Välkommen to the Land of the Tall, Blond and Blue Eyed
I hope you enjoy reading these musings about Swedish life. Feel free to post comments and questions you have about moving to Sweden, traveling in Sweden, and even dating a Swede.
As a non Swede, I’m not quite sure what’s the deal with all the Christian holidays in a very pagan country. I just feel it is another reason to drink, eat, and drink again. And be really crazy. So I put together a little list of all the dates you should know during the Christmas season, the Swedish way.
Advent
Until today, I had no idea what Advent is but it is the official Christian Christmas holiday season. Advent starts on the 4th Sunday before Christmas, so this year it’s on November 28th. Get your swedish christmas decorations [...] Continue Reading…
After my massive bashing on Swedish fashion, I figured I would at least credit Sweden with awesome decoration for Christmas. I mean, I’ll still be hater on fashion here.
It’s definitely Christmastime in Stockholm. The lights on Hornsgatan are lit up. Ahleans has the pretty Christmas lights. And even the Pressbyrans and 7-Elevens have that Christmas smell of Lussekatter. Yummmy ! But for us foreigners, what is a Swedish Christmas and what do eat, do, and decorate during this six weeks of food eating?
No fear, Sapphire’s here! :P At least to help with decorating your apartment to look like a [...] Continue Reading…
I give up on Swedish people being fashionable or Swedish fashion being trendy; whichever comes first. Tony, one of my friends asked me about Swedish fashion and how Swedes take on the catwalk.
When I moved here last year, it was a horrifying experience already. The 80s, yes the 1980s, look was back in style. As if all us who grew up in the 80s didn’t suffer enough with bad fashion, the major fashion houses took the world by storm in 2007 and gave us black leggings, bad hairdos, baggy t-shirts, all over again. It was [...] Continue Reading…
When I write for Lost in Stockholm, I have tons of ideas in my head that eventually gets vaporized by my lack of effectively putting these thoughts into sentences. Just now, I was thinking ‘well, what the hell do I write about? Do people care about my daily bits or do they want to hear about polar bears?’ I gots no clue.
But, I wonder about lots of things in Sweden and outside that have Swedish names. Like Nordstrom, or Swedish fish, or even the Swedish bikini team. I decided to head online (which is anyway [...] Continue Reading…
This is part four of the Living in Sweden series. Here are the others for you to catch up on:
Find a Job in Sweden
Going for a Swedish Interview
Find an Apartment in Sweden
English books are expensive in Sweden. There’s also a limited collection of them at most bookstores so after a while you go crazy. But I discovered there are quite a few places to buy books in English in Stockholm at reasonable prices.
Secondhand stores – I’m normally not a fan of secondhand bookstores, but these stores have a hidden treasure of engelska bok, english [...] Continue Reading…
This Post is part three in the Living in Sweden series. Need to catch up? Here are the others:
Find a Job in Sweden
Going for a Swedish Interview
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 [...] 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…
