Student blogs

It’s a random sunny Saturday in May and several main roads in central Stockholm are closed only for students to parade their week-long impressive and funny builds. There’s cheers from the crowds, music blasting from each vehicle and laughter from both the students and the spectators. What’s going on? It’s Quarnevalen!

What is Quarnevalen?

Quarnevalen is Sweden’s largest student carnival, organized by students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm’s student unions. Held every three years in May, the event is famous for its huge street parade featuring imaginative homemade floats built by students, ranging from pirate ships to giant rubber ducks and modified vehicles (like our car converted into an ambulance!) Students of different unions buy a ticket to participate and in return get massive stacks of Brux, the traditional magazine that accompanies the event (which I’ll bring up again later.)

If you want to get a better picture of what the parade is like, take a look at this reel: quarnevalen reel.

It is a long-standing tradition (since 1910!) organized by students who take a gap year to take care of all the logistics that come with the week of building, the entertainment at the beer tent the entire week, with some really fun sittings too. I simply cannot get over the fact that hundreds of students from different student unions in Stockholm are all eager to spend a week at the building place from 6am-6pm building a float or modifying anything from a car to a truck that gets destroyed right after the 2 hour parade. And the student unions participating don’t take the task of building and design lightly. The things they build are extremely impressive (…it is very obvious by the final product which students are studying engineering.) 

How do you get involved as builder?

I had the luck of being a member of PrU, the student union’s programme committee. They participate in many unique student events such as this one. You sort of have to be part of some sort of student comittee to participate in events like these. We collaborated with the nursing committee too!

Together as a team, we decided we would convert our car into an ambulance, with a helicopter on top!

What if you want to be part of the whole thing…but avoid the building?

Brux is a satirical student magazine sold throughout the city to help fund the parade constructions. I didn’t know much about the event when I bought the ticket, so when I was told I should go to collect “tickets” that will help me make my money back, I showed up, and was shocked to receive a stack of 50 magazines…which I had nowhere to put. It was quite funny. 

You then sell these magazines to friends and others interested in going to the internal events throughout the construction week.

The day of the parade!

The day of the parade is super fun to be part of or to watch. It’s a two hour long procession through central Stockholm. After the parade, students immediately start recycling and deconstructing their creations. The sooner we finished with deconstruction, the sooner we could claim our tickets to the afterparty (which is always in a secret location.) This year it was in a parking lot in Kista. It was a great unique sittning and afterparty!

All in all, I found this a super cool student event and I’m very grateful I got to experience and be part of it!