The AirBnb

For the first 10 days in Stockholm, we stayed in an AirBnB. We got the taxi from the airport (when it snowed) and arrived at our new home (for a week and a half) in Nacka, Stockholm.

We got into the house, and saw this:

Elanor ponders her new life ^{(actually she's on Esther's phone chatting to one of her friends in England but that kind of ruins the image a little so I'm just going to pretend she's "pondering")}

That's the view from the back of the house we stayed in. The rest of the house was nice, but this location was stunning. Also, the picture isn't doing it justice (a common theme in all the pictures we're taking in Sweden).

The interior of the house felt very Swedish. Lots of nice old wooden furniture, and lots of Ikea (of course). Where it really started to feel different was looking in the kitchen drawers - the types of utensils they had were not the same as we're used to... about 8 wooden knives, but not a single wooden spoon. The tin openers looked like this:

Does anyone even know what the hook on the top is for?

And there was at least one knife in the drawer that I'm pretty sure would be illegal in the UK. Of course, the sockets were different, and (shock!) there were light switches in the bathrooms. The washing machine lived in the bathroom too. An interesting thing was the drainage plumbing... there was a drain in the bathroom floor, and the plughole from the bath just led to a PVC pipe ending above the floor drain. Apparently this (like a lot of stuff in this list) is normal for Swedish homes.

The hosts were absolutely lovely. They met us there, and told us all about the house and the locality. They'd done all their research and printed everything out in English for us, and had left a bottle of Cava in the fridge for us, as well getting in a nice box of fancy Earl Grey for us. It was a lovely sentiment, but it was sad not to be able to use it (as we don't drink alcohol or tea...). In the course of the conversation, we learned that we were their first guests, so we naturally felt very honoured.

Moments of terror

Soon enough the hosts left, but Piroz and Kristofer (two of the five owners of Mirado) had come to meet us there. More Swedes being lovely! They had come to help introduce us to the hosts (Mirado was paying the rent, after all!) and then to take us shopping so we didn't have to face the first shopping trip alone, and get us sorted with travel cards and such. 

During these events, Esther and I both found ourselves experiencing moments of horror - when Piroz and Kristofer and the hosts were chatting to each other in Swedish, Esther suddenly felt very alone and like she was in a foreign land. Then my moment came a bit later at the supermarket, when I realised that i didn't really recognise so many of the foods. Even buying bread, I had no idea what sort of loaf to get, because most of them were so different, but most shocking was how expensive everything was. We knew that Sweden was expensive of course, but I bought just a few bits and pieces to get us through the first day or two, and managed to spend about £40. I suddenly found myself terrified that the whole thing was a ridiculous idea and that we'd never be able to afford life in Sweden... 

When I got back to the house and Kristofer and Piroz left, Esther and I just held each other a little, and it started to sink in that it was real. 

Scary.