Onsdag

Wednesday here in Uppsala. So we've been here a week now. Starting to get things figured out. We've got the bus system figured out. The number 7 stops by our building and takes you into downtown. Take the 14 from there to IKEA or every other 3 to Ragen's campus.

We've got our first bit of mail, from the bank. Still haven't heard about our ID numbers yet so no cell phones. We may not get some now anyway. Skype has been working well for us to call the states. We have a Swedish phone number associated with it. We may just put a Swedish sim card into Ragen's phone so she can use that. Until I start working somewhere, I'm probably better off holding on.

The little things are still tough. Like trying to figure out how to use the oven or washing machine. Well, we've figured out how to use them, but we're not sure about what all the symbols mean. Also when we go to the grocery store were not exactly sure what we're buying or how to cook them. We had chicken meat balls that were kind of not great, as well as some balled potatoes that were like little balls of fried mash potatoes. Those were kind of good. Milk comes in a box and yogurt comes in a juice carton, which does make it easy to pour, kind of tough to drink.

We've found that there is a baseball league as well as an American Football league, there's even a team here in Uppsala, the Uppsala 86'ers, so at least I've got that going for me. And of course there's a second division football team here and several teams in the top league down in Stockholm.

And oh yes, Swedish tv. We have a very basic set of standard channels and there is a remarkable amount of US tv here. It's an interesting mix too; the Simpsons, Smallville, Lost, ER, Gillmore Girls, Oprah, Montel, Rachel Ray, Ellen, the Tonight Show, Friends, Malcolm in the Middle, American Gladiators (the old ones), Pro's vs. Joe's, and some other short lived shows to name a few. We do get some good soccer games, Champions League, Serie A, La Ligea, and the Euro cup this summer. And some old MLS games thrown in. And there are some Swedish shows too. They seem to be mostly reality shows about hospitals and boat police and home makeover shows. They also have a lot of news shows and those game shows where people call in, I dont really have an example of something similar in the states but I know I've seen some. They are also big on gambling here. OTB's are everywhere, and we get some horse racing on tv too. My favorite TV moment so far has been an episode of Ellen from before Thanksgiving. Soulja Boy performed and at the end Ellen gave everyone in the audience a copy of his new cd. Needless to say the crowd reaction shots were ideal. There was loud cheering and some grandma types with some very confused looks on their faces. Pricelless. *note to our readers. Be advised that "Everyone in the audience gets a copy of Soulja Boy," or other derivation of that, will be CougsinSwedelands running joke.

Peace out for now.


Oh yeah, here's a link to some video about the "fire in the sky" on the Palouse the other day.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=13738

Hej

Hej all. Time for the long overdue, eagerly anticipated, much debated, and hopefully highly celebrated, I know I'm elated, first post from Uppsala...

So we made it to Uppsala this past Tuesday morning (still Monday night out on the West Coast). Ragen's boss picked us up at the airport where we crammed six bags (four full suitcases, a kayaking bag, and one overstuffed duffel) into her car and drove to Ragen's department at SLU. We met some of her colleagues and then one of them took us to our flat. We got unpacked and tried to stay up for the rest of the day so we could fall asleep at the appropriate time and get adjusted to the time difference. Ragen had to go in the next day for a meeting and start getting paperwork filled out. Once she got home, Yezica (pronounced Jessica) took us to one of Dr. Wife's favorite places and my future employer (fingers crossed!), IKEA. We got some new sheets and towels; which brings me my Moving Abroad tip number 23 -there is no particular order so don't get hung up on the number- When moving to another country make sure to bring towels and sheets so that you can get that "homey" feeling right away. Nothing is wierder than sleeping in someone elses sheets and using their towels.

We found a grocery store up the street a bit called Willy's. Awesome I know. We found spaghetti and meat sauce in a bag. Which is tastier than it sounds and actually pretty convenient when you are not sure what time it is. We also found the below:

This is apparently the Original Taste of America: Chocolate Banana soda. And I know that when I think of America, Chocolate, and Bananas the color green does, in fact, come to mind (I know it does look kind of yellow in the picture which would be somewhat appropriate, but trust me, it is greener than Mt. Dew). To be fair though, it is a limited edition, should the people of Sweden get a lasting impression that Americans love their chocolate and bananas in green soda form. Tastes better than it looks.... barely.


Anyway, the next day, yesterday, Yezica and Sanna, another person in Ragen's department, took us downtown to get some of the other essentials taken care of. We had to get personal identification cards from the Tax office, so that we can pay taxes and other things. Since the visas in our passports say that we are in the country from the time we were approved (late January) through the end of December the man at the Tax office told us that we may not be approved because we would not be there a whole year, but to go ahead and fill out the application anyway. I'm glad that we had our translators with us, because the form to fill out if you are moving to Sweden is, of course, in Swedish. Also, the guy did not seem to interested in speaking English, a common sentiment we were to find out, even if he was pretty good. We forgot to bring our original marriage certificate so he could see the original stamp and make a copy, so he said it may take two weeks for us to get our cards. Beuracracy! I love it!

Our next stop was to find cell phones. I have heard about all these cool phones they have in Europe and had planned to find one. We went into a few shops, found the one I wanted, but she didn't have any more. We looked at a few other places and no one else had it either, so today we'll go with Plan B, and hope our Swedish friends do not despise us for having them run us around yesterday. The issue we hope to avoid however is that we do not have our personal ID numbers (similar to a social security number) and that they will be necessary to purchase a cell phone plan. Two weeks without a phone will be tough, only for communication between Ragen and her department, for the folks back home we will try to stick with Skype.

We were able to open a bank account though, even without the ID numbers. The bank assigned us one for their purposes and gave us this cool little device for logging into their online banking site. Online banking is big here for paying bills, more so than in the states, and they don't use checks out here either. Interesting tid bit I know.

Here is a water tower that's down the road from us as you head to IKEA. Kind of cool.

For Kristen: its like your car, only blue.
Oh and here's a picture of Ragen taking a picture. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not.

Anyway, that's where things stand at the moment. Ragen took the bus to work for the first time today, and I'll take the bus to meet her downtown and hopefully get the cell phone conundrum solved once and for all. After that we may meet her friends to see the Barber of Seville, which I think just opened here if I understand the TV commercials correctly. More on Swedish TV later.

I HEART NY

On Friday we had to drive down to NYC between 10 and Noon to pick up our visas and the Swedish Consulate. We left Syracuse at 4:30 am and drove to Beacon, NY to catch a train to Grand Central Station at 8:22, which would have got us to Grand Central at 10:05. The drive took longer than we planned because of freezing rain and the road, and our windshield, being coated with ice. We even saw an Xterra spin out on the road and into the ditch behind us as they went around another car. They did about a 720 before it went into the ditch, but it stayed upright and got back on the road a little bit later.

Anyway, we didn't make the 8:22 train and had to take the 9:08 one, and made it into the city at 10:32. Fortunately we only had to walk two blocks from Grand Central to the Consulate's office. The weather however was not in our favor as we arrived in the middle of a crazy rainstorm. We, mostly me, were soaked by the time we got to the building the Consulate was in and that was after we spent $10 on a big umbrella from a guy on the street outside of Grand Central. I bet that guy made a killing that day. Unfortantely the rain was so bad that we had to cut our sight seeing short. We did get a few pictures of things that were between Grand Central and the
Consulate. Oh well, next time.

We were worried about not having enough time but there was only one other person there so it took about 20 minutes to get our visas entered into our passports and collect some brochures on Swedish culture. And a Swedish fashion mag. Score.

We had lunch in the train station at Juniors, home of New Yorks best cheesecake, which we got to go because we ate too much for lunch. It was really good when we got it home though.

The Swedish Consulate office was on the 45th floor, which is the highest I've ever been in a building.

We caught a train back to Beacon after deciding it was way too wet to do anything else and then drove back to Syracuse via Scranton, PA. We had this great idea to record our drive through Scranton and post it with the theme from The Office, but again, the weather was terrible and so was the traffic at that point, so it didn't turn out. We made it back to Syracuse about 7:00 that night and found out that the interstate was closed right behind us. So we got our visas and then bought our plane tickets this weekend. We found a direct flight from Newark to Stockholm for just over $400 each for next Monday. Not bad for a week before our flight. We'll rent a car and drive down to Newark and then off to Stockholm.

This lady seriously had an umbrella for her dog... New Yorkers.

The UN building, this was as far as we wanted to walk in the rain.

The "World" part of World Tower stands for its location near the Turkish Building in the background.

"Cham pag ne?"

Some pictures from Grand Central Station. Definately one of the coolest buildings in the world, regardless of how you feel about Aestetic Zoning regulatons (a joke for all the lawyers in the crowd).






























Outside of 100 United Nations Plaza. Diplomatic immunity perhaps does not apply to dogs.

A very cool picture of a building I took. Not hard to do in New York I think, just look at a building and click.

Another cityscape picture. Neato.

A smeared picture of Yankee Stadium, as it should be. No I kid, the stadium is cool and historic, it's the team that's lame.

Man it felt as though we were never going to get there for awhile, but now that we have visas and plane tickets... it's a little scary, but it's going to be legend... wait for it... ary!

Good News Everyone!

We've been approved! Hoorah! We got word last night from the Swedish Migration Board that our permits have been approved (we applied for work permits and residency permits). So now we have to go down to New York city to the Swedish Consulate with passport photos to have them entered into our passports. Then we just have to get plane tickets. We're almost there. We'll take some pictures while we are down there and post them later.

Down at the bottom of the page you may notice a new feature. It's a map search program from Google maps. I don't know what it adds to the page but I'm still learning how to add widgets and pimp this baby out a bit. You can enter Uppsala, Sweden and then start zooming out to get an idea of where we will be for the next year. That's kind of cool I guess. Anyway, let us know what you think.

Peace out.

The Uppsala Lastbil

That's Swedish for truck.

This was our rental car for getting across the country. We were supposed to have an Explorer, but you know, options are limited in Pullman so we got the Dodge Nitro, which was the largest of the SUV's they had. We needed something that would be roomy enough for us, Jax, and everything we may need for the potentially the next two years. So you can see how loaded we had it. That's four full size suitcases by the way. We get 70lbs each for international flights and we are going to use every one of them.

The Nitro at the little yellow farmhouse in Bozeman.

Colorado plates, Pat and Ragen's dad dubbed this a good sign.
Jax.
Look how stuffed. Jax is hiding.

Still stuffed. Jax not hiding.

So the Nitro was good. I liked it. It had crazy head space, but the doors were low so you had to go in head first, weird. The passenger side door was a little off, didn't line up the right way but it worked. It was a good car, very rugged. Ragen thinks it looked like a toy truck. Jax seemed ok with it, even though he needed a lift to get in most days.

The Legend of Lake Effect

Here's Jax at the hotel in Missoula.

So we are still in the 'Cuse, waiting for our visas. Haven't heard anything at this point even though our 6 to 8 weeks have passed... hopefully in the next couple of days. So the plan now is to hear and receive our visas and then maybe we can fly out before the Super Bowl (I wonder if the commercials are as big a deal in Sweden).


In other news...


We lucked out on the weather for our drive across and have been looking forward to the "feet" of snow that they get here in Syracuse. So far we've got about four inches. And as Ryan Lahne pointed out back in Pullman, "I've shoveled snow like every day." So we heard about this big snow storm that was supposed to roll in last weekend and dump a foot of snow on Sunday. Sunday came and went and nothing happened. Although it did dump over three feet about 30 miles to the north. So close.

I got to see my mom and Kelly this weekend. She flew into Syracuse to help him to drive across country to San Diego. It was nice to see them before we go and next time we will see them will be in Berkley in June. They have not been as lucky with the weather at this point. Now they are about half way there now.

So we have some pictures from our drive that I have been negligent in posting so I'm going to start doing that. I may post them one at a time or all at once, whatever allows me to put in snappy captions. We'll see.

(9:05 pm update - its snowy and we just had some thunder. Up until the last couple weeks I've never heard of a snowy thunderstorm, but this is probably the third one we've heard about... cra cra)

Road Trip

Day 1: Pullman, WA to Missoula, MT (247.6 miles)

After an emotional goodbye to our home of 10 years we made a short drive to Missoula Montana. The drive was pretty smooth except for a blizzard we encountered on Lookout Pass. Good thing we ended up renting a Dodge Nitro (crammed full of our luggage, but at least nothing had to go on the roof), the SUV has proved to be very useful (even if the passenger door does not quite work). After tangoing with several large big rigs in the mountains we stayed in Missoula and had a nice visit with Chaise and Megan. Jax had fun playing with Gunner (Megan's dog) and won over the heart of the women running the front desk at the Day's Inn.

Tired dog in Missoula. I like how every hotel has the same pattern on the comforters. Hotel Comforter Warehouse. "Where we got all the comforters for all your hotelier needs."

Day 2: Missoula, MT to Bozeman, MT (203.3 miles)

After a good night's rest in Missoula we awoke completely exhausted from our moving experience. Rather that push too hard, we decided to stay with Aunt Karen in Bozeman Montana. A short but beautiful drive lead us to a quaint farmhouse in Bozeman (the Lazy K Ranch) run by Aunt Karen's neighbors Leo and Donna Keller. The Keller's were kind enough to allow us to stay in their beautifully resorted farm house for the night. We had a chance to relax and recoup from the moving of boxes and visit with Aunt Karen and Cousin Jacks. We played Wii bowling and learned how competitive Aunt Karen can be :-) We also finally had a chance to meet Jack's boyfriend Andy and his brother and roommate who flew in from Pennsylvania. Jax had fun playing with his doggie cousins Maybell and Sniffy... and of course running around in the snow. Nice day, but really windy. At the farm house, Jax met his first sheep... he was pretty curious until it "baaaaa'd" at him... which made him run away.

The Little Yellow Farmhouse in Bozeman. Very nice.

Day 3: Bozeman, MT to Rapid City, SD (515.4 miles)


In looking at the weather patterns we decided to go ahead and take I-90 across Montana, through Wyoming and into South Dakota. We set off early in the morning for Rapid City South Dakota. The high winds the night before left many cars and trucks overturned on the freeway. We passed by one large semi overturned into a ditch just outside of Livingston Montana. When we left Bozeman snow was falling, but by the time we reached South Dakota the weather had cleared up. Jax was very tired after playing with all of his dog friends in Montana and slept all day in the car and then all night in the hotel room. We had a nice view of Devil's Tower as we passed through Wyoming. Rapid City was uneventful, but a lot bigger than we expected. Note to travelers: Safeway in Rapid City did not allow us to use the $1.40/gallon discount that we accumulated in Pullman... these must be regional. We have also discovered that all of the Chevron and Texaco stations across the Northern US have vanished... this makes it extremely difficult to use gas gift cards :-(





Day 4: Rapid City, SD to Missouri Valley, IA (502.7 miles)


Driving through South Dakota proved to be as entertaining as usual... we read 100's of billboards as we approached Wall Drug and then passed by the movie set for Dances with Wolves and the home of Laura Ingles Wilder. Note to travelers: every other town in South Dakota claims to be the home of Senator John Thune... he must have lived all over the state! Boy are we glad that our rental car has Sirius satellite radio... the comedy channels helped us pass the time and we listened to the Seahawks beat the Redskins the day before. There are a lot of unique artists in South Dakota... we passed by several roadside displays including a metal sculpture of a giant dinosaur skeleton being lead around on a leash by the human skeleton... and an art yard with a giant bull head, hammer and other art pieces... the key word here is GIANT... these sculptures are enormous, blending into the vast landscape.

A giant steer in the home of the Corn Palace.

Ahh the Corn Palace. If you ever drive through South Dakota you'll see signs for it, about as soon as you leave Wall. So you would think that it would be right off of the freeway given all the publicity, but no. It was a good 15 minutes from the freeway, in the middle of town. I guess because admission is free they have to get you to spend money some other way. Sneaky sneaky chamber of commerce.

We didn't get a picture of it because I could not pull the camera out in time, but the police cars in the town that is the home of the Corn Palace that I cannot remember of the name of, have numbers on the back like in NASCAR. Crazy.

It's good to know that the fireman are ready should the Corn Palace catch fire.

Sun sets over South Dakota.

Day 5: Missouri Valley, IA to Montpelier, OH (635.3 miles)

We decided to make a big push today and traveled through Iowa, across Illinois and Indiana and into Ohio. This leaves us with a straight shot to Syracuse tomorrow (one more day's drive). It was raining and very foggy in Iowa (which Adam slept through), but we did pass through Colfax and Moscow which reminded us of the Palouse :-( We are staying in a "funky" Ramada straight from the 80's... we were curious to find that the hotel has no windows which open to the outside of the building (only to the interior corridors)... but after being here a few hours the news alerted us to a tornado watch in the area. That's right... a tornado in January... who knew? Oh yeah... it was in the mid 60's today in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio... we have hit a tropical heat wave! Jax very much longs for the return of the snow.

You can barely make this out but here is the sign for Colfax, Iowa.

Our navigator. This is us leaving Ohio.