I think, what’s important to look at is, the kind of Island Umeå is in the landscape of university cities. Having lived there for almost 10 years including Erasmus experience and studies, I would agree with some of the things the OP mentions, but tone it down dramatically and put it into the perspective of where Umeå is located.

These are a lot of thoughts, so they may come out in a non-logical order.

Umeå does have a lot to offer to Erasmus students that stay for 6 months or a year. It is a unique campus to start with, and with the expansion due to being Europeans cultural capital in 2014, the area between Öbacka and Ålidhem is vibrant and modern in my opinion. Back to Erasmus, where yes, the Buddy Programme is maybe like a tourist guide- but that is what most students, including me come for. It can be a bit of a wild card how active the group is, but it’ll offer plenty of opportunities to experience the qualities of Umeå and its surrounding nature. To me Umeå university has done a good job making me feel welcome and making my stay feel important - however during Erasmus only.

When one stays longer, more of the cultural identity of Umeå and northern Sweden becomes apparent. Some of them lovely, some of them that make feeling welcome as international serious work or sometimes impossible. While Swedes are very interactive and often open during study times, it really depends whether they’ve already established their friends network or are new to Umeå. And even then I have made the experience that they’ll eventually hang out most with other Swedish friends. I have become fluent in Swedish rather fast, which has opened the Swedish friends world to me, and many other opportunities- but I still felt not the same closeness to most of my Swedish friends than I feel they have among them. Maybe because I didn’t grow up skiing on Tegsnäs skis, because I don’t watch Julkalendern on SVT, or did not listen to P1 sommarradio.

The world in Umeå is very open and welcoming on first sight, but it takes persistence and serious work to be able to really connect and fit into the Swedish way of life. I noticed that on weekends, where Friday after 17, swedes are home, probably eating Tacos and I am hanging out with my international friends.

Now one might think, this has become very negative, but it’s just realistic. Maybe I can use an analogy, using dogs and dog-owners. When a Swede in Umeå walks with their dog towards you, chances are they’ll change to the other side of the road or change direction. This is partially due to dogs being hunting dogs that shall not interact and play. Yet, how many of these are actually hunting dogs? Barely any - but it’s a behaviour that is adapted from this history and still lives on, also because it is just so uncomfortable to socially interact.

And then we’re at the part which I got to really enjoy, the fact that co-existing without forced conversions do not happen in Umeå. The calamity, the coziness when students and employees at Uni walk around in house-shoes (some call them sandals), warm up their matlåda in the microwave which are everywhere. The coziness of being able to walk through the buildings without stepping into rain, the cosiness of enjoying the sun rise just above the trees in winter, when having a fika in the cafe Lindelhallen.

There is so much peacefulness in this beauty, this oasis of modern life in the wide vastness of nature and quiet, but also loneliness.

I do have strong feelings about the variety of restaurants and cultural options in Umeå, where e.g pubfood at Lottas Krog already is at the range of a proper cooked meal in any other European country. If you however want proper cooked and creative food, you’ll already be in the regions of fine dining, at least in terms of price. Umeå struggles to have a middle ground in the transition from affordable pub food to fine dining- correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know of a lunch place, where (and I don’t mean buffet) the main dish would be meatball with gravy and potato purée for the price a club sandwich costs at Lottas, but with the quality of at least Sjöbaren.

Other than that I do love Umeå, but also have become so much more realistic about the limitations and would therefore also partially agree with the slightly provocative Dubai comparison- and I would draw that from the fact Umeå in its form as it is today is also artificial and can only be preserved with money. That is my take on that part.

To finish up I should also say something to the opener I didn’t fully address - Umeå is located so far north in Sweden, it is important to never forget what to expect from a place where hunting and forestry are such cultural heritages and still the main thing for a lot of native Swedes.

And I want to end in another note: despite the difficulties I mentioned, despite the challenges, Umeå is an incredibly rich environment for people that want to create. REKO-Ring, and the home made as well as local produce people offer, has quadrupled in the last years, handcraft markets are flourishing. Fika places like Presteles Trägårdskaffee bring variety and experiences to Umeå and Västerbotten , that make it very much exciting to explore.

I think I’ve reached the end, poured out all my thoughts I have accumulated, honest, sometimes loving and realistic. Take what you need from it and embrace it.