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.

Christmas in England

So the first trip back to England for me and the girls is going to be an extended 3 week visit for Christmas and New Year! Lots of things planned, many people to see (and we're not going to have chance to see everyone we'd like to), places to go, and quite a long shopping list to fulfill. I have to say, people aside, I haven't actually missed all that much about the place. I am looking forward to going clothes shopping for me and the girls though, as we are quite limited for options on that score here in Södertälje.

I wrote a little blogpost on posterous about the things I'm looking forward to. And yes, it is all food.

So I guess it can't be all that bad here, or we'd be more homesick surely?

As we'll need a car whilst we're there, we've decided to travel overnight on the ferry from Esbjerg (in Denmark) to Harwich. We did consider driving the whole way, but the thought of spending 2 full days in the car with the girls was not particularly appealing. And being on the ferry, in a cabin, feels like it will be something of an adventure - I'm sure it will be to the girls anyway.

I confess I initially wasn't that bothered about going back, but I am looking forward to seeing everyone, and it will be nice to have a break from being in the apartment. And now that it's nearly time to set off, I am getting a little bit excited!

So don't expect any more updates for a few weeks (as if you were anyway!) - I'll see you when we get back to Sverige.

God jul och gott nytt år!

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.

Back to England

Well D went back to England this morning to pack up the rest of the house and put it into storage, leaving me here with the 3 girls. I'm not jealous of him being in the UK, but I am VERY jealous at the thought that he's going to be having proper bacon butties!

iPhone again

As I mentioned previously, one of the things I was looking forward to about moving to Sweden was that I was promised an iPhone when we got here. Decided to wait till the end of July when the new 3GS was released, but of course when I went on the day they had nowhere near enough stock in and I had to order one. They told me that it would be about a month, so you can imagine my delight when I got a phone call last night to say it had arrived already!
So off I trotted this morning down to the store in much excitement, only to find (after the shiny box was tantalisingly placed on the counter in front of me and we'd determined which tariff was appropriate) that actually I'm not allowed to have a contract phone until I've either been in the country for 8 months, or we have bought a house.
A very sad me left the Telia shop and wandered over to Carphone Warehouse to get a pay as you go sim card to put in my UK phone. Looks like I am doomed to only have basic phone functions for a while longer.

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.

House sale latest

Just realised that I hadn't mentioned anything about the house sale since we accepted the offer - everything seems to be going through fine; D goes back to the UK next week to empty out the rest of the cupboards and the garage and put it all into storage. And of course go to the solicitors to do the last odds and ends of paperwork. So barring any last minute hiccups we should be completing either the 21st or 28th of this month.
All of which means that we can then seriously start looking for somewhere more permanent to live over here. But that's another post all of its own.

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.

House sold?

Still here, still finding our feet, but for now just a quick update on the house - we're very excited to have accepted an offer on our place back in England! The people want to move in by the end of August so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly...