Ever since I have come to Sweden, I have come across several "curious" questions from the people of different cultures. The most curious one being from the students of one of our neighboring nations - after knowing I am from Bangladesh - would ask me "Do you eat ONLY rice and fish all day??". Now, how would you answer to this question in the most non-offensive manner, in order to rate their curiosity above your SHOCK ?! However, you could be smart enough to put the ball back in the questioner's court by questioning him back, "Why, have my government stopped exporting HILSHA and RICE to your country??" or you can just put on a straight forward answer with, "No, actually in our breakfast we have Bread and Vegetable or Meat curry, in the lunch we usually have rice with some curry and at dinner we have either rice or bread with some more curry :)" - aaah that brings back sweet memories of back home :(.
Now, let us come to the question we encounter from the LOCAL(s) here, the question that has no straight forward answer and no escape through, "Why did you choose Linköping University for your higher education??" :s . Before letting you know about our REPLIES, I would like to ask the readers, what would be YOUR answer and how you think would reply with a plain and smiley face, showing no nerve at all !?? ......*think*think*think*
Let's check if your answers matches with ours; most of us would just "blah blah umm umm" for a while and come up with an answer like "Well, ummm, it's mostly because of free education and ummm I found the courses of the program quite interesting...and that's it" *phew*. The answers however, are never a convincing one. Regarding the fact that the Swedes are very shy in nature, the questioner had no other better way to start a conversation with a student from an alien cultural background.
The purpose of this post is to let the new comers know about Linköping and Linköping University as a whole. I will try my best to lay out the things as simple as possible.
After a dreadful 6-month long winter, the city of Linköping is alighted as Summer has arrived with full blaze. The Everest, North Face and Peak Performance(s) can now rest, it's time to rush in to Inter Sport, Stadium and Team Sportia to buy some summer outfits and hit the play grounds, swimming pools & beaches. During the summer it's only DAY all day long, we hardly have any complete darkness. I know it would be hard to believe for you, if I say, we start playing cricket at 7 pm and play till 10 pm, and we still have natural lights then.
By the time you will reach here, the air would still be warm during the day but would start to get colder during nights. The temperature varies a lot over a day (aprrox. 15 degrees Celsius). The student housings, usually managed by the Studentbostäder, are equipped with heaters so, it is not necessary to bring in thick blankets while migration, a thin one would do. However, for outdoor you will need to bring in the items I have mentioned in the previous post.
The grocery shop, Hemköp is a couple of hundred of meters from the housing, but the items are a little expensive down there. So, as a means of a better alternative we take the FREE bus to the outskirts of the city, Tornby. There we have several shops and malls for affordable-priced goods; starting from IKEA for household stuffs (anything you can possibly imagine), Coop-Forum and Willys or Willy:s for the bread and butter (Lätta), food ingredients to spices and cosmetics, etc.
Sweden is not an ideal place to buy electronic goods from, because of the high tax rate. However, if you need any urgent or "I can't live without" things you can always visit Elgiganten, OnOff, Experts, Siba (all located at Tornby) and last but not the least the online shops Tradera, Dustin Home and lot many I can't recall.
I hope you are getting quite familiar with the life and surroundings of Linköping; I will get back to you with the second half of this mini series, "Linköping University life" in a few days time.
Till then stay healthy and have a great time with your family and friends.
-Zobi
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