Arrivals and Departures

January 5-6, 2019

When the time of our big move finally arrived on Saturday, January 5th, Peyton and I went alone. We didn’t sleep much on the overnight flight, as usual, but it was already morning in Stockholm when we landed on Sunday, so we hit the ground running.

We quickly paid and loaded our SL Cards at the nearest Pressbryan store (a convenience store, like 7-11). The cards allow you unlimited access to a lot of public transportation.

We were thankful to be able to go straight to our hotel, conveniently located just outside of T-Centralen, the central subway station in Stockholm. Since we weren’t able to move into our apartment until the day after our arrival, Monday, January 7th, we needed a place to land (and sleep).

It was cozy and quiet in the hotel; outside it was dusky and overcast. Average daylight this time of year was about 6.5 - 7 hours; the sun went down around 3:30 PM, but was never high in the sky during the winter. It was easy to fall asleep, but hard to wake up. The thought of food proved motivational, however, so we dragged ourselves into the afternoon darkness in a sleepy, grumpy fog, in search of lunch.

Stockholm is an archipelago, a series of islands in the Baltic Sea, and Sodermalm is the island on which my husband had lived when he worked there in 2013-14. The restaurant, Kalf & Hansen, was right next to the Hotel Rival, the place where our love of ABBA music was born during a previous stay. We nourished our weary bodies with some meatballs (My son kept reminding me that, while we were living in Sweden, we didn’t need to call them “Swedish” meatballs), then headed out to hunt for bed pads. Bed pads were the Swedish version of mattresses, but I didn’t fully understand that yet. Although our apartment came furnished (thank goodness!), the owners had let us know we would need to provide bed pads. I assumed they meant mattress protectors, so we bought a few, then realized this wasn’t right. (To hear more on this story, see Gratissbus to Ikea.)

Our next task was to map out the route from the apartment to my son’s school, since he was to start in just two days, and we had to move into the flat first. We were so jet-lagged we didn’t have much patience with each other, but we muddled through and accomplished everything we needed to do to prepare for the move.

We ended the night at a favorite dinner spot in Stockholm – Koh Phangan – a very colorful Thai restaurant not far from our new apartment. Exhausted, we then snuggled back into our cozy hotel room and enjoyed dream-filled sleep before dragging ourselves out of bed, feeling slightly drugged, for another busy day.

It was move day, which meant an early start. We were meeting the owners and our relocation agent at the apartment for an inspection at 9 AM. That doesn’t seem early, but we were still on East Coast time, and every hour felt like we were slogging through thick soup. It took us at least a week to stop feeling, every morning, like we were being woken in the middle of the night and forced to function like it was daytime. Also, Swedes are very punctual, so we did not want to be late for the inspection.

In the middle of the inspection, the movers showed up to deliver our belongings from my husband’s previous corporate apartment. After the inspection, I headed back to the hotel to collect our bags, leaving my son to wait for the men coming to re-assemble our IKEA sofa. The rest of Monday’s story earned its own entry. See Gratissbus to Ikea to hear about that adventure.

Overall, we had a full and productive day, and everything went smoothly. We even had a bottle of champagne and beautiful white roses as a thoughtful welcome gift from the apartment owners. My oldest son arrived Monday night, and we enjoyed sitting around the table together, eating Indian take-out, and feeling grateful that at least half of our family was with me in our temporary new home.

I do confess that I battled constant feelings of homesickness and fatigue for the first week. Each night, I would shed a few tears as I thought about how I had left behind two of my kids, my dog, family, friends, and home to live in this very foreign place. Gradually, however, as jet lag improved and we developed a routine, I started to feel more at home. And God had some surprises waiting for me in Stockholm.