Alcohol

I've been back from London for almost a week now. It was a bit depressing that when I left England the sky was blue with no clouds, and I then landed in Västerås to some quite depressing weather. Thankfully now it seems to be back to sunny weather here.

Today is the most important day of the year - Eurovision! I'm looking forward to it, but disappointed that Finland is not in the final because I always vote for them on principle. I'm having a small party tonight, and that meant that today it was time for my very first trip to Systembolaget! Systembolaget is the Swedish alcohol retailer, very similar to Alko in Finland. Although Sweden does not have the same restrictions as Finland in terms of only being able to buy alcohol during certain hours, it is more strict in that only light beer can be sold in supermarkets, so to buy full strength beer you need to go to Systembolaget. I don't have alcohol in the house that often, and even then I don't mind having lighter beer, so it's never come up to go to Systembolaget before.

The opening hours are a bit annoying - at weekends it's between 10am and 3pm. I was only buying a few drinks, but everyone else seemed to have baskets absolutely full of drinks. As the hours are inconvenient, and maybe it's not open on Sundays, I suppose people need to stock up.

Supermarkets usually just sell a basic range of domestic beers, and I was impressed by the variety in Systembolaget, with drinks from a lot of different countries. I went for Belgian fruit beer, and English Brewdog beer.

That brings me nicely to the next alcohol related point. My colleague and I have been a couple of times this week to the Brewdog bar in Fridhemsplan. Brewdog is one of my favourite bars in London, so I was very happy when I found out there was a bar here too. It's certainly not disappointed me - I can buy my favourite beer, it looks a lot like the bar in Camden, which I didn't have a chance to go to last week, and is generally quite comfortable. It's another of those little pockets of English in Stockholm - the staff are English and Swedish, depending on who you speak to they may automatically speak in either Swedish or English, the menu etc is in English, and I had a very nice chat with one of their staff who turned out to be from Norwich. As it's already one of my favourite bars in London I think it has now automatically become one of my favourite bars in Stockholm.

And to end on a European theme because it's Eurovision day - my workplace has the flags of the member states in our auditorium, and I noticed that the flags of the UK, Finland, and Sweden were conveniently grouped together. So yesterday, at the end of a very busy week, I could be found fannying around with the flags of the three countries that are most significant for me. Enjoy!

A trip to Uppsala

Yesterday we went to Uppsala for a visit. It's possible to travel to Uppsala using a Stockholm travelcard, and just pay a 36kr supplement for crossing the county boundary. When I found out that the Uppsala train runs from Älvsjö station, which is 15 minutes walk from where we live, and that the journey only takes just over an hour, I really wanted to go. By coincidence, on Saturday I met someone who moved to Stockholm from Uppsala in December, so he was able to give me some suggestions of what to do there.
Unfortunately I don't think we chose the best day to visit Uppsala. I had been warned that there was a lot of snow this winter, more than in Stockholm, and whilst the weather in Stockholm yesterday was somewhere between snow and rain, in Uppsala it was very windy and very snowy. It wasn't the best day to be walking around outside.
It was also a bit difficult to get away from the cold, seeing as very few shops or businesses seemed to be open. Maybe Stockholm is a bit different to elsewhere in Sweden, and I took it for granted that everything would be open. The streets were so quiet too.

Regardless of this, I really enjoyed our visit, and I thought Uppsala was really pretty. The river there kind of reminded me of living in Turku - I'd love to see how it looks in the summer. We went to see Uppsala castle, which is up a very snowy hill with really nice views, and also visited the cathedral. I would seriously recommend visitors to go to the cathedral - it's very beautiful, with lots of tombs, stained glass, and interesting decorations. I noticed a large number of skull motifs in various places there, and also some sort of decoration that featured tall horns - not something you'd really expect in a cathedral. The decoration of the cathedral is so varied and beautiful; I found it quite awe inspiring. I think there is a lot that would appeal to designers and artists there.
Although the businesses that were open were quite limited, we did go into a small shopping centre and visit a very cool second hand shop, where you can either pay for an item entirely in cash, or pay less and give them an item you no longer want. I like rummaging in second hand shops so I thought this was a cool idea, I'd love to find somewhere similar in Stockholm, but if not at least Uppsala isn't far to go.
I also noticed a few colourful sculptures around Uppsala, and any form of public art usually appeals to me. Even though it was a very cold and dark day it helped to brighten things up.
I enjoyed our trip, and I'd definitely like to go again, preferably on a warmer and busier day. I'll look out for exhibitions at the art gallery there too, seeing as travelling is so cheap, easy, and convenient.
Maybe the weather in Uppsala was just a sign of things to come, as since yesterday the snow in Stockholm has been quite relentless. I started my new job today, so I no longer have the choice of staying at home avoiding bad weather! But I'd much rather have this step in the right direction than avoid the snow.

Making progress

It's been snowing quite a lot here over the past few days. I'm not sure how normal it is here, but the temperature seems to fluctuate quite a lot - it snows, melts a bit, snows a bit more, and goes on in this way - today is the first day in several days with no snowfall. It's quite different to my memories of winter in Finland - after the first snow that was pretty much it for the next 6 months.

Yesterday was a really good day for us. We finally got round to buying sim cards, and I had the whole conversation, which was obviously a bit more complicated than "Hej", "Nej", and "Tack", completely in Swedish, for both myself and Kai. It's only one thing but I was pleased afterwards that I'd managed it with no problems at all. I also feel more settled now that I have a working Swedish number and am no longer being charged large amounts of money to use my phone by my UK network.

Then in the evening we went out to a bar to meet a group of ex-pats from all over the world living in Stockholm. We looked at the Meet Up website - which I knew of but had never used before, and as one group I was interested in were meeting that evening we thought we would seize the day and go along. My thought was that in the worst case scenario we might not meet our new best friends, but at least it gets us out of the house, visiting a new bar, and socialising with others. 

As it was, the other people there were very friendly and welcoming, and we've been invited to a similar meeting this Friday. We met a lot of nice people, and there were also a few Swedish people there too. I'm an open minded person with friends from all over the world, but here I'm particularly interested to meet Swedish people and make some friends from this country. However, it's also really good to meet others who have moved here, and in most cases have more experience than we do of being here. I really enjoyed talking to people from lots of different backgrounds, who all ended up here in different ways. 

Even though Kai is here with me, I miss having friends around. When you live somewhere for a long time you do take for granted the fact that you have friends there and know your way around the place, here we're really starting from scratch again. I think having friends and a social life is really important, so hopefully this is the start of us integrating more.

After this experience I definitely intend to go to more meetings like this, and have joined some other groups on the website. One group I joined is a women's art group, who will be meeting to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Moderna Museet. Obviously I'm keen to see that, and the people in the group have been really welcoming so far. 

However, I joined a language exchange group that frankly is not very appealing because their meetings seem so strict and structured - I was looking at an event for Swedish and English, and it didn't seem very friendly at all. Going into a group of people you don't know can be nervewracking, and I'm not keen to join an event that seems a bit hostile! My Swedish ability is a lot more advanced than Kai's, and reading the description of the event made me feel like they'd chuck him out or something if I took him with me. Maybe it's only the person running that specific event who takes such a seemingly harsh attitude - hopefully I can find something similar that seems to have a more welcoming atmosphere. Any kind of social event should surely be fun, not making you feel like a schoolchild. 

Thankfully the group of people we met last night were all great, and even if we only see those people regularly in the context of that group it still means we've met some new people and are visiting more places in Stockholm. I'm looking forward to going out on Friday, hopefully that experience will be just as enjoyable.

It came and went

It snowed for the first time since we arrived, but has actually already melted away. I'm not really that keen on snow, or maybe just how my own country copes with snow, but on this occasion I was reminded of how magical it looks when it first starts to snow, before layers of ice develop or it melts into sludge.
There's a woody area near to our house, and it looked really beautiful covered in snow. There seem to be a lot of dogs living here too, and it was nice to see them being taken for walks covered in snow. Yesterday our time job hunting was punctuated by breaks outside to play in the snow like children. It made a nice change for me - I kept remembering that the alternative option was being in London.
I feel a bit less negative about snow now, but then this was the dry, powdery snow that it's difficult to slip on. I didn't expect it to melt quite so quickly - this time yesterday every surface outside was still covered in layers of snow. It snowed lightly but steadily throughout yesterday, and most of the night before.

On a different note, today I've had a serious lead about a job, one that exactly fits the kind of thing I was hoping to do here. I don't want to jink it, and should learn more soon, but for now I am hopeful.