Category: Sweden

Home… Sweet Home!

The river OuseOur last day we spent with Pete and Kate we did the all important visit to Ikea – yep it is pretty much the same as at home, but a lot more of the products make sense in the Swedish environment – especially the meat balls that they sell in the cafeteria. We caught the speed train the Ryan Air airport about 100km from Stockholm (and didn’t get a chance to see Stockholm this time, we’ll just have to go back to visit it). Ryan air is about as budget as you can get – the chairs are primarily made from hard plastic! We arrived in Luton (near London) exhausted and made it to our guesthouse, what an adventure that turned out to be!

The guesthouse owner had overbooked the accommodation, so he offered us his room, which we took – as my recruitment agency had prepaid for three nights and it seemed like a waste of money paying to go elsewhere. We were directed out to the back bungalow, which was a real bachelor pad. This bachelor however had a thing for purchasing clothes, and, other than the bed, you could not see any of the furniture as it was all covered in clothes. We found about 1 meter square to put all our bags, we were almost too scared that our belongings would merge into the chaos that surrounded them. To top off the clutter situation, there was about an inch of dust over everything. After viewing the bathroom, we decided that we were in England now and we only needed to bathe once a week! The owner was such a top bloke though, we felt as though we couldn’t really complain.

We spent the next few days visiting medical centres (trying to get Matt seen as he had a really bad ear ache), checking out the real estate and hassling my job agency. We finally made it to London on the Friday and did the monopoly board tour, while trying to open a bank account. So we have had our highs and lows this week. It looks like I have a job, which is great – cannot believe how easy it is, and we were homeless for a little while and shelling out the dollars (which don’t convert to pounds to well) waiting for temporary accommodation to be sorted out. I also caught up with the uni crew that are over here – there are about eight of my peers here, we had a baby shower for Kerri (for those that know her).

Looks like our home is going to be Bedford for a while. And tomorrow we are going to move into our new place, which is fully furnished, with a big screen TV (I think that was the selling point for Mat).

We have uploaded heaps of photos from Hong Kong and Europe for those that are interested in using the internet inappropriately at work.

Love yall and looking forward to your correspondence. And yes… I’m soon going to get tuff on you guys who have promised e-mails and haven’t delivered yet!

The land of milk and meatballs

View from Pete and Kates at night.We flew into Copenhagen feeling a little groggy after our 6am start (which was necessary because we couldn’t be bothered packing the night before). We didn’t pass through any customs, I am still feeling a little confused about how all this EU stuff works – who’s in it and who isn’t, who uses the euros and who doesn’t?

We walked straight to the train ticket booth (how great are these airports that have train systems that connect to the airport), and abruptly asked the ticket man the details of our journey – turns out they are a bit more helpful in Denmark. Felling a little bad after this interaction I adjusted my interpersonal style to match this new environment. We caught a train that crossed directly to Sweden and travelled north to a town called Alvesta where Pete (Matt’s school mate) and Olivia (his 2 year old daughter) picked us up. How great was it to see them (and then Kate – Pete’s wife, later), it was one of those weird feelings knowing that a lot has changed over the three years since we have seen them, but so much was still the same.

So this week we have been up to a lot of catching up, relaxing, eating, walking through the woods, fishing in the lakes, visiting bakeries and tea houses, golfing, watching Hong Kong movies, meeting Kate’s family, playing cards (yep Pete’s influence), dancing to the wiggles and walking Poppis (the dog). Matt and I think that they put something in the water over here, because Poppis seems to be the most gifted amazing little dog that we have ever met. He understands only Swedish (which makes it a bit difficult for us to interact with him), but when told he does just about everything – he can discern between his different finger puppy toys (duck, bear, lion, froggy etc). Matt has been trying to communicate with Poppis by talking like the Swedish chef from the Muppets.

Oliver, Pete and Kate’s two and a half year old daughter speaks both English and Swedish (this kid is smarter than us and she is 2 and a half). She is such a little cutie, but she suddenly hit the terrible twos while we were there ☺ But she is still sooooo cute!

Pete, Kate and Olivia say “Hej-Hej” (G’day).

Sweden is exactly what you expect, the air is clean, everything is designed smartly (triple glazed windows on houses), they actually eat meat balls, they’re all blond and giant (well not the recent immigrants), dairy seems to be a staple over here – milk with everything, everyone bludges off social security and there is an Ikea on just about every corner. Disappointingly we haven’t seen any mousses (elks) yet, but we have seen lots of cute road signs with schematic diagrams warning of their proximity.

There were some crazy storms here in Smalland in January where five years of logging produce was destroyed in one day. Even now some houses haven’t had power restored. Trees are down everywhere and it is only now that the major clean up is commencing (after the snow has melted). There are high piles of logs beside the road every 100m. Entire forests have been flattened and some minor roads are still yet to be cleared. Peoples retirement plans are in chaos as they were relying on harvesting the wood slowly to give them a steady income.

We’re off to England in a couple of days – time to face the real world again ☺ Thanks for all the emails and sorry that these blogs have been so long coming.