I See Dead Code

This entry collects some of the remarkable things that happened to us during the course. In honor of the course language, this blog entry is in English.

Meeting Old Friends

On Tuesday, after finishing all preparations, we spontaneously decided to visit Lappis and see if any of Torsten’s former co-residents lived in Forskarbacken 12. Both of us clearly remembered the door entrance code (0190, not very surprising given the connotations) and the mail boxes still carried some of the old names. We entered without running against any resistance to speak of and to make the evening perfect, Calle was in his room and more than happy about two Germans keeping him from working for his studies. We talked about old the good old times and about those that left or came after I had left Stockholm. In an attempt of humanity, he asked us if we wanted to eat dinner with him. Maybe we just had a hungry look on us and already thought about eating some of the smaller students running around sheepishly in the kitchen. We bought some Swedish beer [sic!] in return and had a very nice evening on the sofa. Our host was also quite surprised by the amounts of spaghetti the both of us could eat, possibly because he had planned on eating from the dinner he made for three more days.

The Swedish Lunch

A typical Swedish lunch normally consists of:

• A meal
• bread
• unlimited salad supply
• a drink and/or coffee

And all this for competitive prices! The mensa of SU drove both of us to tears, when we thought about Bochum or Tübingen. These people sell actual food to students.

On day, Martin invited us, together with Joakim Lundborg, the local network administrator, into the Fakultetsklubb at SU – a club so exclusive that only employees of the university can become members. They are, however, allowed to bring guests, and so we ate in wonderful lunch in a distinguishedly elegant environment without being bothered by having to eat next to or in the vicinity of students. Even better, the lunch was a buffet, which accommodated both of us.

And so, we can only recommend everybody to go to SU, if only for a couple of days to have a couple of Swedish lunches. We are definitely looking forward to being invited to other Swedish universities.

Hidden Skills

As already mentioned before, our students liked to keep the exact amount of their knowledge safely hidden under several layers of casualness and shyness. The simple question “Does anybody of you know Java?” remained unanswered, so Torsten assumed that nobody knew Java, while secretly throwing away half of Wednesday’s “OO in Python” slides. Later, it turned out that at least two participants had had a Java course.

Obviously, we also made the impression that we had psychic powers. When Torsten asked whether anybody had solved a particular exercise, again nobody dared to admit it. Later on, it turned out that one student had actually solved the exercise, but „assumed you knew” that already – thus not bothered telling.

The hidden skill that turned out to be the biggest source of fun for us where the clandestine German-understanding abilities of some students in the first row. As the reader might be able to imagine, we felt quite free to talk about what we wanted in the beginning, lulled in by a false sense of security that Swedish people never learn German. Somewhere along the way, the suspicion that this sense of security could betray us entered our minds.

While only being mildly alarmed, as we had reserved the really interesting topics for after the course, we decided to probe how good her German was. This resulted, with Calle’s help, in the sentence „Meine Patte ist voll, das ist der Knüller.”, which may sound a bit nonsensical to German ears, but might ring different bells in the ears of Swedish listeners.

It turned out that we did not need the sentence at all, because the student could not neither help but smile during eavesdropping, nor blush when confronted. We had our victory, but the sentence was still unused in our arsenals. In the afternoon, while chatting idly in the halls of SU, Daniel uttered it – not noticing the bunch of female Swedish students sittings at the table behind him. Torsten nearly dropped his coffee mug on the floor. Fortunately, no cohort of Swedish feminists appeared to take Daniel to work off his misdeeds in the Swedish ore mines.

Still Missing

Nothing. The voyage home was smooth for both of us, although Torsten had to get up quite early to catch his flight. For everything else that happened, interesting stories behind the pictures or undisclosed events, please buy any of us a beer and get us talking.