Tomorrow's the day!

We have a jam-packed few days ahead of us. Tomorrow, we arrive in Stockholm and spend the evening with Marcia and Rutger. We have a taxi to take all our collected luggage out to Stavsnäs and Aspö on Thursday. I've turned on the heat pump, so with some luck, the house will be nice and cozy when we arrive.

The big news is that, on Friday, Lote the delivery boat (pictured left) will arrive with our 30 boxes of stuff from London. Olle and Annika have said they'd help with the carrying. With luck, we will be all settled by the end of the day.

Just to make things even busier, we are going to leave Aspö Saturday to attend a 30-year celebration party for the job that brought us to Sweden for the very first time, way back in 1989. It will be good to see old friends, and to relax after the move!

Getting closer!

We're in Sweden this weekend, visiting Margaret and celebrating Marcia and Rutger's birthdays. We will be taking a tour through the USA the next couple of weeks for a few visits before we return "for good" to Sweden on May Day. I still have to settle the shipping of our goods from London, but we expect they'll follow a week or two after.

One thing we wanted to do yesterday was to meet with Skatteverket, the Swedish tax authorities, to apply for extended residency as we are planning to stay the whole summer. I received advice which indicated we could be "secondary residents" of Sweden as long as our house was not our primary residence for the majority of the year. Thankfully, that's exactly the case, so I didn't expect any problems.

The tax office interview wasn't as smooth as I had hoped. The good news is there are no issues with our physically being at out little stuga for 4 or 5 months as we have planned. The bad news is that it looks unlikely we will get our personnummers made active.

As I've written a few years ago, most everything in Swedish society, big and small, hinges on one's number. We can get by without one, but things are a lot more difficult. I am hoping against hope that the authorities will look kindly on us!

March weather

We've had a good month. It's been getting warmer steadily, and we had a bit of rain as well. This is exactly what we want for March!

April will be the last month without us in residence. We will at last arrive at the house for the whole summer on May 1st!

Sooz and I are meeting with the tax authorities in a couple of weeks to set up our residency. It should be a straightforward process, but we shall see. Stay tuned for updates on this subject!