We've experienced so many wonderful, so many challenging, so many exhausting, and so many ridiculous things in the past year, that we thought we'd take this blog entry to recount a few of our Top 10 lists for our time in Sweden thus far. We hope you enjoy!
TOP 10 PLACES WE'VE VISITED IN SWEDEN
1. Gamla Uppsala: It was here that we first realized we were living on historic soil. Culture here was established many hundreds and even thousand of years ago. In contrast, everything in the US seems new or at least more modern than the historical structures we find here. Additionally, Swedish and European territory has been through periodic massive border changes mostly due to wars and territorial disputes. Yet the core culture of Sweden remains unaffected.
2. Uppsala Cathedral: No matter how many times we visit the Cathedral, we never tire of standing in awe of the amazing art and architecture! And when the pipe organ plays, it's magical!
3. Stockholm at Christmastime: Most of the Christmas celebrations in Sweden are muted in comparison to those of the US; however, the window decorations and lights of Stockholm created quite the festive atmosphere, as did the Lucia celebration and fireworks show in Uppsala.
4. Opphem: For Tyson, returning to the "motherland" of Opphem (from whence came the Samuelson family, which settled Ophiem, IL), was the single most amazing experience of his time in Sweden. He experienced this together with his parents as they walked alongside the very fields possibly once farmed by his ancestors.
5. Sätra farm: For Julie and her dad, it was an interesting experience to not only see where his great-grandfather had lived, but also to see the house full of museum-quality artifacts most likely used by their ancestors. Equally enjoyable was talking to Birgitta about her interest in this farm and her three meetings with Setterdahls from the US.
6. Parliament: The stark contrast between Swedish and US politics was highlighted during our tour of the Swedish Parliament. From the regaled yet powerless monarchy to the large proportion of women in Parliament, and from the lack of lawyers and the abundance of teachers in Parliament to the low pay for members of Parliament, it proved to be a thought-provoking tour.
7. Nordic Museum: As is the recurring theme, our visits to the Nordic Museum showed the historic nature of Sweden. Our favorite exhibits portray the clothing and dining evolution throughout the centuries.
8. IKEA: We arrived in Sweden never having visited an IKEA before, and we have more than made up for that in the past 12 months. Almost everything we own in Sweden came from IKEA with the humorous instruction manuals, tools only used for IKEA products, and cheap prices. A trip to IKEA is one which we always seem to fill our bicycle baskets =)
9. Forests: We never would have guessed Sweden to have so many swampy and moss-covered areas, but walks through any forested area in Sweden is a feast for the senses. Though we see little animal wildlife, the floral and fungus wildlife fills the landscape.
10. Linnaeus Gardens: Carl Linnaeus is one of Uppsala's most famous citizens, known for his biological classification system. He was a professor at Uppsala University, and was known for his teaching ability and taking his students on walks in the forests. His gardens highlight his talents, and include many non-native plants cultured for research and teaching purposes.
TOP 10 CHALLENGING SITUATIONS SINCE MOVING TO SWEDEN
1. Getting our personnumbers. Oye! Two trips to the immigration office, two trips to the tax office, and 3 weeks of waiting, and we were finally considered residents of Sweden. So thankful that this process does not have to be repeated.
2. Getting a credit card. Of course we couldn't get a bank account, much less a credit card until we had our personnumbers, so this was over a month in the making. Even now, we're working on getting a genuine credit card - one with a Master Card logo on it - instead of just a Maestro card.
3. Understanding enough Swedish to get by... or just get groceries. This has dramatically improved thanks to our svenska class! No more buying buttermilk instead of regular milk for us ;-)
4. Securing apartment #2. Tyson was in the lab late one night in December, about 4 days before we flew home for Christmas. Julie just happened to stay up waiting for him and checked the Blocket website (where 2nd hand rentals are posted) and lucked out in being the 2nd person to respond to a great apartment ad at about 11:30pm. An hour later, we had secured a viewing and meeting of the couple renting the place, which took place the cold and snowy night before we flew home. We did get the apartment - where we lived from Feb-Aug - but it was absolutely by chance that we obtained it.
5. Getting Tyson's first paycheck cashed. I don't think we've shared this story on the blog, but it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Tyson got his first paycheck at the end of September, several weeks before we had a personnumber or our own bank account, so of course an easy direct deposit was out of the question. We took a check (which are almost non-existent in Sweden) to the university's bank, which then cashed it for us. So there we were in the bank with a wad of Swedish krona, and I had the pleasure of riding across town with it stuffed in Tyson's Spibelt (a small storage belt worn under clothes when running) under my shirt. I pedaled rather quickly that day!
6. Shopping in IKEA the day we arrived. The afternoon we arrived, Tony arranged for a taxi to take us and his family to IKEA to do some shopping. His wife and sons had only arrived in Sweden a few days earlier, so they were also in need of some housing necessities. I came armed with my list of everything we wanted to get, and we went to town shopping. Now this happened mid-afternoon Sweden time, which was early morning US time for us, and remember, we didn't sleep much on the plane. All went well until the kitchen section when Tyson fell asleep standing up. I came to put something in the cart and thought he looked kind of funny standing there with his eyes closed. We found him a nice bench where he took a power nap and I finished my kitchen shopping. And around 8pm that night, we went to sleep and woke up the next morning about 10am, ready to explore our new surroundings.
7. Understanding how the train, bus, and t-bana systems work. This was incredibly challenging. There are regional, city, and national transportation systems. For the buses and trains, they are different colors and they all require different kinds of tickets depending on how far you're traveling. And because the majority of people use public transportation, the number of city bus routes is incredible, and of course, they don't all leave from the same place downtown - there are about 10 different city center stops. But like most systems we've encountered in Europe, if you sit down and really study the schedules and maps for 15 minutes, you can figure them out, which makes getting around without our bikes so much easier.
8. SFI class - 5 hours of svenska class every week was trying. We have taken a break from classes, but believe it is a great social program offered by Sweden for free to all immigrants.
9. Clash between the American work style and the Swedish work style. Swedes enjoy taking life more laid back than Americans, which in some respects, is something many Americans should learn to do. There are certain workplace customs, however, which are hard to understand, especially when no one tells you why things happen the way they do. For instance, fika is a standard coffee break that happens daily at 10am and 3pm. Everything stops at work for everyone to have coffee and pastries. Another example is red day holidays, which seem to happen every few weeks in Sweden. Red days are national holidays of some kind, during which no one shows up to work, which by itself is not unusual. But when red days fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, the Monday or Friday kind of become a "pink day" (as Tyson and his lab mates have taken to calling them), or unofficial holidays.
10. Transitioning to thinking in SEK instead of USD. The current conversion rate is about 7SEK=1USD, which is easy enough to remember, but stunning when your grocery store bill for 2 days worth of groceries is 300SEK or around $45. Everything is more expensive here, but even knowing that and the conversion rate is still a bit hard to swallow at cash registers.
TOP 10 THINGS WE MISS FROM THE U.S.A.
1. Family
2. Friends
3. Dixie
4. Food - food with flavor, a variety of food, and food that's cheap!
5. Our Prius - though we have no intention or need to buy a car here, we do miss the convenience of having a car at times (like today when we biked to the grocery store in the rain). But neither of us have ever been in such good physical shape from all the biking and walking we've done over the last year. Without a doubt, we've biked more in the last year than the rest of our lives combined.
6. Access to information - Because of the language barrier, we feel quite out-of-the-loop a lot of the time. Even simple occurrences like understanding what is announced on the train without deep translation concentration makes us feel more at home in Ireland and London than in Sweden. Though our understanding of Swedish has come a long ways, we are by no means proficient and realize that most kindergartners speak and understand more Swedish than we probably will by the time we leave Sweden.
7. Large discount stores - There are no Targets or Walmarts in Sweden (which is probably a blessing in disguise), but malls or gallerias as they are called, are much smaller here and much less diverse. Recently however, we found Granby Centrum close to our present apartment, which is the closest thing we've found to a mall in Sweden. It's 3 floors of stores of all kinds, including 2 large grocery stores. We've enjoyed making weekly excursions to Granby for the last month.
8. Big 10 football. We're subscribing to ESPN sports today so we can watch the Hawkeyes (and maybe a few other teams) play football this fall. Our next apartment has a grill on the deck and we can't wait to fix some football food and watch the games! Go Hawks!
9. Stable and available housing - We were told when we first arrived in Uppsala that people tend to move at least 5 times before finding long-term housing. We're on place #3 right now and thankfully, place #4 will be our long-term apartment in about 3 weeks. Though moving between apartments is much simpler because of our lack of "stuff," it's still a process to pack things up and change everything over from one address to the next.
10. The "normality" of U.S. culture. Yeah, it's hard to imagine anyone describing U.S. culture as normal, but as weird and evolving as it is, Americans are accustomed to it. That's why living in a foreign country, like Sweden, seems at times so odd - the culture is completely different. And it should be! We're living in the Swedish culture, and as we have tried to demonstrate over the past year and to our visitors this summer, yes, many things about Sweden seem strange. Yes, the Swedish people interact very differently with one another in a way that many Americans would describe as unfriendly and stand-offish. Yes, the customs, traditions, and work ethic in Sweden seem so strange. And yes, there is a completely different way all Swedish people and their property are treated by the government. But it's not wrong; it's not backwards or messed up; and it's not anymore delusional or self-aggrandizing than any other culture. It's the Swedish culture. And in general, we have enjoyed a very pleasant and comfortable life this past year being treated in the same way as all other Swedes. A different culture than yours does not imply that it is wrong; It's just a different culture.
Thanks for following along throughout our first year in Sweden. Here's to our second year of living in Sweden and the adventures we'll have! However, we are sure none will compare with the birth of Baby Shepherd in about 4 months =) Here's how that little project is progressing:
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| 21 weeks along |
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