KTH has an amazing program to welcome international students. The university has a very strong student union called THS and one of the three chapters of THS is THS International. This chapter coordinates dozens of super fun events for new international students to get to know the school, the city, and each other. In this post I will share some of the events that I have participated in so far. Some other events that I didn’t get a chance to participate in are hiking, kayaking, board games, baking, museum visits, sauna night, city tours, day trips to other islands in the archipelago, laser tag, volleyball, tennis, capture the flag, rock climbing, minigolf, bike repair workshops, improv workshops, thrift store crawls, ice skating lessons, trivia nights, and more.

1. Welcome Ceremony in the Blue Hall
2. Buddy Groups
3. Union Day (campus org fair)
4. Welcome Party
5. Amazing Race
6. Pub Crawl
7. Brännboll
8. Midsummer Gasque, Nøllepubrundan, and Osqvik

Welcome Ceremony in the Blue Hall

On August 24th, KTH hosted a welcome ceremony for all new students in the Blue Hall at Stockholm City Hall. The Blue Hall is where the Nobel Prize banquet is held every year in December. The hall was originally supposed to be blue but the architect, Ragnar Östberg, changed his mind about the color of the walls when he saw the beautiful red bricks, after the hall was finished. I remember visiting the Blue Hall on vacation with my parents in 2016 so it was really cool to attend an event here. The ceremony itself was short and sweet, with words of welcome and advice from the president of the university, the president of the student union (THS), and a distinguished alumna. There was also beautiful music by an orchestra, choir, and jazz band, all from KTH. The ceremony was a lovely way to kick off the school year in such an iconic venue and be formally welcomed to the KTH community alongside other new students, both Swedish and international.

Buddy Groups

THS International organizes Buddy Groups of about 15-20 new international students paired with 2 older Buddies that organize and lead activities throughout the first few weeks of the semester. So far, I’ve had two Buddy Group meetings. At our first meeting, we met up at the Royal Library (Kungliga Biblioteket). We had a short tour of the building including the study areas, library resources, and café. We also saw the Codex Gigas, also called “the Devil’s Bible.” It is famous for two reasons: it is believed to be the world’s largest preserved medieval manuscript (Codex Gigas means “giant book”) and it contains a large, full-page portrait of the Devil. I bet your local library doesn’t have one of those! Another cool fact about the Royal Library is that it contains a copy of everything published in Sweden, with the idea that these copies should last forever. After the library tour we gathered outside in the park, Humlegården, and did a speed dating style activity to get to know each other one-on-one. Finally we went to a cafe to have an afternoon fika! Fika is a lovely Swedish tradition of taking a break to enjoy a coffee and a pastry with friends, family, or coworkers. We sat at the cafe for at least two hours and had a really wonderful time getting to know each other.

At our second Buddy meeting we took the Tunelbana (metro) from campus to Gamla Stan (the old town) and then walked uphill to Mariaberget to see an incredible view of the city. Next we walked to a park called Tantolunden to hang out and play a Swedish lawn game called kubb. In kubb you have one block called the king and ten blocks that you line up in two horizontal lines of five about 30 feet or so apart. There’s a set of sticks that each team throws underhand to try to knock down the other team’s blocks. It’s easy to learn and a lot of fun to just enjoy hanging out outside with friends.

I believe we have at least one more Buddy Group meeting and I’m looking forward to it! These group meetings have been a great way to make new friends and smaller groups of people from the Buddy Group have met up to get dinner, go shopping, or attend other events together.

Union Day (campus org fair)

Union Day is the school org fair, where all of the clubs showcase their organizations and recruit new members. It was fun to walk around the student union building and see all of the different opportunities. Some of the booths I saw were a sustainability club, a club for women in STEM, an outdoor club, lots of different sports clubs, chess club, two choirs, an English improv group, a DJ club, rocket club, a photography club, campus safety, and the library. My goal is to join the outdoor club and a choir.

Welcome Party

After Union Day, THS hosted a huge neon-themed welcome party in the student union building on campus called Nymble. They had two dance floors and four or five bars and the capacity was about 1,000 students. The student union at KTH operates independently from the university and owns the Nymble building. They host lots of events in this building and even run legitimate legally operating bars out of here for events. This was a very new concept for me. The legal drinking age in Sweden is 18 (with some caveats about where and what you’re buying) so the culture here is very different than it is in the US. While I’m not a huge fan of dance parties, it was quite fun! Another culture difference was that they had a separate dance floor with techno music and lots of people were really into it. Maybe techno will grow on me while I’m in Sweden.

Amazing Race

One of the most fun (and exhausting) events I have attended so far was an Amazing Race style puzzle game and treasure hunt across the city. We spent 5 hours walking around Stockholm doing a scavenger hunt, solving puzzles, and playing games. We were divided into groups of about 12 people. Every half hour, we were given a riddle that, when solved, revealed a location within the city. Once we solved the riddle we walked to that location (which often took about 25 minutes). At the location, we were given a challenge to complete to earn points. Some challenges we did were charades, jigsaw puzzles, song recognition, and a pen-in-cup game. Along the way, we had a list of scavenger hunt items to find and additional challenges to complete to earn points between locations. Here are some of the challenges/scavenger hunt items:

• Bring back planking and plank on different objects
• Do parkour. Bonus points if it’s good.
• Find a stranger named Simon and take a selfie
• Play rock papers scissors with strangers
• Shake hands with a mannequin
• Find some statues around Stockholm and do different things with them (shake their hand, pose like them, etc.)
• Dance the Macarena in front of a bakery
• Find an embassy and sing a national anthem of a different country in front of it

We had a blast solving puzzles and exploring Stockholm. We walked for about 5 hours straight and by the end of the day I had over 25,000 steps. It was a lot of fun and luckily we got great weather until the end. At the end it started to rain so we gave up and went for a fika.

Pub Crawl

One of the first events I participated in was a pub crawl! We went to five different bars on Sveavägen, a big street near-ish to campus with lots of bars. I think we stayed about an hour in each bar before rotating to the next one. It was a really fun way to meet lots of new people and have time to actually sit and chat for a while. We got a special student discount at the participating bars so we were able to afford a beer at each location. It was a fun way to explore the bar scene in the neighborhood, get to know each other, and ask some Swedish students about university life.

Brännboll

Brännboll is a Swedish sport that’s a bit similar to baseball. It is played in the same contexts where Americans might play kickball – think middle school gym class and summer family lawn parties. The basic idea is that the hitting team hits a tennis ball with a bat and tries to run around all of the bases before the fielding team gets the ball back to the pitcher. If the ball gets back to the pitcher before you have touched the next base, they have “burned” you (bränn = burn) and you have to go back to the previous base. I won’t go into all the rules here but if you’re interested you can check out the Wikipedia article for brännboll. It was a really fun way to spend a few hours outside, get some exercise, and learn a new game. Just like with the Amazing Race, we had beautiful weather until all of a sudden the sky opened up and it started pouring at the very end, calling an abrupt halt to the game.

Midsummer Gasque, Nøllepubrundan, and Osqvik

There are a few more THS welcome events I attended these last two weeks that are beloved Swedish student traditions or KTH traditions. They all deserve more time and space to explain fully so I won’t discuss them in detail here but stay tuned for upcoming posts! (Pro tip: you can subscribe to my newsletter below to get blog updates straight to your email inbox).

Midsummer Gasque: gasques are an awesome Swedish student tradition consisting of a student-run three course dinner with lots of entertainment and some drinking. One of the first welcome events I attended was a Midsummer themed gasque.

Nøllepubrundan is a pub crawl of all of the student-run pubs on campus. This one is particularly full of student traditions that are a bit hard to explain but I’ll try my best in a separate post.

Osqvik is a cabin owned by THS on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. Different student groups can rent the cabin for a night or two to gather with friends, experience some beautiful Swedish nature, go swimming, and enjoy the sauna. I had an incredible time on my trip to Osqvik and it definitely deserves its own post with lots of photos.

It has been a very busy few weeks settling in in Stockholm and having as much fun as possible before classes start. I am really grateful for these organized events because I have made a lot of friends, explored Stockholm, and participated in activities I never would have done otherwise. I felt very welcomed and supported as an international student and these events definitely helped ease the transition. Stay tuned for more explanations of Swedish student life and all the fun things I’ve been getting up to!