Tales from the tax office...

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth?
$1 = 6.0673 SEK

A lot of things have happened for us in the past couple weeks so I thought I would break it down and cover a couple topics at a time, in no particular order.

First of all, a couple weeks ago, like the next to last week of May, Ragen and her lab group went out into the Swedish countryside to ride Icelandic horses. An Icelandic horse is a little horse (short legs) with kind of a 'fro for a mane. Ragen is third from the right in the red jacket. She said it was a lot of fun but it ended up being pretty wet and muddy out there, as you can tell from the picture. Where was I you ask? Actually I had football practice so I missed out. But at least it didn't rain on me. Another thing you may not realize when visiting a foreign country is that when you return to the US, as we did for Ry and Kim's wedding, you have to declare whether you have been on farm or pastureland during your visit as you go through US customs. I did not know that but we did and explained that we left the clothes that Ragen wore back in Sweden. The agent seemed satisfied but did take the moose, or maybe it was elk, sausage that we bought in the Arlanda (Stockholm) airport. So the moral of the story is that you really can't bring meat back to the states with you from vacation, or for vacation in our case. I would label that as CiS Cultural fact #4, but it really is more of a US cultural fact than as Svenska one, which maybe I can justify as saying that the Swedish life has rubbed off on me to the degree that I find the ways of the new world confusing and terrifying. Or maybe I can call it CiS Travel Tip #4 instead. Yeah, I'll do that.

IN OTHER NEWS...

The Friday before we left for the states we finally got word that we were granted Swedish Personnummers (I don't really know how to spell it at this point so that is what I'm going to say it is) at about 5:00 pm that day. We really couldn't take advantage of that before we left so we had to wait until we got back here to go to the bank and get Visa debit cards instead of ATM cards and sign up for some cell, I mean, mobile phones. Last Monday we were able to go in and update the bank so we could get the Visa cards; they said it would be up to two weeks but they arrived in three days... the fastest anything has happened here. So the next hurdle to clear was mobile phones.

Ragen and I have decided what kind of phones we wanted to get. The verdict is the new LG Secret (released in Europe, Asia, and South America maybe all on June 8, coming to the US later... suckers). A very stylish and advanced phones for all you technophiles out there, both of you. Personnummers in hand we went to a mobile shop called the Phonehouse which is across the square from our bank. We went in, they had the phone and we got our number for the queue and when it was our turn we spoke with the manager. Now the manager is a lady (Kvinna for your Svenska word for the day... Learning is Fun!!!) in maybe her early to mid 30's. Seems pretty helpful to everyone in the store. Except for us. For some inexplicable reason the lady does not like Ragen and I. She's very curt and unhelpful, not willing to answer questions, I just don't get it. Maybe she doesn't like speaking English or something, but it's weird. Don't let anyone tell you that all Swedes are polite and helpful, it is just not the case, especially when you are trying to get on the bus or stand in line at a convenience store, quite pushy they are.*

We ask the lady how much the phone would cost for a two year plan since we will be staying here that long. The first thing she asks is if we have our ID cards. We did not have those yet, forgot to ask while we were at the bank, and she said in a very curt way that she could not help us and walked away. Previously on CiS, we had gone into the shop when we first arrived and asked about the LG Shine which she had on display and she told us, via our Swedish guide, it was not available. Another time we went in she said she would not help us unless we had personnumers. Next time we go in she'll tell us she cannot help us until we speak Swedish or have become naturalized. Oh bother.

We went back to the bank, found the same person to help us and asked about getting our ID cards (banks are one place you can get them). The kvinna there told us that we needed to go back to the tax office of all places and get a form that said we were married, and then the bank could do the ID card. Apparently the bank does not trust the word of the State of New York that we are married, only Sweden's word will do. So ultimately we have to go back to the tax office, yet again.

After that we looked at a couple other mobile shops and one guy who was helpful asked us if we were Swedish citizens and when we said no he told us that they may need proof that we would be working for two years, so that the company knows they can get their money. I can't blame them for that, at least the dude was helpful enough to call his manager. Later Yezica, pictured on the left of the first picture in the last post, emailed Ragen a link to an online mobile store where we would be good to go with only our personnummers and not all the other rigmarole. We went on the site this weekend to sign up, but it was all in Swedish, and had some things that we couldn't translate on our own, so we will wait until we get the help of a translator. On the plus side, there were no Julia Robert's movies on this weekend.

SMS you later (That's Swedish for text... hej! That can be CiS Cultural fact #4... they say SMS instead of text.)

Oh wait, here's another picture of the Icelandic horses. Ragen's was the one on the left. Now maybe Kristen can leave me alone.