So I’ve been in Sweden for over two weeks and this is my first attempt at writing a blog about it. Over the coming months I will try to keep you up to date about what I’ve been up to. The blog will essentially serve two main functions; first to keep anybody who is interested in what I’m doing informed now that I’m expatriated and second it will act as my own personal record of my time in Sweden. I’ll try not to be overindulgent in my writing and keep things as succinct as possible with the occasional splash of humour (I’ll attempt to keep all subsequent blogs shorter or at the worst no longer than this first one in which I’m setting up what the blog is all about). Hopefully my writing style will improve over time so the blog becomes more engaging and entertaining to those that read it regularly.
As I write the blog I’ll also try to enlighten you about Swedish culture so if you have any questions about Sweden or Swedish stereotypes let me know. I can then train my astute and objective eye on the country and observe the Swede’s in action to either dispel these stereotypes or encourage them!
So here goes: Blog 1
Back-story: July 2009 Stephen is offered a post-doc position in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institutet. 31st January 2010 Stephen becomes jobless in the UK. 1st March 2010 Stephen becomes homeless. 7th March 2010 Stephen becomes carless (that’s car less). 10th March 2010 Stephen becomes Swedish.
My first two weeks can best be described as follows. Day one; turn up at the wrong hotel have to get a £13 taxi to the right one! I try to have a power nap for an hour in the evening at about 7pm so I can go and see one of my new workmates (Michael) play in his band, I don’t wake up again until 4am! I think I was exhausted from the exertions of the previous few days as I prepared to leave old Blighty.
Day two I go to look at the place which will be my home for the first few months I’m in Sweden. It’s out in the sticks south of central Stockholm and it is a foreign exchange students’ residence (students from what I can gather by the names on post boxes come from France, Spain and Germany and I reckon they’re in the 19-22 age range). The area is called Riksten which from this point onwards I’ll refer to as Sticksten. The room is satisfactory and I agree to take it; I have my own self-contained space that has a bathroom and kitchenette It’s relatively close to work (about a 35-40 min commute) so it’ll do for now. I move my belongings in the next day.
I briefly pop into Stockholm centre on the first Friday night to meet some of my new colleagues but by the time I get there I’ve only got time to stay for an hour as I’ve got to get back to Sticksten on the train; I still manage to cram in 3 bloody Mary’s though (£6 a pop). By the time I get back home my bladder is about burst! Over the course of my first weekend my only mission is to find a supermarket. The mission is successful however the discovery that the price of food is almost double what my usual visit to tesco would cost is rather perturbing (£50 for two shopping bags of essentials)!
During the following two weeks I have settled in at work quite well. I have a new computer on the way. It’s an iMac with the top spec i7 quad core processor in it. So I’ll finally be joining the Mac community properly after previously only flirting with it by using iTunes and buying an iPod; top of the range iMac however equals 3-4 week wait for delivery though. I finally received my personnummer today; you can’t do anything in Sweden without a personnummer. It’s a bit like a national insurance number but it’s a lot more restrictive not to have a personnummer compared to not having an NI number. It now means I should be able to open a bank account and get paid for the first time since the end of January!
The weather was quite cold at first, probably down somewhere past -5C on a few nights but things are warming up and the snow is starting to melt. There is no way that I could be described as a sun worshipper, quite the opposite in fact, the sun equals death for my pale ginger skin but I have to admit for the first time in my life I’ve been looking at the Manchester weather longingly as it has been on average 10C warmer than Stockholm!
Other than the weather my first impressions of Sweden have been quite positive. There hasn’t been any problem with language as all the Swedes speak really good English, there was only one incident on a bus with a foreign driver...bloody foreigners! I’m still looking the wrong way when crossing the road. I’ve had meatballs for tea twice. I haven’t been able to buy a decent loaf of bread with slices that are big enough to make a proper sandwich for lunch. I’ve managed to watch a couple of Liverpool matches, one online and one in a sports bar in Huddinge (the less said about that one though the better). I even bought a bottle of HP sauce from the supermarket so things could be a whole lot worse.
Two weeks gone so far so good. Two weeks gone and I still haven’t spoke to anyone where I live except to say hello when passing in the corridor. I think they all think who is this old balding ginger bearded bloke that’s living in our building? It’s kind of like being at school again, the cool kids ostracising the loner. Ah well at least they’re not bullying me…yet.
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