Wildling Wandering

Jonas tells me to get there early.
Go straight after the boat race. Apparently there is no time to yell ‘SKÅL’ with ten thousand students from all over Sweden, sculling down øl and wine, while sitting in the sun crowded by thousands. He should know. He’s the club master at Södermandland-Nerikes Nation (affectionately known as Snerikes), one of the thirteen student Nations at Uppsala Universitet in Sweden.
He says that the line will wrap, squeeze itself around the Snerikes pink 'castle' and its green grounds, the parking lot swallowed into it. There will be a flood of people, all-willing to spend a 100 SEK for each and every champagne bottle.
It should be said: this isn’t a solemn tradition. It’s about a mass of students spraying champagne at one another in celebration of Valborg, of spring, after months of grey skies, negative temperatures, and multiple layers of socks.
Once upon a time, after the white graduations hats were thrown into the sky, after the fires were lit to beckon spring, students galloped to the Nations to drink champagne. Now it’s just to spray it.
I get there at two, the line is already an entire block, we are all pilgrims. Security barks at us for IDs, police observe. My heart skips, chest swells, I can taste the champagne, hear the roar of the crowd, and the band inside the fence demanding for more champagne, more dancing, how can we hope to celebrate otherwise. I’m almost in, gripping the wire fence, drinking it up.
The moment I step in, pass a crumpled note in exchange for champagne; I’m christened from behind. Everyone must bathe. Hair is dripping wet. Hands grip bottles, frantic up down up down, spraying into a raging mosh.
When Jonas finds me, decked out in a champagne-soaked tuxedo with his half-finished orange dye-job and blood-shot eyes, he gets me in the face, laughing, and then hugging me tight. The rest of the bottle is sculled down our gullets. Another bottle is thrust into my hands. He’s suddenly gone, the space filled quickly. Next thing I see is Jonas on stage, filming his last Gallop, king of the Pink Castle.
Rinse and repeat until dinnertime: a never-ending champagne spray, galloping like wildings in the thick of the crowd, hundreds of bottles discarded at our feet.
In the end, it takes three washes to get the smell of champagne out of our clothes.