Ok, so its about 5 weeks or so now and the big move will have happened. Thats right folks, I'm upping sticks and shifting my oversized arse into another country. One that's famous for boring cars, lots of snow and an international bikini team.
Its been quite a long an arduous journey to get to this position, but as with most things in my life I've landed on my feet in quite spectacular fashion. I suppose it all started when I first met my girlfriend on a summers day in 2005, at the time I never thought I would stand a chance with her, but obviously it turned out a bit different!
Obviously with her living in Sweden and I in England, there was somewhat of a distance issue that needed to be addressed, so after about 18 months of being in a relationship I felt it was time to take the plunge and actually move to the same country as her. This is where things started falling into place...
First of all after reading various on-line articles and forums, I got a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to find a job. Well as luck would have it, last January I got a job working in central London at an Icelandic bank, that just so happened to have a large office in Stockholm. After contacting the IT Operations manager there, I managed to secure myself a transfer to that office. It wouldn't have been possible without the help of the aforementioned manager, I really am truly in his debt, he has bent over backwards to accommodate me and I wouldn't be setting off on this adventure if it wasn't for him. So if you ever read this, cheers Thomas, I owe you one big time!
Well with that all sorted, all we had to do now was to sort out an apartment to rent. Now this is where the nightmares began. We had been searching from around October 2007 for available apartments to rent in Uppsala, but to say there's a severe shortage is an understatement. I think they have plans to build over 700 new apartments to cater for the demand. The main builder and distributor of apartments in Uppsala is Uppsalahem. They have a queuing system which means when you first register on their website, every month you get points, when apartments become available they are queued for a couple of weeks where you can apply for it. At the end of the queuing period, the applicant with the most points gets the apartment. Quite a fair system really! But due to demand, for the most desirable apartments in the middle of the city, you can be waiting for up to 15 years! So the only other alternative while we wait was to get a second hand contract, which is basically renting from someone who already owns the house. This isn't half as prevalent in Sweden as it is in England, due to laws in place in Sweden which keeps the cost of renting apartments to an affordable price.
We thought we had found somewhere at the beginning of December when I was visiting sweden, so we arranged to go and see the apartment on the Sunday that I went home, we drove 200 miles odd only to get there and the person who we spoke to didn't even live at the address and wouldn't accept our calls! Very strange thing to do, but the guy was an American, never trust Americans...
So anyway, a month later and my girlfriend spotted an advert for a place to rent on blocket.se (think an on-line Swedish car boot sale that does everything) called the guy within 20 mins of the ad going on-line and more or less managed to secure the apartment! Its a lovely little studio very near to the city centre. She went and signed the contract on Saturday just gone, so with one little formality to be done, it should be ours from the 1st February!
With all this done all thats got to be done is to book my journey over there, where I've had another stroke of luck. I was originally looking to getting a passenger ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark then getting the train with all my boxes (PC included) up to Sweden. But as it turns out, I've discovered that I can get on as a passenger on a freight liner going from Tilbury which is only 15 mins drive away straight to Gothenburg! Its a 36 hours journey, but I can take all my stuff with me too, so its worked out just great.
My provisional date for the move now is Tuesday 19th February. Which will get me to Sweden at 8am on the Thursday morning. Just got to hand my notice in at work now!
Anyway, I'll keep this blog updated with anything that happens, and I prepare to document my adventure all the way.
Until next time...
