That Was The Week That Was

Much like the fast-paced, no punches pulled weekly wrap-up from the early 1960’s TV show That Was The Week That Was (TW3), our first week in Stockholm has been a non stop consumption of Swedish lifestyles and customs.  The majority of our time has been spent learning the mundane day-to-day ropes of Stockholm living…how to ride public transportation, where to shop for food, how to get mobile phone services, do laundry and a whole host of daily chores we once did on automatic pilot.

Within two days of arriving, we moved into a seven-week “vacation” rental Helen had secured prior to our departure using a fee-based web site called Bostad Direkt that provides access to the rapidly moving apartment market.  Finding Stockholm housing is tricky. We are grateful that we have a starting reference point to help us evaluate longer-term housing.

We encountered our first snag at the Skatteverket when we applied for our personnummer.   The personnummer is the Swedish national identity number that is required for everything.  Acquiring this number was on our immediate “to do” list so we could register for health coverage and open a bank account.  Once the bank account is opened, Jay’s paycheck can then be processed.  

Upon arrival at the Skatterverket, a woman who was most helpful greeted us.  We were handed a form, told to take number and wait our turn.  We had done our homework and were prepared with our passports, resident/work permits stamps in our passport and a copy of our marriage license.  Details…details …not a “copy” but the original marriage license, we were told, was required.  The paperwork was accepted and we were instructed to return within two weeks with the original.  Arrangements were made to have our original marriage license FedEx’d.  Yet in a nod to “we really don’t understand how things work yet,” the very day we waited for the FedEx delivery, the mail arrived with letters from the Skatterverket with our personnummers.

Laundry proved to be a more difficult challenge.  We arranged our “laundry time” as per the custom on a board with key-locked tags that claim a laundry time.  With some experimentation and Google translation searches to understand the wash/drier instructions we completed yet another rite of passage to normal living.

Food shopping has its challenges as we learn what is available and compare prices to our US baseline.  Food, like everything else in Stockholm, is very expensive; twice as expensive would not be a bad linear calculation. 

Our initial acquisition of  the Swedish language is being driven by the desire to understand food labels and signage.  Jay takes pictures of street signs and then later translates them.  We feel a sense of “illiteracy” that we are determined to overcome.  The good news is that most Swedes speak English quite well. 

All these challenges, we are sure, will seen trite in a few weeks.  For now, we are claiming small daily victories as we acclimate to our new home.