Dalarna Holiday Jaunt

On day one at the new job in Stockholm I was asked when I was planning on taking holiday. It wasn’t something either of us had thought about too much to be honest; don’t I have to actually work first? In Sweden; apparently not.

To be honest, we weren’t ready for a holiday. Having spent the last couple of months frantically packing, moving to the other side of the world and then attempting to get settled and start a new life in Sweden, we both felt like we actually had to spend some time in our adopted city – Stockholm, get in to some sort of daily rhythm and maybe then we would consider a holiday.

People kept telling us, urging us to take one though. “Go before summers over”. “Make the most of the warmth and the long days, it’s a long, long winter”. And my personal favourite “Sweden’s got one of the worlds highest suicide rates for a good reason… winter”. Well, OK, if we must. Besides, after one month in our apartment in Rissne, the days slowly shortening, Ana starting at day care on the 19th of August, and an actual rainfall event (yes, practically the first since we arrived two months previously), we decided we had better heed all the advice and go on holiday before the doom and gloom of winter hit us.

But where to go? With Karin around for dinner one night, we consulted the map, which mostly consisted of Tina and I pointing at areas saying things like “That looks nice” and Karin replying with statements like “That’s boring, don’t go there”, or “dull”, with a screwed up face, or simply just a screwed up face. We were beginning to wonder it was worth going anywhere. I’m absolutely positive Karin will never get a job with the Swedish Tourism Board though.

We settled on a region called Dalarna, an area about 3-4 hours drive north west of Stockholm, on the border with Norway and known for some of the best skiing and mountain biking in the whole country. Unfortunately it was both summer so the skiing was out, and our mountain-bikes are still chugging their way over the ocean on the slowest boat known to mankind. The Lonely Planet for Sweden had a whole 9 pages devoted to the rather large region and Dalarna and it was pretty uninformative, so we simply found a couple of national parks, selected four hostels in the area, booked a room in each and hoped for the best.

The hire car, ram packed with our usual entourage of stuff, sped out of Stockholm at the start of the weekend and we arrived in the pleasant town of Rättvik on the shores of Lake Siljan by the early afternoon. The sun was blazing and Ana whopped in delight at paddling in its shallow warm waters. The first of many paddles and swims that were to be had in the following week, or so we thought.

Lake Siljan - that's winter arriving behind us 

Mora was the first stop for the night and we were relieved to find that that hostel we had booked (as were the following 3 over the course of the week) was not a hang out for ageing teenage bus trips or the 20 bedroom dormitory variety. This probably has to do with the fact that they are run by the Swedish Tourist Association (STF) and as Karin suggested, there isn’t much to see in Sweden so the booze buses stay away. In fact we were practically the youngest people staying, accommodation was rented out on a room basis, it was clean, quiet and reasonably priced.

Our arrival in Mora coincided with the end of summer (as holidays are good at doing). The rain and cold came later that evening and the voices of my work colleagues willing me to take a holiday before summer ended rang in my ears all night.

The morning offered us a narrow rain free window and we drove to the small village of Sollerön to wonder amongst a Viking burial site. The villages in the surrounding countryside were very picturesse with wooden red walls and white trims and pretty surrounding gardens giving them an aptly Swedish look. It was no surprise to hear that the surrounding area is known as the most Swedish looking area in Sweden.

The next morning we made a sweeping visit to the Dala Horse factory in Nusnäs so that Ana could feed her passion for all things horse and see a few thousand little wooden horses been created from lump of wood to painted tourist kitch. We left with a few of Sweden’s most sought after souvenirs and Ana also got to drive a bus  (busses being her second greatest passion) when she decided to climb aboard a awaiting tourist bus and the driver happily gave up his seat for a few minutes.

Dala Horse factory - Sweden's most sought after souvenir

Ana about to take a group load of Austrians on the ride of their life!

Next stop was Särna. We stayed at the STF hostel again which was run by a Dutch couple. It was a little akin to a Faulty Tour’s episode, with the constant noise of the landlady yelling at her 4 children (if I had four children I would probably yell a lot too), eccentric rooms that opened either straight into the dining room, lounge or kitchen (as ours did) and seemingly strange long term inhabitants who didn’t (or couldn’t) smile or talk and drank a lot of cider. We stayed 3 nights, the temperature never reached double figures and I can’t remember ever seeing the sun!

Särna also felt like the beginning of the back and beyond too. It was surrounded by endless pine trees, lakes, rivers and not a lot else. It was a handy base to nearby national parks though, hence our reason for staying, and we had a successful day in Fulufjället National Park were we hiked to the base of Sweden’s highest waterfall – Njupskars vattenfall, and up onto the stunted plateau that forms the basis for most of the park. The track verges there, and the tracks virtually everywhere we went during our nine day sojourn were literally heaving with blueberries. Ana, having already become accustomed to this literally endless bounty of her favourite food being absolutely everywhere, soon became an expert blueberry picker and we spent many hours every day feeding our faces with natures free gifts as well as collecting for desert later that night. 

 

Blue berry hunting

The hunter in action

Walking in Fulufjället National Park

Hard to keep walking when there are blue berries everywhere!

Njupskars vattenfall

The following day was cold and bitter. We steered the car north and drove up to Nipfjället National Park. To our surprise we saw a heard of a dozen of so reindeer by the side of the road. Of course we stopped and took photos as the strong bitterly cold winds battered us from all sides. It didn’t seem to bother the reindeer… I guess if it did they would have migrated south a long time ago, but with this being virtually their southern limit I guess they were practically basking in the warmth.

 

Nipfjället National Park - Now that's more like the Swedish summer I was expecting

Through the rain we drove up to Långfjället National Park through increasingly sparse towns, did a short loop walk around the Troll Garden and after Ana had tired of picking up rocks (as toddlers love to do) and eating blueberries (after we dragged her away from them) we drove back to Särna hoping for better weather the next day.

Troll Garden - Långfjället National Park

The weather was better, but it also coincided with me catching a bout of food poisoning. We did manage a short walk back at Nipfjället in the sun (although it was still bitterly cold) and watched a reindeer literally walk straight past us on the track, but it was a reasonably sedate day as we then headed south to the town of Gräsheden which wasn’t a town at all but a place on the side of the road that consisted of a single hostel that looked more like a truck stop run by a strange man from Birmingham, and a development gone wrong that consisted of incredibly expensive looking houses that were all completely empty and awaiting buyers… since the global financial crisis apparently.

Herd of reindeer at Nipfjället 

 

 On the first night we had the hostel to ourselves bar a couple of mountain bikers who had lost the ability to smile and make conversation (including offering a greeting). They were early arrivals for the cykelvasan – a 95 km annual mountain bike race that attracted a mammoth 12 000 competitors. It was run on the same course as the more famous vasaloppet, the worlds largest cross country skiing race. That we happened to be in the region on the very day of one the world’s largest (by participants) mountain bike race was purely coincidental. Yes, we both felt pangs of jealously, but when we saw the course - practically fire roads and tarmac which explained the super fast times (2 hours 43 minutes was the winners time), the pangs subdued somewhat, but only a little. The vasaloppet however…. Hmm, I might have to learn how to cross country ski!

So while the cyclists arrived the next day, we took ourselves walking and blueberry hunting in Granfjällsstöten in the cold, but avoiding the afternoon rain once again (just).

If in doubt - pick blue berries

 

Add your own caption here??

The next day we wove our way back to Rättvik where we bumped into a lady we had met a month before while waiting for a ferry on the other side of the country (I love small countries). Our arrival also coincided with the return of summer. Perfect timing considering the next day we drove back to Stockholm and to work. Although, the heat probably had more to do with the location of our holiday than a change in weather patterns.

 

I think I see the sun....

OK, there was the odd bit of sun

Potty training of a road trip

 All up, a successful adventure, some places to return to – with bikes and skis, and we now feel a real need for another holiday soon.

We love Ikea... kind of

Having sold practically everything we own before we left New Zealand apart from a fleet of bicycles, outdoor equipment and few left over rags that have some resemblance to clothes, there was really no question as to where we would do our shopping when we arrived in Sweden. Ikea, the Swedish institution serving Swedes and the world alike with a massive assortment of furniture of goods. You can even buy a house there! In fact Ikea is reputed to be the worlds largest furniture retailer – not that being big makes them any good of course, quite the opposite in my books, but they do have a goal of running on 100 percent renewable energy which is a good start.

You may therefore be surprised to hear (I certainly was) that Ikea is not actually Swedish at all, but Dutch, although it did start out as a Swedish company. Anyway, it’s probably sacrilege in Sweden to call them a Dutch company so I will simply comply and pretend they are Swedish to prevent any unwanted abuse from the local populace.

So off we went to Ikea on a beautiful sunny summer’s day. To be honest, it was a complete waste of a steaming hot weekend day, but it’s practically been the same (warm and sunny) for two months straight. With D-day approaching to our move in to our apartment, we quite literally needed to get some stuff and we had run out of time waiting for the weather to deteriorate. We needed basics like a bed, some towels, maybe a plate of two, a couple of knifes and forks to eat with and a cup maybe (we don’t want to get too carried away). In a way I feel kind of free being able to shove everything we own into a few bags and move, but it’s not very practical when your nearly 40 and have a young child, and after being in Sweden coming up to two months I think it’s fair to say we are a bit sick of it.

 

Riding the bus to Ikea. The bus was probably made there too.

The mighty Ikea

There are two Ikea’s in Stockholm. The Kungens Kurva store has over five and a half hectares of floor space and is reputably the largest Ikea in the world. I figured if we were going to do the Ikea thing, we may as well do it properly. As it turned out, this massive behemoth would have taken us quite a bit more time to get too and we (quite rightly) wanted to minimise wasting too much of the beautiful day getting there; we opted with the smaller, closer store instead.

Not that it was small! It had its own bus stop, which was minnowed by the huge towering blue windowless wall that inside contained a labyrinth of aisles and happy shoppers. Probably happier, no doubt, in the knowledge that they couldn’t see the beautiful day they were missing out on outside. Separate entries and exits greeted us, the purpose we found out later (so you have to walk through the entire bloody shop to get out!) and it took a while for us to figure out how to actually get in.

Inside the front door was a very large enclosed children’s nursery. In effect it worked like this. You dumped your kid at the reception, the staff gave you a number and put a bright yellow vest with you number printed on it on your little one. The kid was then free to go berserk in the large play area. Then I guess when you were finished shopping, your simply came back, handed your number over and your little one was retrieved. I wanted to take a photo but decided it was best not too given the sensitivities of parents to middle aged men (not quite but nearly) showing interest in their children.

Ana was a bit young to leave there, however she had a great time jumping on and testing out all the beds on offer, playing in conveniently located children’s corners throughout the store and chomping through more than her share of Ikea’s famous meatballs at the large restaurant located within. In fact we both thought the meatballs were not too nice (by Swedish standards) and our grumbling stomachs that evening tended to agree. It’s no surprise to hear that they were implicated in the horse meat scandal earlier in the year. Of course, I’m sure they no longer contain any horsemeat; perhaps they tasted better when they did?

Ikea meatballs. Mmmmm.... kind of

We lasted over an hour which was pretty good for us – we really did need a bed. To get out you were forced to practically walk through the entire store, clever marketing, before being thrown out at the Ikea bus stop and awaiting the ride home. Home was eagerly awaited so we could spend some time outside and actually enjoy some of the day!

So what did we buy? Nothing. Nothing! Well, it’s hard to carry a bed on the bus and besides you can order everything over the phone and then things will magically turn up on your door. At least we now know what we want.

Two more sleeps and we can unpack, needless to say we are looking forward to it. Although the shipping company have informed us that the rest of our gear will not arrive until mid September. Just in time to unpack the bikes for the upcoming winter! At least it gives us a little time to figure out where to put them!

Mid Summer

The summer solstice is particularly important in the northern countries of Europe… no doubt this is directly related to a distinct lack of light for a large portion of the year coupled with freezing temperatures, 4-5 months of snow, frozen lakes and seas…. brrrr… I’m probably the only one in Sweden that is actually looking forward to it!

Mid summers is a big holiday in Sweden, a practise run for the long holiday period really. Although termed mid summers, it isn’t really mid summer at all (despite being the summer solstice), but a time when weather patterns settle and the short but warm summer period begins (well, in theory at least). It is a prelude to schools breaking up a few weeks later and most of the country cashing in their long annual leave entitlements and disappearing for months at a time, only to return when the days truly shorten and the excitement of the oncoming winter is experienced by only a sole deranged New Zealander.

In Stockholm, families flee to their holiday homes on the archipelago, mow and weed the erratic spring growth, paint walls, dust down the cupboards, stock them with supplies, make lists of building materials and supplies needed and slowly return to work the following week in eager anticipation of their annual summer migration several weeks later. We were lucky enough to be invited to be part of this ‘prelude’ and stay at the Pehrson family collection of summer homes on the beautiful Island of Blido in the northern part of Stockholm’s archipelago. While Karin rode her bike and the rest of the family drove, Tina, Ana and I took the slow route – the ferry, from downtown Stockholm. We arrived early on Thursday morning, the bus strike (yes a strike in Sweden) not curtailing our efforts to get there by 9am to get a good queuing position in what was to be a busy boat with families heading out to the Islands for the long weekend. We would have been a bit stuffed if the train drivers hadn’t cancelled their strike the evening before, which would have potentially curtailed all our weekend plans; however the train drivers pulled the plug on their planned action enabling our carless family access into the city. Incidentally, the bus drivers were still on strike one week later. Riots and strikes in the space of 5 weeks, maybe Sweden isn’t the harmonious society we were led to believe?

Anyway, I digress. Despite the long line of overloaded prams, cycle trailers, bags and families, there was room to stretch our legs on the boat as it started its two and half hour journey through various inlets of the Baltic Sea stopping at small wharfs and jetties, ejecting people and goods and collected others in replacement. From the boat we could admire the idyllic looking holiday houses - some mansions, some more modest abodes, and the calming effect of green forest meeting blue water, fluttering Swedish flags and boaties of all shapes and sizes darting in and out of maze of islands had us looking forward to the long weekend. It seems no one is really sure just how many islands there are. Some are big, some are so small a solitary tree takes up the entire surface area, while others aren’t even big enough for this. But take a look at a map of the Stockholm archipelago and it is mind boggling. Various sources list 10,000 to 30,000 islands in all. All this in an area of about 100 km by 50 km.

The ferry stopped at the small wharf at Bruket (our destination on the Island of Blido) just long enough for us to extract ourselves and our gear and the small pedestrian ramp was actually pulled out from underneath me as I took my final step onto solid ground… keeping to the ferry timetable obviously the essence of the occasion.

From Bruket, Karin was waiting for us, and we walked the narrow country lane through the forest before we turned off onto a dirt road which become smaller, narrower and rougher and more infested with mosquitoes until we finally reached the end. We had reached the Pehrson posse of holiday homes, a collection of three beautiful wooden houses surrounded by large gardens and bordered by the surrounding forests. The mosquitoes took one look at the fresh city folk and went to work!

The main celebrations kicked off the following day. After a leisurely breakfast (everything was leisurely on Blido) flowers were picked and taken to a large open grassed area where they were attached to a maypole. With cross bar and circular rings of leaves and flowers, the pole lay flat on the ground until the celebrations later in the day saw it hoisted into the air, it’s phallic stature, meant, I assume, to promote virility among the populus.

Tina, Ana, Karin and Anna - One of the many fikas on Blido

Island Walkway

One of Pehrson holiday homes. Not too shabby for a hand-built  job

 However, before the celebrations kicked off it was time for a traditional lunch of pickled hearing and assorted condiments. The extended Pehrson family and few foreign imports (us included) munched away in the early afternoon sun before three o’clock rolled around and families from around slowly started migrating to the pre-arranged gathering place where fika was held before births and deaths since last mid summers were announced, the maypole raised and the real celebrations were ready to kick off.

 

On our way to mid-summers celebrations

Now, in a lot of the world it would be time for the adults to start drinking heavily for an evening of boozy entertainment. What I really like about Sweden, well at least to what I have been exposed too so far, is that it is very family orientated and in what is arguably Sweden’s biggest national day, alcohol did not seem to play too much of a role. Perhaps that is simply what we have been exposed too so far, but the afternoon really centred around the children. A small band played while traditional songs were played and the community danced around the maypole while those not inclined to dance or too tuckered out by too much dancing, sack races or tug-o-war competitions, simply lay on the grass and drank coffee. To say Ana enjoyed herself would be an understatement and by the time we had returned home, eaten a late dinner, bounced (or were bounced) on the trampoline by half a dozen kids a lot older than her for an hour, she virtually collapsed onto the bed at the site of it despite the sun not even giving the faintest hint that it was going to go down that night.

 

Dancing around the Maypole

The following few days revolved around taking fika, swimming, a spot of boating and having a pretty relaxing time all around. Just what we needed after a month of settling into our new lives. Stockholm, work, and the tax office all seemed very far away. It amazed me that the houses we were staying in were practically all built by the family. Karin explained that although on the face it, months idling away on Blido every summer seemed like paradise, the reality was that all through her childhood, the were practically always building; there was always a project on the go. It is hard to believe looking at the houses. Practically the only help they got was the milling of the wood from the trees cut down on the property. The buildings were all at least double glazed, the more modern ones triple glazed, people don’t believe me when I tell them they still build single glazed buildings in New Zealand. It seems the art of building is passed down from generation to generation. If you want a house built, I would recommend getting a Swede to do it.

 

Boating - a favourite Swedish pastime

Island fika spot

Back in Stockholm, we are now living with Karin’s mother until we can move into our apartment. A few more trips to Norway loom for me, to Germany for Tina and Ana, and then come mid-July we move (hopefully for the last time this year) back to Rissne where we can unpack our meagre possessions for the last time and our shipment from New Zealand will arrive and we make a home here.

One month in Sweden

It’s hard to believe that I arrived in Sweden nearly four weeks ago, with Tina and Ana arriving a week later. In many ways it feels we have been here quite some time, of course in other ways it is all still very new to us all.

Overall life seems pretty relaxed here. If people are stressed going about their day to day lives they are good at hiding it. Since the moment I arrived I have been astonished how quiet everything appears considered Stockholm is a reasonably big city (for my standards anyhow). The tunnelbanna (underground train) always appears reasonably quiet and at worst busy, but never so chaotic that the platforms are overflowing and the trains bursting. The same can be said for the roads, airports, the tourist sites, practically everything in fact. It’s like everything is stuck in an un-hectic un-stressful cruise mode. I’ve seen people making ‘interesting’ manoeuvres in their cars and bicycles that have ended up causing inconvenience or at worst causing the traffic to come to a halt. In New Zealand they would receive a barrage of abuse (by way of depressed horn of the car or furious arm waving cyclist (I’m one of the later I have to admit), but in Sweden, people simply stop and wait. It appears a few seconds inconvenience is not the end of the world… as it should not be. Cyclists, pedestrians and other cars are also treated with a lot more respect than I am used to. It has had a remarkable calming affect on my own attitude too.

Even the Royal wedding in the weekend appeared a relaxed affair. We were walking through the city and passed by the Royal Palace where things were in full swing for the big wedding between Princess Madeleine and New York banker Christopher O'Neill later in the day. Well I say full swing, but it was a pretty sedate. I’ve seen school boy rugby matches stir more passion. Barricades had been set up along the procession route and police stood on corners. But even when guests were being whisked to the ceremony in their chauffeured cars and buses (yes public buses) under police escort, the crowds were not 20 deep, or even 5 deep. In fact along much of the route, apart from the very entrance to the palace, the crowd was zero deep. It seemed that either people didn’t care for a royal wedding (there was only one a few years ago) or they just didn’t think it was worth making a huge fuss about. The roads in front of the palace were officially closed and barricaded off. Yet cyclists still whizzed by and the police escorts just went around them. I can imagine in other countries they would have been shot! It was similar for Sweden’s national day last Thursday. We went into the city to see what was on. The Royal Palace was open to the public, and although a constant stream of people walked through it and the Swedish flag flew proudly around the city, things were very relaxed.

Ana negotiating the crowds outside Swedish Parliament on Sweden's National day

Inside the Royal Palace on Sweden's National day

Guests taking the bus to the Royal Wedding. At least the driver put on his suit!

Even the male train drivers have a relaxed attitude to wearing skirts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22828150

As far as getting settled we have achieved the following.
-Obtained a national ID number, without which you can't even sneeze in Sweden;
-Opened a bank account (which you need a national ID to do);
-Arranged for payment of relocation expenses and salary (which you need a bank account to do);
-Enrolled Ana in pre-school (again, national ID number is crucial for this task);
-Found and signed a contract on an apartment (you guesses it, the national ID is the key);
-Purchased new bicycle (what were you expecting?); and
-Sent registration information to Försäkringskassans who in effect are the social welfare providers in Sweden. They told me that we will be eligible for up to 460 days of paid parental leave (yes that's four hundred and sixty) minus what we received in New Zealand (which was nothing) if we stay up to two years or more (highly likely). 

Ana's new bike. She'll grow into it

No wonder there are kids everywhere in Sweden. In fact neither of us have seen so many pregnant women, prams and buggies, playgrounds and actual children themselves anywhere else in the world. It’s like one very large breeding programme.

Pram park

Update on the Great Stockholm House Hunt

Despite finding our apartment in record time, the phone kept ringing with offers from prospective 1st hand lease holders eager to sign us up as seconds. Most sounded dire, but one caught our ear. As we hadn't signed the contract for the one we had already found, we went to view it and it was damned near perfect in every way. So we kind of changed our mind, and are now moving there. The 30 second commute is ancient history, but to be honest, living that close to work scared me a bit. So in Rissne we will stay, with its wide open spaces, cheap rent (relatively) and family orientated living.

The Great Stockholm House Hunt

Finding a place to live in Stockholm is no joke. We were warned about it before we came and all the advice most people in Stockholm can offer is “its really hard”. The reality of the game set in pretty quick as we started our own adventure.

Ironically, the problem seems to stem from Sweden’s egalitarian society which at the end of World War II was transformed from a largely agrarian society into a model representing the ‘middle way’ between capitalism and socialism relying heavily on a social welfare system in which equality was its cornerstone. Home ownership was and is encouraged with heavy tax breaks for people paying mortgages and low interest rates (compared to New Zealand at least) making ownership an attractive proposition, apart from the very high cost that is. However one of the biggest drivers for home ownership would have to be the dismal rental market. We have heard of people giving up on finding somewhere to rent and buying instead!

There are basically disincentives to be a landlord in Sweden. The return on the investment is simply not worth it or negative. There are government schemes to rent, which to be honest I still don’t really understand, but basically babies are put on this list when they are born, the waiting list is so long. So when you get a rental directly from the landlord (termed 1^st hand rental - more often than not the landlord is the state) you never let it go. A big advantage to hanging on to the apartment is that the state often sells the apartments with time and if you have been renting it out for a long period, you usually get it very cheap. So when you want to leave, you don’t relinquish the lease (that would be deemed idiotic), you simply sub let it out (termed 2^nd hand rental). Believe it or not there are even 3rd hand rentals where you lease from the leaser of the leaser of the landlord. Confused?

Of course everyone adds on a bit of fat to line their pockets, leaser terms become more and more restricted and cumbersome (and often not legal) the further down the chain you become, and you end up with a property market like Stockholm’s where it is nearly impossible to lease directly from the owner of an apartment or house, and 2^nd and 3^rd hand leasing terms are generally overpriced and short term – 1,2,3 month leases are not uncommon.

Unbelievably, we turned down a 1^st hand lease that was made available to us through a friends sisters neighbour before we even set foot in Sweden (I hear everyone in Sweden gasp and call us fools), but it was simply beyond our means. To put it simply, the rental market in Sweden is horrendously hard to crack. A recent Property Federation (Fastighetsägarna) study in Stockholm study had this to say about it:

“The study compares how long it takes to find and sign a contract for a small (40 square meters) rental apartment in eight European capitals.
In six of the cities in the study – Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Brussels, Madrid and Berlin – you could find an apartment immediately. In Amsterdam it would take you one to five weeks. For Stockholm the figure was a shocking 307 weeks.”

So how is our property search going? Blocket (http://www.blocket.se) is the Trade Me or EBay of Sweden and is generally the first port of call. Apartments and houses are listed, you send a little message to the lister and if you are very lucky they will get back to you. Rumour has it that people listing adverts or available apartments get literally 100s of calls / emails within the first hour and I have heard that if you do not make contact within the first couple of minutes of an advertisement been posted, you may as well forget it. The other option is to list yourself, tag a cheesy photo and hope people will come to you first. So for approximately $120 NZ up our advertisement went:

Our small family (Tim, Tina and young daughter Ana) have recently moved to Stockholm from New Zealand.

We have transferred to Sweden with Tim’s employment and he has taken up a fixed income / permanent position as a scientist in Solna. Tina has recently finished her doctoral studies and will be working in a research position.

We are excited to be Stockholm and seek an apartment or house with a minimum of 2.5 rooms to live for at least six months somewhere in the north of Stockholm (Sollentuna, Danderyd, Täby, Uppland Vasby, Solna, Sundbyberg, Lidingö, Bromma)

We don’t mind if the apartment or house is furnished or unfurnished and are willing to pay up to 12 000 SEK a month.

We are non smokers and have no pets. We have never been in any financial difficulty and are dependable people who are quiet and clean and would look after your apartment / house as if it were our own. We own a house in New Zealand and this is currently leased out long term to tenants.

Please contact me by phone or email if you would like to hear more about us, or you have a property that you think would be suitable for us.

Thank you for your time in reading our advertisement and we hope to hear from you soon.

Tim and Tina

Our Blocket Photo - how could you resist!

We were very lucky to get an almost immediate reply from a lovely lady who worked as a chef on an oil rig (and happened to be 4 months pregnant) and her husband who was a sergeant major in the British Army currently deployed in Afghanistan. They had the perfect apartment for us and if we deposited 3 months rent into a secure bank account, the key would be delivered to us and we would have a 10 day appraisal of the property in which we could decide whether we wanted it or not. Needless to say I stopped communications at that point. We were offered a 1 month lease on the opposite side of town, a two month lease in a 1 roomed 35 m² apartment, a 3 month lease that may be extended from a lady with two daughters who was moving in with her boyfriend who also had two daughters that could extend into something more long term (if they didn’t hate each other after the first few weeks!) and in the mean time we were sending dozens and dozens of emails to 1^st and 2^nd hand lease holders of apartments being listed for 2^nd and 3^rd hand rentals and hearing back from barely any of them. And that was just on Blocket!

As the week went by we sent messages to many people advertising apartments and houses and heard back from barely none of them… apart from those mentioned before. We got quite a few messages from our personal advertisement, but nearly all had apartments or houses with very long commutes, tiny boxes where you couldn’t swing a cat, minuscule lease periods, were over priced and/or in areas that have recently made the International media for the wrong reasons – the Stockholm riots. I came home from work one day and announced that I had had enough and we were going home!

Then Thursday rolled around and I had a nice email from a lady called Eva who had an apartment in Solna, which happens to be the suburb where I am working. We exchanged a few emails and photos and then she sent me the address. The address looked strangely familiar. I copied it into google earth, dragged the little man across to look at the view of the street and laughed out loud. From behind my computer, I stretched to the right and there, outside the window, across the road, was the very same apartment block that my computer screen was showing. In the whole of Stockholm, we were going to look at an apartment directly opposite my office!

So off we went. The apartment was big – 110 m², and at the very top (maybe a bit over) our price range. Eva and Bo (the 1^st hand lease holders) were very nice and the apartment which they had lived in for the past 35 years and had been an embassy for some obscure country before that, seemed like a good catch, even though the décor was not really to our taste. Eva and Bo owned a holiday house on and island near Stockholm and were planning on buying a house in Spain and living there over the Swedish winters, yet still rented the apartment and wanted to continue to rent it (1^st hand lease holders), such is the peculiarities of the Stockholm property market. We spent an hour there before leaving, in which time the apartment was offered to us for 12 months. To get a nice apartment with a 12 month lease with no massive sum of money for a bond from people we trusted within 7 days of looking and 14 days of arriving in Stockholm is pretty unheard of. Locals would beat us on the head with the folly of what we did next. We said we would sleep on it. Later that night, Eva sent us an email dropping the rent and asking us to have it… yes this is Stockholm, but it does happen!

Move in 1^st of July, and that is our Stockholm great house hunt story.

Unlikely to be too many complaints about the commute length.

The Crescendo Sophia Hill Climb

I first came to Europe when I was 18, and came to race bikes. It was where cycling was born and where it involved into the spectacle (albeit confusing one) that it is today. It’s where the best cyclists rode their bikes and where you came if you wanted to be the best.

21 years later, and I have still never raced a bicycle outside New Zealand. Why? Well that’s another story, but today I finally broke the spell and broke on to the international scene. Not quite in the big way I had imagined as a young man trying to make his way in the world, but I was definitely noticed.

A good friend of ours – Karin, who had recently moved back to Sweden from New Zealand, suggested I might want to come along to one of the local road racing clubs hill climb events after work. As I am still family-less and Karin is the only person I know in a radius stretching many thousands of kilometres, I accepted. I didn't have a bike, well I did - Karin’s 15+ year shopping bike complete with basket, malfunctioning gears, dodgy brakes and delaminated tyres, but I thought a bit of spectating with beer in hand on a hot summers evening sounded like a pretty good idea.

Karin met me at work and I followed her on her slick racing machine through a labyrinth of cycle paths and back roads to the meeting point outside the Babajan bar in the heart of Södermalm, the large Island in the heart of Stockholm. We were the first to arrive and before I knew it Karin was entering me on the start sheet. What? I was dressed in my work clothes, had a bike that was… well, I won’t call it a heap of junk as I’ll have to give it back, but I didn’t even know if I could pedal it up the so called hill climb let along try and race on it! But it was done, and the friendly organiser, salivating at the idea of making a complete fool of this foreigner was loving every moment of it. He even went home to fetch me a helmet.

Other cyclists started to trickle in. They were of the sleek looking whippet variety with shaved legs, head to toe matching lyrca sporting sponsors colours and riding ridiculously expensive bikes. I was feeling more of a fool by the minute. So we snuck off for a quick (quick probably the wrong word to use) reccie of the course. The racing was to be had in heats of four. The riders were neutralised until a sharp left hander and risk of oncoming traffic had been accessed before been let loose on another tight right hander and gradually climbed up an increasingly steep gradient (to a maximum incline of 15%) on a narrow winding road to the summit of a small hill, atop which stood the Sophia Church. The first two riders advanced to the next round, the losers to a repacharge called “lucky losers” in which you had one more chance to advance or it was beer o’clock for you.

The whippers ready for action. My bike is on its stand in the gutter to  left of the centre of the picture.

The course

Beer o’clock sounded good as we milled around waiting for the heats to start and for me to be put out of my misery. Karin was off in the first heat and as she and her fellow competitors took off into the pain zone, I pulled my trusty steed over to the start line behind bikes sporting Sram Red and Shimano Dura-Ace components. If you don’t know what that means, its like travelling first class on a bicycle. Me, in my work clothes on a 15 year old shopping bike, was in the luggage hold.

Me on the start line (3rd from left in red top). Note everyone jealously eyeing up my bike. (Photo: Andreas Nyström), 

My only chance (the only real hope was a huge oil slick around the corner) was a quick start. Despite the first 100 or so metres been neutralised, when we were sent off, I managed to sneak past everyone at a furious pace (yes we were still neutralised) and hold the lead for about 2 seconds (this was also the flat bit) before I was swamped and left behind (yes, the race was still neutralised). By the time I actually got to the climb, the other three were gone, and I enjoyed the support of a small crowd as I snaked my way up the climb before crawling over the line and letting out a heavy wheeze of effort. Of course, as a ‘lucky’ loser I got to do it all over again… lucky me. I’d take you through that race step by step too, but it went very similar to the first one, except I didn't manage to take the lead for 2 seconds in the flat neutralised section.

Karin in action. (Photo: Andreas Nyström), 

While the fit whippets on the sleek bikes battled it out in quarter finals, semi finals and of course the finals, Karin and I watched from the outside seating, wrapped in the provided rugs trying to keep warm in the Swedish summer’s night. It wasn't how I imagined my first international race would pan out, dead last by a very large margin, however I never imagined that such a poor showing would be so much fun as well.

Relaxing with beer in hand on a balmy Swedish summer's evening. Note the blanket (provided by the  bar)