Friday 17 September 2010

Happy Anniversary

Here it is, one year of living in Sweden. Put on your ridiculously small party hats and fire those party poppers.

It's crept up after being a long way off. As the tone of a few recent posts have been a bit negative and whiny and dare I say, self pitying. So in order to mark the passing of the year, I thought I'd list the positives of my year here so far:

1. Our Daughter will be born at the end of October.

2. My Swedish has improved drastically. Sure it needs a hell of a lot of work, but I think I'm through the hard bit of learning the language. My written Swedish needs plenty of work, but that just takes time, and access to full time education. The proof of my progress, for me was that I sat through four hours of parent's education and another two of father's education at Lund hospital this week. I'm not going to claim I understood everything, but I think I got about 75 to 85% of what was being discussed. I can now also happily eavesdrop on people's telephone conversations on the bus now too. I'm sure I'll get sick of this quickly as it is a bane of modern life normally, but it's a nice indication of your language skills.

3. Necessity has made me realize that actually I really disliked being a project manager, and I am now actively seeking a return to the code face as a software developer again. Being responsible for other people in the work place is like herding cats, and therefore best avoided.

4. The day to day challenges have forced me to do things I would typically avoid or procrastinate over.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Empty Apartments

There's nothing like a short break back in England to remind you of why you're struggling on over here in Sweden. On Tuesday I flew back to London to get my apartment ready for the Estate Agency who are handling the sale. They need to photograph my apartment and make it look desirable and inviting before advertising my property on their website.

My friend who has been renting my apartment assured me earlier in the week he'd moved out and had given the place a moving day clean. Great, I thought, this should be easy, I just have to clear some of the junk that I had left for him (mainly kitchen things and the odd bit of furniture).

Once I'd met my friend, we dropped a spare set of keys with the Estate Agency, and walked the short distance to my apartment. I was horrified when we got into my flat. Not only was 90% of my friends possessions still there (including large leather sofa), but the guy who had rented the spare room had also left a large double bed. I fired questions at my friend: didn't you tell me you'd moved out, I thought you cleaned the place? No, no he answered (somewhat disingenuously) I didn't say that at all. Now I've know this friend a long time, and foolishly perhaps, I thought having a contract for the rent would be overkill, as he was so trustworthy. But to have someone attempt to contradict himself so obviously was insulting to my intelligence. To cut a long story short, apparently the reason for not having moved his stuff out was, unbelievably:

1. the place he's moved to is only five minutes walk up the road and he was too cheap to hire a taxi to help him move, and was carrying the small amounts by hand to his new apartment. In fact, when I mentioned that perhaps this might be a better strategy, he admitted it hadn't occurred to him.

2. He decided rather than shift his stuff and clean and make sure the place was in a suitable state, he'd go mountain biking in Wales instead.

Rather than explode and rant and rave, I decided clear honest communication was the way forward. I told my friend I felt very let down and he'd been quite dishonest. I tried not to sound too patronizing as I patiently explained (as one might do with a small child) that it is normal that when you move out of an apartment you spend several days thoroughly cleaning the place. It's easy to do as by that stage you've already moved your possessions out.

I've decided to accept that it was a lesson in life, and that trusting people (even if they are friends who've you known for years) to rent your apartment without a contract is a bad idea. Having a contract although it seems very formal just means that everyone knows where they stand. I guess you learn these things by making those mistakes. I don't hold it against my friend, he's still a reasonable guy, it's just he has a tendency to make the most out of a favour.

There were some positives of the trip: I realized why I'm so glad to get out of London. My flat is in a crappy depressing area (bizarrely in a convenient location though),and in contrast my flat here over looks the sea and Öresund bridge. The air is clean and I'm not assailed by putrid aromas wafting up from the neighbours kitchen's (I swear one neighbour was cooking a combination of dog boiled in stale cabbage water).

This Friday is the anniversary of my arrival in Sweden. It's been a year of positives and negatives, as you would expect from anyone living as an immigrant in a new country and trying to learn a new language. Five years ago, working and living in London, I felt like I was in stasis, trapped in routines of convenience I'd created over the years: my job, my apartment, my friends, my interests, patterns of behaviour, nothing seem to change. Over here, everything is a struggle, but so far it hasn't been routine.

Ok, so I don't have a job yet, but I do feel like this place is home now.

Sunday 5 September 2010

During our summer break up in Hälsingland (where my sambo is from) we brought a car. It's nothing fancy, nothing flash, but with our daughter arriving at the end of October, we thought it was no longer a luxury, but something we wouldn't be able to do without. So after looking in every car dealership in Bollnäs we finally found something nice on blockett (a ebay type site). The following day we brought what we now call the gherkin (it's metalic green), and at the end of the holiday, we drove down to Malmö over two days.

It was exciting as I am not an experienced driver, although I passed my test almost two years ago I've haven't had much opportunity to drive. I have only had access to a car when we've been staying up at my sambo's parent's. Having lived in London for many years, there really was no need to have a car. Sure, there were plenty of occasions where it would have been very useful, but it's very expensive to run / insure and park a vehicle in London.

Now we are mobile, we're able to leave our apartment easily, we've been getting out and about and seeing a little of Skåne. A couple of weekends ago we decided we'd get out into nature, and took a trip with friends to Torup, a forest just to the east of Malmö. We decided to repeat the trip last weekend (I've been slacking finishing this post), and in warm autumnal sunshine we walked under the canopies of tall larch and oak trees. We followed the three kilometre circuit (seven and a half month pregnant ladies can't march that far), and only saw the occasional joggers or walkers, despite it being Skogan dag in the the forest.

We had hoped that we'd be able to fill several old ice cream boxes with wild blackberries as we'd seen plenty of bushes that needed a week or two to ripen. Apparently lots of other people had the same idea, and we only really found a couple of bushes. We ended up with about half a box of berries, not enough to make jam, still it was a very pleasant day out and a great way to shake off a touch of cabin fever.