Super amazing news!

I have some wonderful, joyful news! After an absence of almost 3 years, which I can't quite believe, I am going to Turku! In just over two weeks I'll be getting the ferry to Finland for a few days, and I really am so happy. I had had it in the back of my mind since I got to Stockholm that I should travel there, but hadn't got to it. Then I had a message on Friday from one of my Finnish friends asking when I would come back, and now it's happening! I really hope it hasn't changed too much, my friend Emmi who I met in Turku but now lives in England goes back to see her family now and then, and has mentioned some things about it to me, but I really cannot wait to be back there myself.

However, I must say that my first experience booking with Viking Line has been fairly ridiculous - much more hassle than it needs to be, and both Finnish and Swedish friends who I've asked have told me that they also think the website is terrible.

It's not user friendly - the Swedish site is only available in Swedish, which is ok, but if I'm spending money I often prefer to use a website in English so I have no doubt over what I'm doing. I certainly don't think that services in this country should have to be available in English, and I've been critical of others I've met who expect this. Anyway, I spent all of yesterday attempting to buy tickets, using two different computers, my phone, two different cards - both of which had sufficient funds to make payment, and only ever received error messages. I thought it might be my error as I'd been providing my Swedish address, but my cards are registered to my parents' address in England. I tried their address, that didn't work either! Something that should be so easy was causing me so much stress.

This morning I called their customer service team to try to make the purchase over the phone. The lady I spoke to was helpful, but once she'd made a booking for me she instructed me to go to their website to make payment, which was the problem in the first place! She then tried to make a payment over the phone, the card still didn't work! Maybe their system dislikes cards from outside of Sweden, but I told her it was a UK card and she didn't mention that they didn't accept this. They make reference on their website to ID requirements for non-Nordic citizens, and I would think that for people who are travelling using the ferry would be quite a good option, so I really don't see why a card from another country should cause such problems. 

After payment failed yet again she advised me that I could pay when I check in, and just needed to take my booking number. This is fine for me, but as this has been such a hassle so far I'm anxious that something else will go wrong and my booking will mysteriously go missing or something like that. In fact, I will need to call them again anyway, as when I entered my booking number and name into the website to check that everything was correct the message advised that the name did not match the booking number. I appreciate that my name is unusual for English people, let alone a Swedish person, and the lady I spoke to probably just misheard me or made a typo, but the whole thing is not filling me with confidence.

So in conclusion I'm very happy to be going back to Turku after quite some time, I really cannot wait to see my friends there again, but I'm not impressed at all with Viking Line, to the point that last night I wrote my first complaint in Swedish. Hopefully it sounded as effective in Swedish as in English, and hopefully my trip will actually be straightforward once I've solved the issue of what name they put on my booking. However, if there's a next time I think I'll use a different service, especially as no one seems to have good things to say about booking with Viking Line.

Buying cigarettes

So just now I bought cigarettes in a supermarket for the first time, and I have to say it is a very strange process, the strangest I have come across. Up until now I have bought cigarettes and tobacco over the counter, as I am used to, in Pressbyrån or Svensk Tobak och Spel. I just came home to find that Pressbyrån was already shut, so I went to ICA to buy some cigarettes.

I had noticed before that over the tills there is a shelf of cards that look like the front of cigarette packets. I assumed that you chose the right card and the person on the till then gave you the correct cigarettes. That's not too complicated. Wrong!

So you choose your card, which is scanned and paid for. You then go over to another machine, scan the card, and are given your cigarettes. However, I thought you just needed the receipt so I was furiously trying to shove my receipt into the machine and getting nowhere. Just as the truth dawned on me and I was about to go back to the till, the member of staff who served me came over with the card and helped me.

I really do think that this country has a tendency to over-complicate things. In England you would go to the kiosk in the supermarket to get cigarettes. In Finland there is a machine by the conveyor belt of the till where you select the correct brand, it spits it onto the conveyor belt, and you pay for it with the rest of your shopping. When I lived in Finland the brands were shown on the machine, but a few months afterwards they banned this, considering it a form of advertisement, and just showing numbers instead. So unless you really knew the machine you had to ask for the correct number, or play cigarette roulette. Now I know that in Sweden I need to take the card with me, and once you've scanned it you can recycle it at the machine. But still, I find this very strange.

Skatteverket attempt 2

People who have read this blog previously may remember my last attempt in September to get a personnummer - you can read about it here. Essentially, it was a complete failure.

However, this time round I have a work contract, and my only doubt was what they would make of me having a short term contract with the possibility of extension. Either way, I left work early this afternoon and went off to the same office I visited last time.

I told the man at the front desk what I wanted, in Swedish. He immediately said "Oh ok, English" when I said I was from England, I then told him I could speak Swedish, I then misunderstood the next thing he said to me in Swedish. My spoken language skills definitely need some perfecting. Anyway, we got there in the end, he gave me the paperwork and a ticket - they love giving tickets for when you're waiting here, just like in Finland - and sent over to fill in the form and wait to see someone. This alone is further than I got last time!

It took a while but eventually I was called up by a very nice man, who was very encouraging. He did say there might be a problem with the length of my contract, but unfortunately there's not very much I can do about that. Although the Skatteverket website doesn't state this, he told me that for a permanent personnummer you usually need a work contract of at least one year. I know I wouldn't choose to leave this job without something else lined up, and if the contract was not extended then finding something new would obviously be my main priority, but they can't rely on that.

However, he took the application anyway, and told me that if this application is declined I can apply for a temporary number which will definitely be accepted. Presumably having this means I'd have to renew it each time my work contract changed, which would be quite annoying, but if I got a longer term contract I could apply for a permanent personnummer straight away. Seeing as Skatteverket says that if you are staying here longer than 6 months you need a personnummer, surely there would be a point where they would have to accept that I'm here long term and give me a personnummer? A short term number is better than none at all - I had a temporary number in Finland, but I think that's because I knew all along that I was going to leave. That's not the plan here.

Anyway, the man who saw me was very nice, and gave me the paperwork for a temporary number already, so that if there is a problem I can apply for it really quickly. He actually checked to see if I could apply for both numbers at once but that's not possible.

One helpful thing is that whilst I'm applying as an employed person in Sweden, I can also apply for Kai even though he's not working. However, if it comes to the temporary number I can only apply for myself. If he finds a job in the meantime with a long term contract we can both apply for personnummer's through that. That option would make him finding a job even sweeter for us.

I'm realistic, and I'm going to get the temporary application ready, as it seems likely there will be a problem with the length of my work contract, even though I explained why it's short term, and this can be verified with my employer. I've still got further in this process than I did last time, and it's been much less confusing and difficult so far. Having to renew a temporary number every so often would be frustrating, but better than nothing. It's still a step closer to getting settled here. I'm expecting to have to go down that route, but in an ideal world I might get a nice surprise from Skatteverket this time!

Fatal errors

I suppose it's only natural that we're going to make some silly mistakes whilst we're here, especially whilst we're getting used to the language. I probably made plenty in Finland too, I just can't remember them.
First mistake: Last night in the supermarket my boyfriend said "Look, they have apricot juice!" I'm not sure why I didn't question this, seeing as he can't read Swedish. I didn't know the word "kräm", and assumed it must be another word for juice. So we bought the juice, opened it at home, and discovered that we'd actually bought a litre of apricot puree! We ate some of it out of sheer stubbornness, and there was nothing wrong with it, but it's definitely not fruit juice. We were a bit confused about why anyone would actually need a litre of apricot puree, we tried to google it and it seems to be a product for baking. So now we have a litre of puree and we're not sure what to do with it. Lesson learned.Second mistake: This morning I decided to write a speculative job application in Swedish - prior to this I've been writing applications only in English. I wrote it, felt pretty happy with it, and sent it off. Every other time I've written in Swedish off the top of my head I've then checked what I've written in a translator to be sure there are no errors. You'd think this would be especially important for a job application, but for some reason I did not do this, and as soon as I had sent it I realised that rather than saying I had customer service experience I'd actually said I had experience in art dealing! So I'm assuming that the application won't get very far, but if they read my CV I hope they'll realise that this was just a language mistake. Especially as the company has absolutely nothing to do with art!