Who would possibly leave Bermuda and move to Sweden in the middle of the winter????

Stockholm in January

Bermuda in January

Only us, 2 crazy kids from Connecticut!!!  After we visited  with our families and packed a trunk full of winter clothes, off we flew to Stockholm.  We flew first class as there was no charge for excess luggage.  It worked out to be the same price as economy and pay for luggage.  So why not sit up front with the rich folks!!!  Unfortunately, our flight was so delayed leaving that I was too tired to stay awake for the meal and all the extra frills!!!

Not knowing how far the airport was from Stockholm, and not having done much investigating, we opted for a taxi to town.  Welllllllll, town was about an hour away.  So, just about all our spending cash went to pay the fare. No wonder most people were getting  on  the bus!  The bus destination is right next door to the Sheraton Hotel where we were going. Such worldly travelers we were!!!!

Our first few days where a whirl wind of activity.  We were put up in a room at the hotel while we found a place to live.  The woman in Human Resources found us an apartment to look at in the outskirts of Stockholm. We took a taxi to see the rent.  It was on the third floor of a walk up apartment.  Herr Erickson was the landlord.  He didn't speak a word of English and we didn't speak a word of Swedish except ya! He showed us all around and we didn't understand anything he was saying.  He finally got his daughter and she was able to speak to us in English.  The apartment was semi furnished(furniture only).  As we had not seen anything else in town we just decided to take this one.  It was clean and pleasant and we were within walking distance to the Tunnelbanan (subway).  We took the subway back to the city so we could get packed up and return  to our new domicile.  Again, not being "city folks or world travelers" we never thought about finding the name of the stop where we needed to get off the subway back at our apartment, or even which line we were on,  so had to take another taxi ride back to the apartment!!!!!  Our next venture was to find a store where we could buy dishes, pots, pans, linens etc.  We found Åhléns. A fabulous department store with everything we needed.  We were very impressed with the prices, but had no clue about the sales tax called Moms tax.  It was 25% !!!! Yikes.  So, totally loaded down with new household goodies, we realized we couldn't carry all of it to the subway and then back to our apartment, so for the third time in one day, we took another darn taxi!!!!!

The front door of our apartment building

The bed in the apartment was actually two twins pushed together.   There was a wooden frame around the beds so there was about a 3 inch gap in the middle of the bed, where mattresses didn't exactly meet. We were hoping we could push the mattresses together and have the bottom sheet hold them in place. Before we left for Sweden, my mother bought us a satin sheet and satin pillow cases.  Well the satin sheet wasn't going to hold the mattresses together so we needed to buy a bottom sheet.  When we were shopping in Åhléns we used our trusty little English/Swedish translation book to find the word for a sheet for our bed.  It is lakan.  So when we found a paslakan  we figured it was a sheet so purchased it only to find out it was a cover for a comforter, not a sheet.  So we cut it into two pieces and used it as a bottom sheet.  All was great except I think it was made out of burlap.  So burlap on the bottom and satin on top.  What an adventure we were having and this was only week one!!!!!  Many more memorable moments to come !!!!!