No giant leaps, but progress is being made

I haven't blogged in a while and that might have made you think nothing new happened or even, dare I say it, that we have given up on our project. The truth is that the last couple of weeks have been a bit quiet. We have made progress on almost every front, but nothing really significant happened. I will try to condense all our news in this blog post and hopefully write something really interesting next week.

We are making a lot of plans for our upcoming visit of Lund. You can expect a full blog post about our plans later on, but we are looking for ideas to add to our to-do list. We are very excited about our
apartment, we can't wait to see it in person. We expect everything to be as good as it is on the pictures the kind landlord sent us!

Care to add anything to our Lund to-do list? Please let me know about all the wacky stuff there is to do!

A while ago I wrote about CouchSurfing where I wondered if the service is popular in Lund. I can now report, that I have successfully found a host for both my significant other and myself. We aren't hoping to save money by using CouchSurfing, we are in it to meet someone interesting. Ideally our hosts will turn out to be among the first friends we make in Lund. You can expect a blog post just about CouchSurfing after we return from our trip.

I have news regarding my Swedish as well. For the last 10 weeks I have been attending classes in a language school and yesterday was our last meeting and as you would expect it included a written exam. I'm proud to say I passed, but just barely with 57 %. I'd like to applaud my superb teacher Brigita for her hard work! Now it's my turn to practice and practice some more, thus putting it all to good use.

Igår jag passerade introduktion till svensk. Nu jag behöver bara träna och sedan öva lite mer!

My last grade at UNI,
with a perfect mark mind you :)

Speaking of academic achievements, just last week I have passed my last exam at University of Ljubljana. Now the only thing left to do regarding my Masters degree is the final thesis.

Everything above is important, but the most significant news of the week is probably this: We have set our wedding date! I'm not going to share it, since we are striving for a private wedding with just the two of us and two witnesses, but I'm happy to tell you that we will get married in Slovenia, before setting off for Sweden.

As you can see, the last couple of days have been busy with small things. But when you enumerate them all you can see it's actually a bunch of important stuff finally done for good. Hopefully I will have more significant stuff to write about, but until then: have a blast!

Is that the sun shining?

So last week I've been pretty down, recovering from the somewhat bad news I've received from Nokia. A lot was going on through my head, mostly over-thinking our plans and how they must change now. I was really worried that the unfortunate turn of events might endanger our entire project Sweden. The thought of letting my better half down nearly crippled me.

I'm feeling a lot better now. It took me about a week to start thinking optimistically again. My fiancé and I discussed our options a lot, and we have agreed to a plan that would allow us to move to Sweden - just. But then something great happened: Our apartment ad was answered and from the very start the offer looked very promising!

I'll just give you the highlights: The apartment is located near both Lund's tekniska högskola, where my wife-to-be will be attending classes and Ideon science park, where I still hope to find employment. It is a two-room apartment, giving us more space than we have now, but not so big that we would feel we are wasting our resources by staying there. And it is available for long-term rent, rented out directly by the owner.

We both feel that the apartment is a catch so we are making plans to rent it. We have seen pictures of it, now we are booking plane tickets to go see it in person, pay our deposit and collect the keys!

We will be flying to Lund on Monday, July the 8th, staying for four days. Hopefully we will get to rent an apartment, take care of some bureaucracy, get to know the city and of course meet some of you!

We won't be moving to Lund until the end of July and yes, that does mean we will be "wasting" one month's rent. But we have decided not to look at it that way: We are paying for the fact that we will have a roof over our heads as soon as we make our way to Lund. We feel such security, given the difficulty of finding housing in Lund, is worth the cost.

Needless to say we are very excited. We still need to find out what things can we take care of in those few days. I'd be very happy for any advice, especially from those of you who have moved to Sweden from abroad. Of course we would also like to explore the town and meet some of you for a cup of coffee or a pint of Sweden's finest. Please get in touch via Comments/Email/Google+

Related articles

• Disaster strikes (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Enter phase: Apartment hunt (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Lund first impressions (helpmemovetosweden.com)

Disaster strikes

Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday I have received some bad news from Nokia: While I am still the top candidate for the opening I interviewed for, they won't be hiring until at least the end of the summer. Even though they would still love to have me on board, it just can't happen - at least not yet. The best that the department head could do was mention that he hopes the situation changes in August.

Needless to say I was crushed by this news. Because I've spent so much time on Nokia this jeopardizes our project Sweden. Even though I wouldn't mind postponing my start at Nokia until September, I do need some kind of a guarantee that there will be a job for me in Sweden. I simply can't afford to wait until August only to find out they won't be hiring for another three months.

I find myself looking for a job - again; this time with a much more pressing time constraint. And if that wasn't enough, I hear the Swedes like to take a lot of time off work in the summer: I have a feeling their absence might make the job hunt harder.

At the moment I have a hard time thinking positive, but that doesn't mean I've done nothing. I have contacted several companies I've talked to before Nokia entered the picture, I've written to my mentor describing the setback and I've asked an acquaintance from Lund for advice.

I hope I have learned something from the experience and if nothing else at least this time I'm searching for a job knowing I am  a top candidate for a senior developer position at one of the largest companies in Scandinavia.

That is all I've got to say for the time being, I'm afraid. Once again I'm looking for your help: If you know of any company in Skåne that is looking for an experienced C# developer, please get in touch and let me know. You can find my CV and LinkedIn profile right here on the blog. And, as always, any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Is it time for a Swedish chatroom?

As you may know my Project Sweden includes learning the Swedish language. So far I've joined a language school and I'm following a learn-Swedish-at-home programme. I feel like it's going quite well, on the other hand I wasn't hoping on having an actual conversation any time soon...

The key word here is "wasn't," because that was before I was inspired by the following TED talk:

Even as I'm writing this I'm
terrified. That's good, right?

Hearing all this, I'm now considering trying an actual conversation in Swedish. I think Google+ Hangouts are a great tool we could use: several talking heads, having a conversation from the comfort of our own home and practising Swedish at the same time!

Would anyone care to have a short conversation with me? It will only take a few minutes and there would only be one rule: No English allowed!

Thinking about this, we could host a chatroom of sorts. There are five other enthusiastic learners in my Swedish class who should be interested in this sort of thing.

Skulle du vara intresserad av att ha en kort konversation på svenska?

Do you think this is a good idea, could it work? Please get in touch over email or Google+ or leave a comment!

Related articles

• Swedish is starting to sound familiar [Swedish progress update] (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Language school is worth the cost! [Swedish progress update] (helpmemovetosweden.com)