Uresa Ahmeti goes down memory lane from her study abroad experience. She is nostalgic about the trains, saunas, bars and doing site-specific research.

Uresa Ahmeti
Class of 2022
Carleton Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe, Fall 2021

I never even questioned it. I knew I wanted to study abroad. As an International student from Kosovo just being here at Wesleyan is a study abroad experience in itself. Yet, precisely because I know how amazing it is to travel and study in different places, I couldn’t just settle for Wesleyan for 4 years. I had been in the Netherlands for two years of high school, and I was supposed to study abroad during the Spring semester of my Sophomore year of college. Covid-19 hit, I was stuck in Kosovo, my study abroad program was postponed, and then fully canceled. It was disappointing and disheartening.

I understand the value of place as a way of knowing, so I was determined to make my plan to study abroad work. I found a program on European Women’s and Gender Studies through which we were going to travel to 4 different countries in three months. Our hopes and ambitions were big, but Covid was bigger. It turns out that traveling in the midst of a pandemic, although it had been more than a year since it hit, was close to impossible. Once again, things were out of my control, and everything changed. The program directors had decided that our program would be held in Stockholm, Sweden, which wasn’t even one of the four destinations of the initial plan.

Fast forward, it’s September 2021, and I’m in Stockholm. I was placed in a lovely apartment building in the Hornstull block. The hallway walls were covered in old white wallpaper with pink flower patterns. The day I arrived I only had a few tools at my disposal. The wifi password, a google maps app, a student app with the resources for the classes and other logistics for things like academics and healthcare. Everything was painted in white. White floors, white walls, white kitchen, white doors, white desks, white drawers, white window frames, you get the point. My roommate arrived – it had been years since I lived with someone I didn’t know in the same room. This experience was really going to be different. What I didn’t have at my disposal was food. What I had lots of were hunger and exhaustion. My roommate had goldfish, and although Sweden is known for its fish, and I truly had some of the best fish dishes there, there’s no comparison to that goldfish in times of crisis.

Because I had been disappointed so many times, and my plans kept being changed from the uncertainty and tragedies that Covid-19 brought upon the world, I decided to go to Sweden with no expectations. Given how hard it is for me not to have expectations, I played a risky game and didn’t allow myself to research tourist websites and fact sheets about Sweden. There are many memorable moments I carry with me: late nights at the Secret Garden, selling my poetry book at the Queer Art Festival, showing up as Vampire Royalty for Halloween with my new friend at a local bar where everyone was wearing sweatpants and hoodies, swimming naked on the lake after being in the sauna, carrying a sad broken new umbrella from the windy weather, taking the cleanest, fastest and the most punctual trains to everywhere I needed to, cruising IKEA and shopping for stuffed cute little animals, and potluck dinners with people of my program. But the ultimate best experience was site-specific learning.

As a Sociology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies double major I am passionate about social issues, identity categories, and public discourses in specific communities. Before arriving in Sweden, I had a vague idea of the general public image Sweden held in the world. It is a progressive state where gender-based equality and LGBTQI+ rights thrive. When I arrived in Sweden, we visited different organizations and attended talks from artists and activists who grapple with these social issues. I learned that there is more to the general picture of LQBTQI+ rights, especially when race, ethnicity, and cultural background intersect with queer identity. This is how I came to my independent field research as part of the program with which I completed my FGSS major. My topic focused on: What are the queer migration patterns in Sweden, and what do lived experiences of queer migration tell us about embodied socio-politics of belonging? How do these experiences inform conceptualizations of queer futurity and hopes for queer utopianism?

Being at the site of my research helped me form connections with local communities. One of them was RFSL in Malmö. I had visited their space for a study trip. They helped me reach out to newcomers, and I managed to build a connection with a trans lesbian asylum seeker. Her interview was the backbone of my entire project. I produced a 30-page paper influenced by my conversation with my interviewee, my talks with the RFSL staff, reading RFSL reports, and speaking to experts in the field. It was one of the most enlightening experiences. It was the first time I was able to conduct research on the site of my topic subject. Throughout my 3 years of studying at a university before going abroad, I read tens of hundreds of articles on feminist and queer theory. It is an entirely different knowledge-production and learning experience to grapple with ideas of the nation-state, borders, race, sexuality, and gender, specifically from local sources and first-hand experience. I was able to produce a body of work that I am proud of, is meaningful to me, and to the path I intend to pursue in the future as an activist and sociologist.

There is much I am grateful for and hold close to my heart from my study abroad experience. My top list definitely includes: my sheep-buddy Chloe, a stuffed animal I got at the touristy station of Gamla Stan, my nights at the Viking-inspired bar in the same station, karaoke nights further down on the green train line towards Hässelby Strand, many working sessions with my program peers at the Espresso Houses all over Stockholm, and, especially, visiting the Sami peoples in the north of Sweden, Kiruna.

If I could do it all over again, I would. In a heartbeat! I miss the sauna culture, the clean trains, my local friends, and even my biggest nightmare – grocery shopping in Swedish.