Lisa forgot to add an exterior pic of the house

Luckily I found it advertised at a real estate office near my work...

 Yup, that's it there in the middle

So Swedish!!!  We can't wait!!!

Searching for the "perfect" house in Stockholm...

...is nearly impossible.  When Sweden's Minister for Public Administration and Housing can't find an apartment in Stockholm himself, you know there is something askew with the system.  The state controls the housing supply and the demand is ever increasing. Other bloggers have spoken more verbosely on the topic so read their posts if you want more information.

Moving to Sweden: Finding a place to live
Got $25,000? Get a box for 30 sq feet

Basically, it's a messed up system that they've lived with for forever so it's unlikely to change any time soon.  I won't go into all of the political details about how and why the housing system is like it is in Sweden, I'll just tell OUR story about how we found our place.

Search, search, search the inter-webs.  First, install Google Chrome because the helpful websites will all be in SWEDISH.  Rather than limiting yourself to English, fee-based sites, just search in Google Chrome and set up your automatic translator.  We found options through homerental.se and blocket.se.  There are other options but those two had the most listings that were in our range. Both are absolutely terrible websites and are not easy to navigate but what is?  A word of caution -- check the "date of availability" of the listing.  There were quite a number of great homes that were no longer available because the people who run homerental.se do not update their posts.  Convenient right?  Also, the filters on blocket.se were incorrect.  There were a lot of listings that did not indicate that they were pet friendly but that didn't mean that they weren't.  If an owner doesn't check a box it won't show up in the filter.  Basically, I limited my search using the filters and winnowed down the candidate listings when there was a secret stash of potential options hiding on the other side of those filters.  In the end, you will have to comb through hundreds of listings, send a gazillion emails and maybe, just maybe, receive 2 replies.  It suuuucks.

Jon's company provided us with a house hunting agency. Perfect! They will surely grant us access to the housing databases that are fee based, right?  Ummm... no.  They searched homerental.se and blocket and gave me the same listings that I had already researched myself.  Worthless!  Why are you getting paid again?  They didn't even arrange viewings or take us to see any properties.  Apparently they have a limit of "showing" us 3 properties. Three!?! Just like International House Hunters only not nearly as helpful, fun or exciting. "Showing us properties" entails them sending an email with the information that is provided on the free websites. USELESS!  We did have some considerations -- we wanted a house that allowed for dogs.  I guess those aren't too plentiful in Stockholm.

We took matters into our own hands and called the only property that allowed for dogs and wasn't going to be ~$10,000/mth in rent.  We searched for properties in the neighboring suburbs, Uppsala, Sigtuna, and anywhere reachable by a commuter train.  Fantastic -- we found one potential option -- in Lidingö...we had no idea where that is.  My fingers were crossed that this would work out because we really had no alternative.  We jumped on the T-bana and headed for Lidingö -- an island on the east side of Stockholm.  Lidingö has its own special banan that looks like a cute little train from 1962.

Lidingöbanan!

We trudged through a freak snow storm and ended up getting off at the last banan stop.  After consulting an electronic map, we discovered we were a 20 min walk (translate that into a 40 min walk IN THE SNOW STORM) away from the house.  Ever the optimist, Jon says, "Well, we get to see more of the island this way."  I wanted to smack him but I was too busy trying not to fall into the slushy snow that was shin-deep.  We arrived at the house soaking wet but happy to be invited into a very spacious house.  They were excited to see Calvin and talk with us about the house and their own moving adventure.  It was a good fit all around.

The house hunting agency drafted the contract during a subsequent meeting the next week and we are now confirmed!  We will have a place to live until August 2013!

The outside of the house is crack-den-ish so I'll only post pics of the inside.  We are looking forward to having some dinner parties, grilling BBQ, and enjoying the nearby nature preserve and lake!

Upstairs living room

Other angle upstairs

Bedroom upstairs

Looking into the kitchen

Dining table seats 8 -- dinner party anyone?

Upstairs bathroom

Renovated kitchen

Eat-in kitchen for 4

Spiral staircase downstairs

Downstairs common area

Guest room/study downstairs

Second bedroom downstairs

Bathroom downstairs - tub, shower and heated tiled floor

Stairway to Heaven

As a general rule, Swedes are generally more down with walking than Americans. They think nothing of walking 20 minutes to their favorite café rather than jumping in a car, and it is a very pedestrian friendly city. That doesn’t mean they aren’t lazy though!

Leaving the subway yesterday, I saw a traffic jam in front of the escalator. Evidently both up escalators were currently being worked on, but were not blocked off. So people didn’t realize that they weren’t running until they were right on top of them. This caused folks to stop in their tracks like they were about to walk on hot lava, almost get run over by people behind them, and then move to the left to take the elevator (slowest elevator in the world btw). Granted, it is a long escalator, but they people walk everywhere, its not THAT big of an inconvenience.

So along with a few other tri-athletes to be, I decide to get my cardio in and walk up the stairs. Everyone is hustling, but then about halfway up, the stairs magically transform back into escalators. This was a little jarring to come out of nowhere, but kind of fun. The funny thing was that IMMEDIATELY, everyone that had made the conscious decision to walk up the stairs determined that their legs were non-functioning any more. It was like they all had stepped into cement boots as they moved to the right side and let the escalator do the work for them. I loved that everyone changes immediately from “I will walk up these stairs by myself” to “I will let the machine carry me now”. The “I will use the escalator for assistance to speed my walk” option was not available that day I guess….

The Swedish Chef Diaries – Cod on Bacon with Mushroom and Potato Puree

After a week without and seafood, I decided to dive back in with a FANCY lookin dish that caught my eye on the official Sweden blog. This one sounded / looked complicated, but was actually pretty simple. Its basically easy mashed potatoes, easy baked fish and a somewhat complicated sauce. By “somewhat complicated”, I mean you sauté bacon, onions and mushrooms then put in some stock and red wine. Let that simmer for 20 minutes and BAMMO, taste explosion.

I added some sautéed spinach to it to get a little green in there, but all in all it was very simple to put together. The picture on the blog looked well put together, so I insisted that I bring out the plates put together, rather than the usual “family style” we normally do.

Overall, I think this might be our big winner so far. Fancy enough to look impressive, but simple enough to pull together quickly / easily. And tasty – that’s the important part obviously

Jon – 5 BORKS

Lisa – 5 BORKS

DOUBLE 5!!!!! FIRST PERFECT SCORE !!!!!

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/2012/01/12/cod-on-bacon-with-mushrooms-and-potato-puree/

Shoppers rejoice - it's IKEA's homeland!

Here we go!

When IKEA (is it all caps?) came to Atlanta, there was a line of cars around the block waiting to park in one of the numerous parking garages.  The store was crazy hectic for months until the novelty wore off.  At first I didn't get it.  Who needs to make their own bed with only an allen wrench and directions ALL in pictures?  I hated going to the IKEA store in Atlanta because I didn't have much need to see how much furniture can cram into 237 sqft of living space because I would never, in my right mind, ever ever live in an apartment that was sooo tiny. Americans look around the showcase floor like its a museum.  It's interesting but so abstract because we can't imagine living in that small of an apartment.  Who lives like that?  Swedes do.

And I get it now.  After living in Stockholm for nearly 3 months, I understand the space limitations that led to the development of such efficiently compact furnishings. I also understand why they developed those living space show rooms.  Those aren't just funky rooms to rubberneck around in the store.  They are rooms to give you IDEAS on how to make the tiniest apartment imaginable habitable for a family of 4 because that's your situation.  I will say that we are extremely fortunate to have corporate housing that gives us plenty of space (66 sqm) but in all honesty, nothing we've seen even comes close to our townhouse in Atlanta -- which was small by Atlanta standards.  If only we could transport our townhouse  to Stockholm, even a suburb of Stockholm, we could easily sell it for $900K (maybe more).  I'm not joking.

Our trip to Ikea was kind of like a pilgrimage to shopping mecca. We walked there from the commuter train because the weather was so beautiful.  As we turned the corner, I saw the famous blue and yellow building on the horizon like an oasis in the desert. I started getting all giddy and Jon just looked at me sideways, like "really?"  There were tall flag poles waving the Ikea signs bravely in the wind.  Nothing is more exciting than a HUGE store filled with HUGE savings!

We toured the showroom floor with more interest now -- looking for real solutions and ideas for creative design but really we were there for 2 things.  1) black-out curtains for Calvin's room and 2) a potato smasher -- we only ended up finding one of these.  We mostly wandered the store and paid a visit to their cafeteria for some real Swedish food.

Easiest way to get around

We grabbed some Swedish meatballs and coffee mugs for the requisite post-lunch coffee and looked for a place to sit.

So much better with ligonberry

We found these great playground "rounds" (or whatever you might call them) that allow the parents to sit on the outside like a lunch counter and watch their kids play in the center.  It was great because Calvin had zero interest in sitting down and watching us eat.  He loved being able to play and explore and we actually enjoyed a stress-reduced meal for once.  He is still learning how to interact properly with other kids and that's always fun to watch.  He got pushed around a bit but ended up pushing back.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to correct him at this age or just let him figure it out.

Food and a show?

hellooo!

Fun stairs AND a wall spinny thingy

We ended up wandering the store some more -- actually picking up a few items to buy and walked back to the commuter train to try to get home before Calvin really crashed out. We were a little too late on that one!

Asleep on the train

Overall, the IKEA stores in Sweden are identical to the ones in the States with a few exceptions.

• The kid drop off/play area before you get into the store was about 3x larger than any I've ever seen.  Calvin needs to be a bit older before he can go in but it looked like a ton of fun.
• The play areas in the cafeteria -- I've never seen those before
• They provide shopping bags on wheels rather than carts.  This is kind of impractical because the handle isn't long enough to prevent the skateboard thingy bottom from banging into your ankles as you walk.  I traded this in for a regular yellow IKEA hobo bag pretty quickly.



It's on wheels!

• The showroom floor was much larger with more room examples (for obvious reasons)
• People were more tolerant of kids running around the store -- or maybe I was more tolerant -- either way it was fairly enjoyable!