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)

Enter phase: Apartment hunt

Time is a scarce resource so I can't afford to stay
idle while waiting for news.

With my visit to Lund I have done everything I can regarding my job hunt and now all that is left is the waiting game. But since time is a scarce resource I have decided not to wait idly and have begun with the next important chapter in our story: Searching for the apartment in Lund!

Here in Slovenia apartments aren't really that problematic. They are expensive (especially in Ljubljana, our capital, where we live), but generally speaking there are plenty of apartments to go round. One might have to look for a while to find a flat that balances all the important factors (location, price and size), but shouldn't encounter too many difficulties.

We haven't given up hope:
we are looking for a flat in Lund!

The situation in Sweden (and especially in Lund) is a lot different. I have been told time and time again that finding an apartment in Lund is going to be a challenge. Some readers have even advised me to avoid searching in Lund altogether and focus my search in the surrounding areas or Malmö.

So far we haven't lost hope. I have replied to about 25 ads found on blocket.se to date and I have received 8 replies so far, most of them encouraging. At about 20% positive reply rate I am confident that we will manage to find something! And today I have posted an ad of our own and already got one reply. I think we will be all right!

If you are a landlord please consider us as your new tenants! Either way please spread the word about our ad!

Not sure about that policy.
Why couldn't I pay for my own ad?

Publishing and ad was no piece of cake... Blocket.se has a policy which prevents payment with non Scandinavian credit cards. I have spoken with their support line, which while friendly was of no real help. Luckily I was able to turn to a helpful reader (thanks again Chris!) who published the ad for me, while I forwarded him the funds. If anyone else is looking to rent an apartment in Sweden from abroad, this is something to keep in mind!

Have you gone through a similar experience? Or do you have some advice to share? Please get in touch via email/comments or Google+

Related articles

• Actually visiting Lund for the first time! (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Planning: Visiting Lund for the first time (helpmemovetosweden.com)

All packed for Lund and I'm leaving nothing to chance!

I count on this to insure I make
friends on the airport!

• Laptop Check
• Kindle Check
• Kindle with full batteries DoubleCheck
• Valid passport and printed plane tickets Check
• Spare clothes Check
• An umbrella Check
• A power cord for making friends at the airport Check

I have been hoping for a dry day,
the forecast changed on the last minute.

You are probably thinking something along the lines "What? Is he moving to Sweden already? I thought that was months away!" So let me reassure you right now: I'm only visiting Lund for a day, I'm just leaving nothing to chance.

Have I forgotten anything? This is the list I've come up with and I can't think of anything else I might need for my epic trip to Lund.

I'm leaving home tomorrow very early and depart at 7 AM from Ljubljana's airport. I suspect it will be a mad dash across Frankfurt's airport to catch the 9:30 flight to Copenhagen. All I need to do there is find the train to Lund and then sailing should be smooth all until I start making the return trip at around 17:00 - this time a lot more relaxed since history will already have been made!

If your path tomorrow is by any chance crossing mine please say hi!

I expect I won't have any spare time in Lund to meet with anyone but Nokia, however I'd love to have someone to chat to on the airports and/or flights. If you are travelling tomorrow drop me an email and let's see if our paths intersect!

In other news Radio Sweden has aired their interview with me from a couple of weeks ago. Here is the link to the episode and here is the direct link to the mp3 file. My short bit starts at 21:40 and lasts for about five minutes. While not exactly thrilled by my performance I think I did all right for a first radio appearance.

Related articles

• Actually visiting Lund for the first time! (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Planning: Visiting Lund for the first time (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• The game is on! (helpmemovetosweden.com)

Actually visiting Lund for the first time!

Image via CrunchBase

Last week I posted about how we are planning to visit Lund for the first time. I also wrote about the good feeling I had about a series of job interviews I had with Nokia. Well it turned out my intuition wasn't wrong and Nokia has now invited me to visit them in Lund at their expense!





I'm visiting on Wednesday, 15th of May from Ljubljana to Copenhagen, with a crossover in Frankfurt. Not only will I be in Sweden for the first time, I will get to see the Frankfurt airport for the first time as well! My flight back is also on Wednesday so I will only be in Lund for a couple of hours, but I hope I will get to take a walk and see some of it - hopefully the weather will allow for it!

Can you recommend me something I simply must see/try while in Lund? Perhaps a unique Swedish candy that will blow my mind?

The plan to visit Lund together with my significant other is still in place. We will still need to find an apartment  but now I will get to see it first! If anyone would like to have a cup of coffee on us you are very welcome - get in touch!

I am so grateful for this opportunity and am really excited - in fact I can't wait for Wednesday.

In other news I have been interviewed by časopis Delo, one of Slovenia's largest daily newspapers. The article only appears in the print version, however I have been allowed to share it with my readers. If you speak Slovenian please take a look (pdf).

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Language school is worth the cost! [Swedish progress update]

Learning Swedish was right up there among "Find a job" and "Rent an apartment" on my priority list since the day we got the news. A language school seemed like a good idea so I did some investigating and found a few that offered an introductory Swedish course right here in Ljubljana! One even replied to my inquiry so I've enrolled. The only problem: Classes started in a month's time...

When your world is about to change you don't sit around and wait! And I didn't: I started learning Swedish on my own. I tried mimicking youtube videos and using a Learn yourself Swedish product and it looked like I was making progress! While I wasn't going to be fluent any time soon, I was feeling quite good.

It all changed on Thursday, 25th of April. Not only did I have a job interview with Nokia on that day (more on that later), but my Swedish course started as well! Our very first lesson was scheduled for 18:30 and going there I was feeling quite smug. I thought it was going to be a short introductory lesson where the teacher will introduce herself, we will learn a few sentences I'd have already known and we will be on our way. Boy was I wrong!

Notes and study materials from the first ŠOLT lesson.

The first lesson was intense! It took the whole scheduled 3 hours within which we went from "Hej! Jag heter..." to pronouncing words like "Sjuksköterska" and finally to forming our own descriptions of a fictional character. We even got homework!

My take-home assignment included inventing a fictional character and describing him with as many adjectives I can think of. It should include most of what our lesson covered, namely where he is from, his marital status, what languages he speaks and what his job is. This is what I came up with:

Möta Oscar Svensson. Han är från Linköping. Han är förlovad och har inte barn. Oscar arbetar som busschaufför. Han talar svenska, engelska och lite danska. Han och hans sambo gillar att gå till teater men de aldrig tar bussen.

Long story short: I've learned a lot. I have a very competent teacher and I'm learning together with 5 peers including a reader of this blog (Zdravo Aleš!) who appears to be another Slovenian interested in Sweden. Now I am completely sold on language schools: if you're trying to learn a foreign language be sure to enrol in one!

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• Swedish is starting to sound familiar [Swedish progress update] (helpmemovetosweden.com)
• Language lessons or should I say Jag heter David! (helpmemovetosweden.com)
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