In my continuing mission to infiltrate the Swedish psyche I managed to finagle my way into a proper Swedish student ball over the weekend. By proper, I mean tails for the boys, ballroom dresses for the girls, white gloves, dinner speeches, toasts, snaps, drinking songs, <a href="http://www.dlc.fi/~marianna/gourmet/punsch.htm"punsch, a 12-piece orchestra, ballroom dancing, and then, at 2.30 am, as the glow of morning twilight began brightening the proceedings, an ABBA medley.

It’s all beginning to make glorious sense.

Favorite drinking song of the evening: A subversive rendition of The Internationale, which now goes like this:

More snaps in the glas,
more glasses on the table.
More tables at the party,
more parties on this earth.
 
More earths around the moon,
more moons around Mars.
More marching to Skåne (the region),
more Skåne (the snaps) God bless
bless bless.Mera brännvin i glasen,
mera glas på vårt bord.
Mera bord på kalasen,
mer kalas på vår jord.
Mera jordar kring månen,
mera månar kring Mars.
Mera marscher till Skåne,
mera Skåne gud bevars,
bevars bevars.

I mangled it con molto gusto.

For longtime followers of this site, the ball also provided an opportunity to lay to rest vicious recurring rumors that Steffanie and I are one and the same person. The visual evidence is presented on her site.