Heat Wave

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$1 = 6.0739 SEK


Now that we are past the summer solstice it is now getting dark here at night again. It's still light out after 10 pm but around midnight it is now dark enough that we can see stars in the sky again. For the last two-and-a-half months we could not see the stars at night because the sky was never dark enough. Kind of weird when you think about it.

We also just finished up with a big heat wave here. This past weekend the mercury topped out over 90 degrees (F) here. I know that's not a big deal coming over here from Pullman where a good part of July and August and even September can be that hot, but it's slightly more humid here and it is really unusual up here where the average temp in July is only 61.9 degrees (F) so that's kind of a big swing. We bought a fan for the flat partake in the Swedish custom of enjoying ice cream to combat the oppressive heat.

Still don't have ID cards... super.

The other big news is that on Saturday we are leaving for Dublin for a week. Ragen has a conference there and I get to tag along. We're pretty excited. We planned a couple extra days so we can tour around. So expect plenty of pictures in the next few posts.

In other news:

-Still looking for work. With the country taking July off it's hard to find anyone to. So we'll see what happens when we back from Ireland. On the plus side I did get to spend a week as her lab tech with the dogs. We weren't actually working on her project but somebody else's. Still it was fun. Hold the dog, let the dog go, get the dog, hold the dog, let the dog go... It was fun. I may get to help out again when we get her project going.

-I guess we don't have any other news really. Our phones work. Getting ready to fly to Ireland this summer. A Lufthansa strike may affect our flights back to Sweden next week, but since we are flying on Lufthansa operated by SAS, who knows.

-Football gets going again after we get back. That will be fun. We have four games left and hopefully the playoffs so at least we got that going for us.

-The Julia Roberts trend seems to have subsided as well as the Steven Segal one. Richard Gere may be up for the crown now but he's not nearly as interesting as Steven Segal and the characters he plays... "He's a take-no-prisoners lawyer out to protect the environment," "He's a take-no-prisoners shaman out to protect the environment," "He's a take-no-prisoners elementary school lunch lady out to save the environment." Come on, that guy can play anything.

-Also, Apple-Lime-Elderflower cider is quite tasty.

So that's it for now. We'll try to say more from the Emerald Isle. Later

The Mobiles Arrive

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$1 = 5.9632 SEK

Hooray! We finally have cell phones, oops... mobile phones, again! So finally the phone saga is behind us. We hope. You've read it on this site before that we decided to order a couple phones from the States on eBay. We found a couple of LG Shines, pictured here, from a company listed as being in Hollywood. Doesn't get more American than Hollywood eh?. The prices were ok, buying a phone straight up is not exactly cheap but still less than they are here, and the shipping was good for two phones shipped to Europe. They came in a couple days earlier than we expected which was even better.

We open the box and look inside and the phones look pretty sweet. Very "shiny." Ha Ha. The company was kind enough to ship European chargers to us so we can plug them in here, plus adapters for North America so that we can still use them when we get back to the States. Looking at the manual you could see Cyrillic letters and so we thought, oh, maybe they sent us European phones and so the Russian or Cyrillic based language is just one of many in the manual. We open the phones to turn them on and notice that it has some Cyrillic letters on the keys too. (Plus English). The manuals turn out to be almost completely devoid of English except for the last two pages - which only told us how to use the camera and mp3 player on the phone. I casually take a look at the boxes, which are very cool by the way, and notice that the phones are Ukrainian. Super. So because we could not get phones here in Sweden, we order phones from the States, which really came from the Ukraine. (The Ukraine or is it just Ukraine? I guess it's Ukraine but doesn't The Ukraine sound better?) It's not like we found some really cool phones in Ukraine that we couldn't live without and decided we must have them. We bought these from the States, payed to have them shipped, payed taxes to customs for bringing them into the country, only to learn that maybe we could have had them shipped from a much closer location. D'oh! Obviously cautious readers would be leery of how these Ukrainian phones came to us from Hollywood, and probably with good reason, but fortunately they seem to work fine and so I'm going to say "Hey, it just makes for another interesting chapter in the book."

Here are a couple of left over pictures from our 4th of July celebration. There's a picture of the flag cake we made. It was quite a hit and since then Ragen and I have been asked to provide cake for our large group gatherings. Last night in fact we brought another cake to a welcome party for a couple more researchers over from Bristol to work on the dog program.

Here we have a picture of some of the Swedish team playing Kubb. It's a Swedish lawnbowling/lawndart kind of game involving throwing sticks at blocks and a king. Typically alcohol is involved. We ended up playing Swedes vs. the rest of the world. Look for it soon at a family bbq in your neighborhood.

And here is the British flag that flew over our 4th of July celebration, because Ragen's boss is English and she was hosting. Our flag cake was 10 times cooler and more memorable. People still talk about it. USA! USA!

Taking July Off

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$1 = 5.9673 SEK



We finally had our first visitors from the New World when Ry and Kim came to see us on their European Adventure. We showed them everything that Sweden had to offer, that we could fit into four and a half days. We took them down to Skokloster, a 17th century Baroque castle on lake Mälaren (between Uppsala and Stockholm). It was pretty cool. You can take a boat there from Uppsala. There are some pictures here in the slide show. When the guy who had it built died it was turned into a living museum by his family so it's full of some really cool old pieces that are a couple hundred years old. Here's a link to the Encyclopedia Britannica of our day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skokloster

We also tried some restaurants that we haven't been too before. Some pretty good places. O'Conner's, the Irish Pub where we spent St. Patrick's day, was really good and I think that is a place where we can hang out quite a bit. The owner is pretty cool and said that he would look into stocking some root beer at the bar as well. Sounds silly to ask about root beer but they don't have it here and it is one of those weird things that you miss when it's not available. I guess it would be one of those "taken for granted" things that people talk about so much.

We also took them down to Stockholm to show them the "old town," Gamla Stan. Lots of cool things to see there and take pictures of, including the royal palace. We also got on some "Hop-on, Hop-off" boat tours to go around the Stockholm waterways and over to the Vasa museum. The Vasa museum contains the Vasa warship, built in the 1600's and sank around 10 minutes into it's maiden voyage. It sat in Stockholm harbor for 333 years before it was salvaged and restored and made into a museum. It's probably the finest museum ever built on the topic of sunken Swedish warships. I would strongly recommend it to any one visiting Stockholm. And as always, for more information on this topic, consult your local library... or this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_museum

Anyway it was a great visit and we can't wait for our next visitors to come out.

Moving to Sweden in 14,873 Easy Steps...*

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth
$1 = 5.9871 SEK
A lot of fluctuation lately
*And 6 flippin' complicated ones. That is what it's starting to feel like here. Just when we think we have everything figured out... they add another hurdle. Sweet. Here's a picture of the train station in Stockholm for your viewing pleasure, and yes that is a McDonald's at the very back.

Previously on CougsinSwedeland...

We had received our personnummers, changed our status with our bank, began looking for mobile phones, told we had to get our id cards at the bank, told by the bank to get a form from the tax office that says we are married, go to bank, bring passport photos, get ID card.

Now...

Ragen took a half day off of work so we could go and get our id cards figured out. So we started at the tax office and expected a hassle. Fortunately there wasn't really a line and the women we met with was helpful. It helped that Ragen looked up the name of the form that we needed. So we were in and out of there in like 20 minutes. Not bad. We're feeling good. Going to the bank. People are pretty friendly. No problem.

We get to the bank. The young woman helping us goes through our paperwork, she says we have everything we need but seemed a little concerned. She got another person who we had met with before. That woman told us that, again, we have all the right paperwork and all we need now is our Swedish relative to verify that we are who we say we are. WHAT? We explained that we had brought a Swedish person to vouch for us when we opened the account and the guy that helped us at the bank that day said that we wouldn't need someone to vouch for us again. The woman said that she was very sorry but the rules are very specific and that we would need our Swedish relative or someone from Ragen's employer (SLU) if the employer banks with our bank, Swedbank, although that wouldn't help me out since I'm not employed by SLU and having have my spouse vouch for me wouldn't work. Ok that could work, but SLU banks with Nordea not Swedbank so that doesn't work. The woman said she was very sorry and wants us to stay customers with the bank but suggested that we might have to get an account with Nordea. (Banks can issue id cards but police cannot, although they used to, because the police cannot verify you... a comforting thought to say the least). Otherwise we may be out of luck. Ragen went to work and I went home... defeated and broken.

Ragen told her coworkers, they couldn't believe it, and her boss is trying to figure out what SLU do can for us. On her way home from work Ragen stopped by Nordea to see if she could open an account. They asked if she had a personnummer, she said yes. They then asked if she had a Swedish ID card and she said she didn't and that she was under the impression that she could get one from Nordea after becoming a customer. The person at the bank said she could not get an account without an ID card. Ragen reiterated that she is there to open an account so she could get an ID card. Catch 22 time everybody!! So at this point it looks like no ID cards for us, unless maybe SLU can open an account at Nordea for Ragen without an ID card and then she can get one. And when I go for job interviews I need to ask potential employers if they do their banking with Swedbank, which will be my determining factor when deciding which of the hundreds of job offers I'll be receiving to accept.

So where does that leave us now? Well we are without ID cards for the foreseeable future. Well you might ask what do you really need an ID card for anyway. I'd tell you that you need an ID card for going to the doctor (for exams and physicals, preventative type stuff not emergencies because although you technically need the ID card in the emergency room they tend to look the other way and accept passports), to open accounts at Nordea, to enter into contracts for cell phones and such, if we are ever in a car accident or questioned by the police, for tax help at the tax office apparently (although they have no problem withholding taxes without ID cards), and for the really important things like renting a DVD. Also that probably means I can't play for the 86'ers because I need a medical license (like a physical) that says I'm ok to play.

On the phone front...
We've been to several different stores and told that in order to get a contract, and thus cheaper phones, we need Swedish ID cards, or to be Swedish citizens, or to live in Sweden for two years with our personnummer and ID cards, one guy did offer to take Ragen's offer of employment and send it to the home office and they would decide if we were a flight risk or not. So how did we resolve this conundrum? We ordered some unlocked phones off of eBay in the states and they should be here in the next couple weeks. So there Swedish mobile phone companies. You'll get no business from these Americans! We'll spend our Capitalistic funds (converted from Socialist funds) back in the land of our birth and help spurn a sluggish economy rather than support the power hungry grab of the evil mobile phone conglomerates of Scandinavia. Word.

Stay Strong. Until next time.