New additions

We are going to be having two new additions to our family in a couple of weeks time - of the feline variety that is!

Meet Findus:

and Falafel:

They are both around a year old, coming from the local cats' home, and the girls are very excited! As am I; D not so much. We just have to have a home visit next Friday and then they're ours to collect.
Which brings me on to the latest news, we will be getting the keys to the house on Tuesday and our furniture and other possessions are due to arrive from England a week later. We have the apartment for a further week after that which gives us the opportunity to get everything in order before we move in - a rare treat.
Almost there...

House!

Yes, that's right - we have a house! And a very yellow one it is too...

It's been a long and sometimes frustrating wait, but it has definitely been worth it. Everything is moving very quickly now though!

We first went to view it a few weeks ago. I was already very taken with the pictures on the web, but was worried about the lack of bedroom space - lots of sitting rooms, but not enough bedrooms. However, we decided that we'd go and have a look anyway, in case we could see an easy solution to create another bedroom. There was a lovely warm and homely feeling to the place as soon as you walked in and by the time we'd got to the lounge on the middle floor I knew that it was the house I wanted. Unfortunately, once we'd seen all the rooms that were there, I also knew that it just wasn't going to happen - with only two bedrooms on the top floor, and a third possible one on the bottom floor there was no way we could manage to live there with the 5 of us and I eventually found myself stood back in the lounge fighting tears of disappointment.

When the estate agent telephoned the next day we explained the situation, and it was apparent that we weren't the only people who had been put off by the lack of bedroom space. As a result, the vendors had decided to create another bedroom and then put it back on the market. It seemed most likely that they were going to convert the (open-plan) dining room which for me would ruin the whole feel of the middle floor, so we put it out of our minds and carried on with the search.

Then 2 weeks ago, up popped the house with a 3rd bedroom on the top floor and still at the same price. The new viewing time clashed with some visitors we were expecting, so we crossed our fingers and asked for an early preview which he arranged for Sunday April 18th. Walking into the house gave us all the same feelings as the first time round, the middle floor had been left untouched, so it was with hope and trepidation that we went up to the very top to see how the new room looked. To our delighted surprise, they'd done a great job and managed to create a decent sized room where we had thought there wasn't the space for one.

Now came the hard part. The bidding system over here is much different to back in the UK, so we asked Per (the agent) about the expectations on price so that we could make our bid accordingly. We were rather downhearted to learn that the absolute lowest price they were willing to accept was also the highest price we would be able to bid. After sleeping on it, we came to the decision to bid what we could regardless - nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. So when Per telephoned on the Monday morning, we put our bid in, assuming that they would want to carry on with the open viewing the following weekend to see who else was interested and would offer them more money.

Incredibly, just a couple of hours later we received a phone call to say that they had accepted our offer! The next day Per emailed over the contracts and arranged a meeting for late afternoon between us and the vendors so that we could sign them and agree on a moving date. So by Tuesday night the contracts were signed and the house was officially to be ours! There was a minor hold-up as our bank contact had gone on holiday and got stuck out there with the volcano, but it didn't cause too much trouble and Friday was a trip to the bank to sign the papers there and pay the deposit and that was it, all done. Compare those 5 days with the 2+ months of back and forwards between solicitors and banks that it took when we sold our house in England.

Now we're just waiting impatiently for June 1st to come round! Minor other detail of getting all our possessions over from storage in MK, but right now that's a secondary consideration to the fact that we FINALLY HAVE A HOME!

Links

I've posted a couple of Swedish related things on one of my other blogs, you can find them here and here.

In other news, it was lovely to go back to England and see everybody, but we were all really glad to get back to Sweden, which is a good thing! I was slightly concerned that there would be someone who went over there and didn't want to come back, but happily not.

Snow!

(I was going to put some pictures with this, but I've packed the cable already so can't, sorry.
Yes, winter has finally arrived here. It started snowing on Sunday night and continued for about 24 hours until there was around 20-30cm. Today has been lovely and sunny with blue skies, but this evening the temperature has gone down to -5C and it's started again. (Not ideal when we're supposed to be setting off at 6am tomorrow, but hopefully it won't keep going all night and there will be less the further south we go.)
Then I was looking on the bbc website yesterday to find that the Met Office were issuing a severe weather warning for England because of an expected 10-20cm of snow, and people were being advised not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Which also reminded me of last winter - when we were still in the UK - and all the schools were closed because of the snow.
Here, nothing much has changed. There are perhaps a few less cars on the roads, and certainly not as many pedestrians, but the buses are still running, nothing's closed, and life is carrying on pretty much as normal. At dagis they're not playing out for quite as long as usual, but they still bundle them up in their snowsuits and send them outside.
This is summed up perfectly by the Scandinavian saying: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing". And this doesn't just apply literally to clothes, but local authority organisation as well - here, by Monday lunchtime there were little tractors zipping everywhere; snow plough on the front, box of grit on the back; clearing roads, pavements and car parks. They carried on all day yesterday and today and will no doubt be back on duty tomorrow. Of course the mandatory winter tyres from December 1st also help matters greatly, people do take it a bit easier, but don't have to drive everywhere at 2mph.
All of which begs the question - why do people (and more so the authorities) in the UK constantly seem to be surprised by the snow which happens every year? I've been as guilty as anyone of it in the past, but having now seen first-hand that the world doesn't have to grind to a halt because of some crystallised water falling from the sky, I find it even more incomprehensible.
So I'm not particularly looking forward to coming back to UK snow this week; but at least we will be able to drive safely on our snow tyres past those people crawling along at snail's pace, whilst waving smugly at them. Yes ok, actually probably blowing raspberries and laughing.

Language lessons

D and I started our language lessons a couple of months ago and are both finding it pretty tough. We have 2 hours of one-to-one tuition a week, plus usually a good sized chunk of homework. Although sometimes it does feel like we're not getting anywhere, I know that we must be as I can understand more Swedish, both spoken and written. However my ability to string a sentence together (and confidence to actually speak it) is still pretty rubbish! Next year though, I am going to be joining a conversation class with 3 or 4 other women who have also come to Sweden with their husbands, and I'm hoping that this will help as I would really like to be able to communicate easier with people out and about, and not rely on them speaking English all the time. Although I know most can, and rarely mind, it just somehow feels a bit rude to not be speaking to them in their native language.
Hopefully in time, it will come. Other people have managed it, so I don't see why we shouldn't be able to as well!

There's a list on this blog of some of the words that are common to both Swedish and English, but with very different meanings. Very amusing, but confusing some of them could have pretty serious consequences!

House hunting

House hunting has been an ongoing process since we got here. The sale system is rather different to that in the uk - you don't ring up the estate agent to arrange a viewing; about 2 or 3 weeks after the house goes on the market, there will be an 'open house' - basically a set period of time from half an hour to an hour, where you can just turn up and have a look round. Then the day after, the agent will ring round everyone who viewed to see if they want to bid. It's also an open bidding process which surprised us somewhat the first time we went to look at somewhere.
We've been round quite a few of these open houses which has been really interesting in seeing the variety of property styles that there is. Some have not been in areas that we liked, some have been too small, some too dilapidated (we have little confidence in our DIY skills), but there have been a couple that we've really liked. Up until now though, we hadn't made any arrangements regarding a mortgage (or even found out whether we could get one!) so couldn't put a bid in on them. We got verbal confirmation of our mortgage offer in principal (or the equivalent here), so when we get back from our Christmas trip after New Year we can start looking in earnest. More so now that we know exactly how much we can spend!
Fingers crossed that we find something soon, I think we'd all like to be out of this apartment sooner rather than later. And hopefully it will help us feel more settled. The nosy side of me does enjoy going round and looking at other people's houses though!

School

R has settled into her new school really well. She is fortunate enough to have an English/Swedish teacher, which has been really helpful in easing her into Swedish education. Children here don't start 'proper' school until they're 7 (although they can go into grundskola at 6) but because she's already had 3 years of English education, she's gone straight into grade 3 even though it means the kids in her class are a year or so older than her. It doesn't seem to have caused any difficulties, and she's made plenty of friends. One of her friends lives just across the road from us, and R has already been over there for a sleepover! That friend is Polish, but also speaks both Swedish and English very well so communication is no problem for them.
The kommun also offers all children who have a non-Swedish language spoken at home (even if they were born and bred in Sweden), weekly lessons in their mödersmal (mother-tongue) so R has extra English for an hour every Wednesday which is more to her level than the English lessons the Swedish children in her class have. I went to a hemspråk parents' meeting a couple of months ago, and was amazed at the number of different languages that were supported - well over 20, including Spanish, Russian, Somalian, Romanian and Kurdish. Basically, if there are 4 children or more with a particular language requirement, the kommun will hold a class for it. For children aged 3-5 in dagis (daycare) the teacher will go in for that hour a week and give the child one-to-one attention. I think it's an amazing thing that they do. It also alleviates our concerns about certainly the youngest 2 'losing' their English.
F goes to dagis for 15 hours a week, spread over 3 days. She has been a little trickier to settle in - although we did expect it - but is making friends and picking up Swedish at an incredible rate. Unfortunately she doesn't think that she knows any Swedish, but the problem is actually that she understands and speaks it without thinking or realising! We do have tears in a morning, but they don't last long and she has a great time. They play outside for at least a couple of hours every day, regardless of the weather, so she has waterproof trousers and wellies for rainy days, salopettes and fleecy boots for cold days, a change of clothes for when she inevitably gets wet and has an absolutely fantastic time! They're really allowed to just be children and run around and get dirty, and it's a great environment for her to be in.
She will be old enough to start grundskola in August, but because she's already done a year of school, it may be possible for her to skip that and go straight into first grade, which would also mean she could have the same teacher that R has had this year.
As for G, well she's still at home with me. Because I'm not working, the kommun won't let her go to dagis until she's 4 (when she can have the same 15 hours a week that F gets now). We've put her name down for a place at the same dagis as F so are hoping that one will become available in January. It will be good for her to get out and about and make some of her own friends, but as she's never been away from me before, I think it's going to be a shock for both of us!

Sunshine (or the lack thereof)

When we arrived here in August, there was a heatwave going on, and you couldn't have asked for better weather. And then November arrived. It is well known for being the most miserable and depressing month of the year in Sweden and having lived through one I can now understand why. This November was apparently worse than usual - Stockholm had a total of 17.5 hours of sunshine in the whole month, which equals just 35 minutes per day. And when you consider that there were a couple of sunny mornings with more than their fair share, you can imagine how many days went by without any sunshine at all.
Add the grey clouds to the rapidly shortening days, and it does sometimes feel like the day never really got light at all.
Happily we are only a couple of weeks off the shortest day and then perhaps things will start to improve. Today, sunrise was at 8.33am and sunset at 2.48pm and there's only another 15 minutes of daylight to be lost before the turn around, so I feel like we've almost made it through the worst! Plus, by the time we get back from our trip to the uk we'll be 12 minutes up on where we are right now.
Roll on Spring....

We are still here!

Sorry for the long delay in updates (once again); I shall make it my New Year's resolution to post more frequently, honest!
As you can imagine, we've been very busy over the last few months settling in. There's been so much to get used to - the different supermarkets, school and dagis for R and F, not to mention the language! We're still living in the apartment which is ok, but I think we're all starting to suffer a little from being in such close quarters all the time.
Up till a couple of weeks ago, I still had my car from England over here, but as we were reaching the point where it would need to be re-registered with the Swedish Vägverket (which would involve a sizeable cost with the alterations that would be required), we decided to send it back to be sold. It's not too bad at the moment as everywhere important is within walking distance. There's even a bus stop right outside for if I wanted to go into town, but I haven't plucked up the courage to try catching the bus yet. *blush*
Anyway, as there are so many things to write about, I've decided to break it down into more manageable chunks which I will be posting over the next day or two.

Trosa

We made our third visit to Trosa today and finally got to see it in the sun! Picnic, wander round the shops, ride on the little blue train and an icecream - what could be better?
Photos are here.

Taxinge Slott

Had a day out at Taxinge Slott today - better known as the 'Cake Castle' for reasons that are fairly obvious:


Don't know if it's just the novelty of living somewhere new, or the fact that there's so much right on our doorstep, but we do seem to be going out places a lot more since we came here than we ever did in England...
More photos can be found on flickr.

ID card application FAIL

Well after all the excitement of getting the personnummers through at the end of last week, today has been particularly frustrating.
When we first went to the Skatteverket, we were told that I had to go for my ID card first as D's passport was too old for them to accept it as identification (he hasn't got one with a chip in it), and then I would be able to verify his identity once I received my official Swedish ID card.
So last week we made the payment into the bank for the cards which has to be done in advance, and today I duly trotted back down to the office with my payment receipt, personnummer and passport, only to be told that my passport was also too old. For whatever reason, the cutoff date for passports being valid ID is September 06 and mine is just a couple of months older than that. I got a little bit snippy at this point.
All of which means we have to go and pay for D's card at the bank, wait a couple of days then go through the hassle of getting a Swedish person from D's company to go down to the office with him and verify his identity. And then once his ID card arrives, he can take me down there and verify my identity.
Either that or fork out a load of money to renew our passports. Bah.

Personnummers

Very excited today as our personnummers have finally arrived! For those who don't know, these are the identification numbers that everyone in Sweden has (sort of similar to National Insurance numbers in the UK). Basically there's not much you can do without one - you need them to get a job, open a bank account, for a store card, to get a contract mobile phone - pretty much everything. We've been quite lucky in being able to do some of these things without having them, but things should be easier now. It means we can also apply for our Swedish ID cards which will save us having to carry our passports round in case we need id for anything (like going to the bank or getting prescriptions from the chemist).
So a pretty pleasing day really :))

The Apartment

We visited this particular apartment on our trip here in February and it was a very pleasant surprise when we arrived to find that it was actually larger than I remembered. Basically we have 3 bedrooms - 1 double, 1 small single and one large single with bunkbeds; a good size lounge; a kitchen-diner; a big bathroom (which also has a small washing machine in) and thankfully a second WC. Of course as we're on the 4th floor there's no garden but we do have a reasonable sized balcony. Fortunately there are also plenty of cupboards and places to put all our stuff (not that we brought a huge amount), as well as a little storage cage down on the ground floor for things like suitcases and boxes.
The local area is ok, we are on a fairly busy road which can be quite noisy - especially when the teenage boys ride their mopeds up and down late at night. There's a small supermarket open 8am till 10pm directly across the road which is great if you run out of milk or bread, or get the nibbles in an evening! D can walk to work if he needs to which is handy at the moment as we only have 1 car. The main downside is that there is no playground within a reasonable walking distance - the good one that is closest too us would be possibly be ok to walk to, but the return is up a very steep hill and a bit too far for small legs.
Laundry is a bit of a pain - there are 2 slots available each day, 7.30-2 and 2.30-7.30pm and you have to pre-book on a little board whenever you want to use it. Fortunately not all of the apartments are occupied, or not everyone wants to use it, as there are 20 apartments in the block, and of course only 14 sessions available a week. I'm managing to get in on a Tuesday morning at the moment but it's a bit of a nuisance having to go up and down to the laundry room several times - those girls create a lot of washing! The little machine in the apartment is useful though just to do the odd emergency load if we're starting to run out of anything. It's just drying things that's a problem; we have a clothes horse which is great to put on the balcony if it's a sunny day, but takes up half the bathroom if not. I'll certainly be glad when I have unlimited access to my own washing machine and drying facilities!
All in all, it's not really all that bad. Of course it's very different to where we were before but we're gradually getting used to it, and after all it is only temporary.
Photos will follow when I get round to changing the batteries in my camera...

3 weeks already

So we've been here 3 weeks now and it must be time for a little update. I know there are people out there who are wondering if we've actually dropped off the face of the earth, but I can assure you we haven't! Problems getting the internet connection sorted and the girls hogging the computer all conspired against me. Having bought a 2nd computer (an Asus Eee 1000HE netbook in case you're interested), things are improving so here I am. And I think we'll start with... the apartment.

We're here!

Yes, we've finally all made it to the apartment! Everyone (and everything) appears to have arrived in one piece. Most of the unpacking is done, just a bit of furniture rearranging needed now to get everything to suit us.
Still a little bit in culture shock at everything being different (not least living on the 4th floor by a busy main road) but I'm sure we'll get used to things in a couple of weeks.
That's all for now - will write more when I can get back on my own computer rather than D's horrible laptop...

Firebombings

Not really what you want to be reading about somewhere you're going to move to, but hopefully it's a one off!
http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=2763

The trip - day 4

Saturday
No breakfast in the hotel till 9am so a bit of a lie-in and time to pack up first. I tried to take some photos of the hotel but my camera decided that it would not work when it was cold. Then we drove up to Stockholm to show RP the palace and do a bit of souvenir shopping for the little ones back at home.
On the way down to the airport we stopped off at a town called Gnesta which has also made it onto our list of possibilities, although it would be a longer drive for D to get to work every day.
After a late breakfast we'd only had a snack for lunch so decided to have a hot meal in the airport as it would be late by the time we got back and we had to collect the youngest 2 from grandparents before we could go home. This turned out not to be such a good idea as the meatballs that we all had turned out not to be very pleasant as well as being lukewarm. So we ended up going through the McDrive at Stansted anyway!

The trip - day 3

Friday
We started the day with a drive down to a smaller town south of Södertälje called Järna where we had seen a few houses we like the look of. There was one in particular with a round tower that I had fallen in love with. Sadly, when we got there we discovered that it was right next to the train station. But the rest of the town seemed nice, and it's definitely somewhere that we will consider making our long-term home.
Back up the motorway again to meet D's colleagues and ex-boss for lunch. They took us to an Indian restaurant that looked very drab and dingy on the outside but was stunningly modern on the inside. The food was pretty good too, and really cheap, so it's somewhere we'll be going back to.
Another visit to a supermarket, this time a big ICA which reminded us of Asda or Tesco and will probably be where we do our main grocery shopping. We've been very relieved to see the number of familiar brands so we can introduce the girls to Swedish food gradually. Not sure how I'm going to work out which is the right flour to make bread with though.
We'd heard of a small town called Trosa which was supposed to be beautiful so decided to go have a look. At lunch we were told that it was also known as 'the end of the world' and driving down there we could see why! It was absolutely gorgeous though but we decided it was too cold to get out and have a walk round (really need to buy some better winter clothes). There was a house there that we had a look at as well, which would be a fantastic place to live, so hopefully there will be something similar available by the time we are ready to buy.
Having explored to the south it seemed like a good idea to have a look to the north as well, nearer Stockholm, so we paid a visit to Huddinge. Almost straight away I could tell that it was not my cup of tea at all (don't ask me why) so we're going to stick with places south of Södertälje.
After a big lunch, no-one had much of an appetite so it was back to the ICA for some snacks and then an evening in the hotel playing cards and watching snooker.

The trip - day 2

Thursday
Today started with a 9am meeting with the HR lady who is looking after our move to Sweden. She was really helpful and answered a lot of our questions about all the things we need to do, as well as giving us a fistful of forms to fill in. Still need to go through all those, but we can't do them until we arrive anyway, and fortunately I'm fairly sure we won't be on our own.
Then we had a 10am meeting at a nearby school. It was very different to here, for a start they have no school uniforms, and it also seems to be less structured than we are used to. Can't be a bad thing though as the Swedish education system has such a good reputation. The class that RP will be joining will be a normal class with Swedish children, but the teacher is actually English and is accustomed to teaching international students. She was really nice and set our minds at rest over several issues. As they don't start school till 7 over there, RP will be joining a grade 2 class with children a year or 2 older than she is so she won't have to start right back at the beginning but should still be able to cope with the schoolwork at the same time as learning the language. I'm hoping she learns it fast too so she can help me out! We are going to be having language and culture lessons, but I don't have much faith in my ability to pick it up anywhere near as fast as the girls!
Then we nipped down to McDonalds for lunch (much posher than the ones here, and with a lovely view down the river, although the food was the same) before heading back to the office to meet the lady who was going to show us round the apartment. This is a company apartment that is fully furnished and we can have for as long as we need it (until we find somewhere of our own to buy). An apartment wouldn't be our first choice to live in but this will be just fine on a temporary basis and has enough rooms for us all which is a bonus!
Then we went to have a look at some houses we'd seen on hemnet.se just to get an idea of what was available in our price range, and what the neighbourhoods were like, followed by a visit to some supermarkets (very important). D had a meeting with his new boss at 5pm so dropped RP and I back at the hotel. Unfortunately I was hit with a migraine so had to go to bed whilst D and RP went to look at a house that had been offered to us for rent by a colleague. They said it was lovely, and whilst we would prefer to live in a house, I think we've decided to stick with the apartment as the house is only available till Christmas and we don't want to put any pressure on ourselves to find somewhere else. I'd much rather take my time and find the right house in the right location.
After checking on me, they went off to a little pizzeria for tea where RP was most impressed by 'Swedish' pizza and said it was much nicer than the pizza we have here.