I have seen the future, and it is taller than me. On the occasion, it was also drunker — the occasion being Walpurgis, the location being Karolinska Institute, the medical university where students traditionally ring in spring with a concert fueled by cheap beerEverywhere else in Sweden, this is the night to build a big bonfire with last year’s IKEA furniture, in order to make room for this year’s models. Not so with Stockholm students, who are far too jaded for such blatantly participatory pursuits..

I got in under cover of accompanying Jenny and Maria, who technically aren’t students either, but who at least can plausibly pretend to be. Once in, they were pretty quickly the center of attention of a pack of male students from Idrottshögskolan, Sweden’s sports universityWhat could they possibly be teaching there? Steroid research? Post-graduate swimming? The physics of the hockey puck?.

This group made Eurotrash look like Lady Liberty. They wore soccer jerseys, no doubt an homage to Beckham, but a majority of them also wore one or more gloves in an unabashedly retro-80’s way. And they danced extremely well while simultaneously not being gay. In sweden, it turns out even the jocks are metrosexualApologies for the slight delay in blogging this, but I have added a third cardinal rule to dictate my blogging behaviour: 1: Absolutely no blogging while drunk. 2: Absolutely no blogging while hung over. 3: Absolutely no blogging while it is glorious outside. All three rules were invoked this weekend..

Further burnishing the eurotrash credentials of the night was the band, Lambretta, a semi-famous (so I am told) Swedish thrash-pop act that sounds exactly like Transvision Vamp back in 1989.

Watching them, however, was more of a challenge than concerts used to be. Over the years, my 6 foot 2 frame had afforded me some prime views — in 1992, for example, attending a Guns and Roses concert in Sevilla was like standing in a crowd of smoky midgets. But tonight, perhaps half the room was taller than me. (The New Yorker recently explained why.) If it is important in Sweden that you not stand out, I think I am going to do extremely well here.