Me and LiTHe Blås

LiTHe Blås is a student band at the university of Linköping. For all those of you who have some idea of what a student band is, but you're not from Sweden, chances are you have the wrong idea. For all intents and purposes, a Swedish student band (at the universities) is essentially a frat-house with instruments, silly-looking uniforms who on occasion perform and/or march.

For comparison, I give you the St. Olaf College (Northfield Minnesota) band:



... and then (part of) LiTHe Blås:



I was a member of this band from '97 to '01 (when I studied, or pretended to study, at the University of Linköping), but although I'm no longer technically in the band, you never quite retire from these things. Amazing friendships develop and most of the people I still hang out with today are people I met in the band. And being with the band, in the band, is fun. It's very difficult to describe just how fun, because unless you've been in a similar organization yourself it's almost impossible to get a good idea of it. And if you have, well, then I don't need to describe it. So suffice it to say that it's a lot of fun. I can't think of anything else I've done in life where I've had anywhere near as much fun as some of the times I've had with this band.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because I just got back from a five day tour of northern Germany with other various old members of the band. 47 of them. I'm exhausted, and I don't think there's any major part of my body where there aren't at least three things aching severely, but it's also been years since I laughed as much as I have in the past week.