Lost in Stockholm – World of a Nomad

Finding an apartment in Sweden sucks. Finding an apartment in Stockholm, sucks beyond recognition. Because in Sweden they have a nonsensical system where people go crazy to get a rental contract (yes just a lease) and once they get one, most try to die with it.

It’s a bad system, unlike the US, where you just rent directly from the owner of the building for a year or two and then move on. In Sweden as a foreigner you have to two options: 1) sublet from someone else (also known as second hand contract); 2) or buy an [...] Continue Reading…

thanks to mindrepanda.com for this image.

Dear System Bolaget,

Your whole ’system’ is a joke.  The guise of being a responsible seller without profit motive is just an attempt to gain moral authority and powertrip.  After more than 100 years of being abolished and the far majority of the OECD countries eliminating an alcohol monopoly (except for Canada, Norway, Finland and Iceland), you still see the need to control people to help make “better decisions.”  The excuse for not having an alcohol monopoly?  These far fetched facts conducted by left wing researches from unknown institutes in the United States and [...] Continue Reading…

I only spent a few weeks in Isafjordur, and by far it’s been one of the best cities I have every visited. Mostly because of the friends I made but that, it’s still so routed in nature. Here are a few photos from my time there.

The Viking man. We meet him while taking a field trip with the summer program at Háskólasetur Vestfjarða and received a history lesson on how the northern vikings lived and fished 1000 years ago.

One of the bakeries in town called Gamla Bakarid. Really tasty breads and sweets, like [...] Continue Reading…

I love the Arctic cities. They are beautiful, words cannot express them. So without going too far into detail, here is this week photo set from Narvik, a small city in Arctic Norway. To get there, you take the train from Kiruna (sweden) via Stockholm and most coastal cities.

Enjoy!

An off the beaten path hike, led us up here

The Sun never sets in June, July or August. Get ready for all day awesomeness and weirdness. Wow!

And the local Nordic church

I’ll try to post where I stayed and such so people know.

This post is part two in the Living in Sweden Series.  In the first post, we discussed how to find a job in Sweden.  Now, once you found a job, you need to create a polished resume and prepare for potential interviews in Sweden.

A CV, curriculum vitae, is a longer form of a resume.  If you are from the US, you should revamp your resume to include a few more details that should be on a CV in Sweden.  From the Arbetsförmedlingen guidebook on finding a job, this is what you should have on your CV.

Studies/training
Job experience placements
Training courses
Other [...] Continue Reading…

The first step to moving to Sweden is to find a job. Without a job, you are pretty much SOL in terms of living in the country. There are a few exceptions to living in Sweden without finding a job. Here are the exceptions:
Student in Sweden – Exchange students, post secondary education, graduate students. Link here.
Asylum Seeker to Sweden – Obviously very tight regulations here.  If you are not from a war torn country, most likely you will not be approved as a refugee in Sweden. See more here.
Researcher visiting Sweden – Here’s [...] Continue Reading…

Inspired by my good friend Hairy Swede of Welcome to Sweden, I decided to write a moving and living in Sweden series.   My tale is about finding a job, finding a place, getting a work visa on my own.   I did not have the luxury of EU or Swedish citizenship or a Swedish boyfriend to give me easy entry into Sweden.   Instead, I arrived as a well educated, skills based employee in Sweden.   And yes, it is possible to find a job in Stockholm.   The road is not easy; it is as Robert Frost put it, a road [...] Continue Reading…

Nothing about Sweden or Swedish people today. It’s about our awesome roadtrip through California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Here are a few photos from the roadtrip along with the map of our route. After sleeping the night in the car at an RV park, we drove to Bryce Canyon and continued north to Salt Lake City that very day. Below are a few photos from southern Utah. I love that state and want to see more of it in the future.

Below is the Vermillion Cliffs that borders Arizona and Utah. [...] Continue Reading…

UPDATE WINNERS!: Here they are: Stefan (@lostinsweden), Demmos, Sam, Erik. Congrats guys!

I may be getting more invites tommorow, saturday, so stay tuned if you have not received one yet and want to participate in the contest.

I received a Google Wave invite today from my friend, RS and thanks dude. I evidently had no idea so many desire an invite and I have a few extra invites left. If you want to get a sneak peek at the GW preview and a free invite to it, you are in luck! I will pick four [...] Continue Reading…

When I was small, I would hear about the Swedish Bikini team.  They were blond Swedish women who were of course busty and beautiful. They arrived in 1991 and remained part of pop culture legend. But the Swedish Bikini team has a dirty little secret, one that thousands, if not millions, of men did not know: the bikini girls were not Swedish.   They were not Scandinavian. The Swedish Bikini Team was made up of… Americans! American girls with blond wigs. The horror of it all, to be deceived that your blonde Swedish goddess [...] Continue Reading…