No improvement yet

The US has maintained its morbid lead since my last post, although both Sweden and the UK are doing their best to catch up. The one glimmer of light on the horizon is that a vaccine may well be available soon! Let's hope that allows us to put this terrible year behind us.

Things aren't looking any better

 

We've felt pretty safe here in Florida; we are able to do most things outside thanks to the weather. But it's not looking good in general. It would be great to be back in Sweden or the UK right now, for many reasons!

We're not going :(

 

During our road trip, Sooz and I talked a lot about still going to Aspö this summer. We both desperately want to be there. We've been to Sweden at least once every year since 1988!

However, there are a lot of things to think about, not least the growing number of cases here in the US. Everyone is worried about this virus, and the news is full of terrible stories both here and in Sweden. And, if we were to travel, we would essentially be using a bit of a loophole, by using both passports.

In the end, we decided not to risk it. We don't want to be those people stretching safety rules and common sense just so we can enjoy our little island. 

It's terribly disappointing but it's also the right decision.

Road Trip!

Since air travel is pretty much shut down these days (and of uncertain safety as well), we decided to take a real road trip for the first time in our 33 years of marriage. We've been gone for almost three weeks, putting 3000 miles on our car, visiting our friends and family in Michigan and Minnesota.

On the way home, we took a detour to Clear Lake, Iowa, home to the Surf Ballroom, the venue of Buddy Holly's last concert. Just outside of the city is a small memorial at the site of his tragic plane crash. 

Surprisingly, the Surf was open and we were able to visit. It's wonderfully preserved, and still an active venue for artists all over the world. I was able to go up on the stage and stand where Buddy stood in his last hours. It was quite the experience.

Should we stay or should we go?

 

I've been watching statistics on Covid closely, trying to decide if we should try to go to Sweden this summer. Although travel is banned for US citizens, we could use our UK citizenship to fly to London and then on to Sweden as EU citizens. Sadly this is the last year we could do that, as Brexit takes away our EU membership at the end of the year.

Right now, Sweden and the US are pretty similar in Covid cases. It's interesting that the case rates are similar since Sweden appears to have far fewer restrictions than many parts of the USA.

We will keep a close eye on it over the coming weeks. Covid aside, I'm not looking forward to a hot Florida summer! I'd rather be in temperate Aspö. (Plus I'm itching to try out the new internet!!!)

The internet is in! Really!!

Good news from Annika and Olle, the internet fiber has been installed in our house at last. The junction box is in our bedroom so all I need to do is find an internet provider and hook up my wi-fi.

There's a big range of internet providers available. All of them are faster and cheaper than what I have in the USA.

I can't wait!

Covid

Things have moved fast since my last post. 

The Coronavirus has taken hold in the USA, and our governor has declared a health emergency. Most businesses and indoor activities have been stopped.  

The President has also banned travel from Europe to the US, which of course impacts our ability to go back to Sweden this summer. 

We are dual citizens, so I assume we could fly from the US to London, and then onto Stockholm as UK/EU citizens. 

We will keep updated on the rules, and how the US, the UK, and Sweden are faring. For now, we will stay safe at home. Scary stuff.

Christmas and tendon repair

It’s been an engaging couple of months! We had a wonderful Christmas. Marcia and Rutger joined us and Grant for the Christmas holidays. It was nice to enjoy a warm, palm-tree holiday for a change. 

Sooz decided to have ankle surgery to correct a long-term niggle, so she has been in a walking boot the past couple weeks. She will be ready to scamper along the archipelago soon enough, though. We have enjoyed watching our stuga through the webcams. I am hopeful we will have our internet cables in place for this summer!

RIP Buddy Holly. 61 years.

Hello from our new home

It has been a whirlwind few weeks, that’s for sure. We left Sweden to go straight to our new home! Sooz and I wanted to retire in a place that was on the east coast of the US, warm in the winters, and had an active downtown so we didn’t have to drive everywhere. We found that Sarasota, Florida fit the bill perfectly.

 

We bought an apartment right downtown in a building that was under construction. Our timing was just about perfect, as we were able to move in early November. Lots of things have come together in these past few weeks; we bought a car, signed up for doctors, dentists, etc., had our goods delivered both from our London home and all our stored stuff from Dallas. We also had to buy light fixtures and shop for furniture. I also had the Shelby shipped down so, for the first time since 2014, we are reunited at last. So not that much really! 

 

It’s only been a little while, but we like our new city so far. It’s different to Aspö; our new home is in a high-rise, very urban, and it’s darn hot outside! It will be nice to have the best of both worlds: busy Florida winters and cool Swedish summers.

Falling way behind on the blog, sorry

It's been a fantastic summer. Eventful in some ways, and completely non-eventful in others! We have just finished nearly 6 months here on Aspö. Next comes a totally new adventure back in the USA.

I promise to catch up as soon as I can to talk about all of the changes in our lives and what's next for our Swedish home.

In the meantime, I've finished a summer photo album with all of our highlights. I'm happiest about our project to extend our roof. It projects out another meter now so it balances with the deck, and provides us a lot more rain cover. I've updated our header photo to show the new roof, I think it looks great.

I'm also happy with my gutter installation at the back of the house. I did that one all by myself! We have two 200 liter tanks to capture the runoff, and they fill up quickly with even a short shower. That water will come in handy for watering plants, washing the deck, etc. We won't need to use well water for those uses anymore.

Lastly, the cable for our fibre internet was dug just before we left. All we need now is for the fiber to make it up to the house, and then it can be installed inside readily. Fingers crossed!

The second month!

Time is really flying, it’s hard to believe we’ve been here two months. June was as busy as advertised. We started the month at Marcia and Rutger's for a celebration for Camille’s graduation, and then an extra day in Stockholm to visit Margaret and Janne. 

In preparation for Midsummer, Sooz made an enormous order with the food delivery service MatHem. Ordering heavy and bulky stuff to be delivered to our dock makes our subsequent grocery bus trips much easier to handle. I did the same with our Systembolaget delivery; we had our summer booze sent to Guns Livs on neighboring Nämdö, and all I had to do was to drive it over on our boat.

Speaking of deliveries, I made a big order from our local lumberyard on Djurö. My big project this summer is to extend our roof overhang. When I built the house, I made the long deck two meters wide, which was a great idea. However, I left the roof overhang at one meter, which was not a great idea. I spoke to Wille about extending our roof another meter to provide more cover. He advised me on the supplies I needed, and I made an order from Djurö. Wille is coming out at the end of the month for a few days to get this done. Lots more on that as we complete the work.

The biggest delivery, though, was Marcia and Rutger arriving on midsummer along with Grant and his girlfriend Kelley! They made the trip all the way from Boston to spend both the holiday and my 60^thbirthday together.

We had a fantastic time. The weather cooperated wonderfully and I had a multi-day birthday celebration with my family and friends.

To end the month, Sooz and I saw Bob Dylan at the Globe arena in Stockholm a few days after. Quite the fun and celebratory month!

The first month

We arrived to Aspö as planned on May Day, Wednesday the first. The good news is that our shipment arrived into Stockholm as planned on the Monday. To our surprise, though, the delivery boat jumped the gun and took our stuff to the dock on Tuesday. And of course it was raining that day! 

Thankfully, Ronnie covered up everything with a big tarp so we avoided any water damage. Wednesday was a tough day for me, schlepping all our boxes to our house without Olle and Annika's planned weekend help, but thankfully it all ended well. We spent the next few days unpacking and finding places to put all of this new stuff!

The weather for the rest of May was fairly dry. It was a lot of fun seeing the island become green over those warming weeks.

Sooz is working with Olle and Annika to plant a bunch of vegetables. We'll keep an eye on the crop during the week since we're "residents". Sooz has planted radishes, carrots, zucchini, rocket, lettuce, and cucumber. We can learn from Olle as he has a green thumb! Soon, we hope to be able to add some of our crop to our dinner table.

My most urgent project was to clear up the two big fallen trees. Rutger and Olle helped me with the main trunks and I spent a few days cutting up the trees and hauling them downhill. I spent a more few days cleaning up the rootlumps as well, cutting back the big disks of earth and roots that the fallen trees pulled up.

Sooz and I found a decent rhythm for groceries and errand-running: we take a 7AM boat to Stavsnäs and a noon boat back. This gives us a couple of hours for grocery shopping in Gustavsberg. Sooz gets groceries and I hit the building stores. The busses aren’t too full mid-week so we can take all our stuff back without too much drama.

I have to say the first month has moved by really quickly. We’ve had decent weather and have kept pretty busy. June will be busy, too! 

I’ve moved to Instagram for posting photos, using the hashtag #huslangford on all of our house-related photos. Clicking on this link should show them online; I keep these updated on a regular basis.

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!

Cashless Sweden Pt. 2

I've posted a few times in the past about the move away from cash in Swedish society. It is harder and harder to spend our kronor these days. The airport and Stockholm city center are still cash-friendly, but it isn't easy to spend money in the archipelago.

This article from the Guardian shows very clearly how efficiently cash has been left behind in favor of digital alternatives, for better or worse.

Cash has been replaced by credit cards, of course, but also Swish, a payment system which links one's bank account, allowing super-simple transfer of sums back and forth. It's become a verb now: to 'swish' someone a few kronor.

Those of us without national ID numbers, though, can't register for Swish. I still havehope there will be some way for us to be part of the Swish system once we start spending more time in Sweden this summer!

I will keep my readers informed on how I get on.

Our summer plans

It's now the home stretch of our move from London. In early April, the movers will be picking up our goods and sending most of them to the US. Then we'll be on Aspö for at least the next five months. Bliss.

We will be sending a few things to Sweden as well. It's been an interesting calculation because we want to take advantage of bringing lots of goodies to the house. On the other hand, we don't have that much room in our stuga!

The other calculation is that we're going to be living differently this summer. Living there for a number of months rather than vacationing for a couple of weeks means we'll need different clothes, different food, different priorities in how we will spend our time.

I will be writing more in the next few months about the move, and how we adjust to a full-time Swedish life. Stay tuned!

February's weather

It was very slowly warming in February. We are looking forward to a surge in warmth in March!

The wind gauge isn't working, I believe it's a casualty of the huge storm we suffered in January. I also don't believe the rain gauge is completely accurate, either. I've seen a few days of snow lately, which isn't being measured fully. We can use all of the precipitation we can get!

Stylish Stugas

Dwell magazine has had a couple of articles on small and stylish Scandinavian homes recently.

This first is about the cube from Kodasema, an Estonian company who have a range of small houses—including one that floats!

The second home is a bit more inviting. With its interior curves, this little house from the Netherlands is beautiful, functional and filled with lots of nice touches.

A recycled shopping mall

I read recently about the "world's first recycled mall" operating in the city of Eskilstuna.

The idea of re-using and recycling is a big part of island life. Given the cost in bringing things both on and off the island, it always makes sense to use what you have.

I've repurposed left over IKEA fittings on a new project, and building a shoe rack from wood offcuts. Sooz has assembled many tasty meals from random leftovers.

Sweden is a leader in reducing waste in general. Swedes recycle nearly 100% of their household waste. We are trying to do our part on Aspö!

60 years ago today

RIP Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J. P. Richardson and Roger Peterson. The Independent has an excellent article today about the "Day the Music Died."

This is Buddy and the Crickets on the Ed Sullivan show in 1957, performing "Peggy Sue".

January's weather

Most of the month was pretty close to freezing. My rain gauge doesn't measure snow very well, so it's under-reporting precipitation. The wind gauge ran out of battery unexpectedly mid-month so we'll be without those measurements until we get there in the spring.

It's nice and toasty inside though!!

Report from Aspö

I'm back in London after a quick trip to our house. It's always odd to go to Aspö in the off season. Everything is so quiet and dark. Only five people (plus two dogs and a cat) were on our huge icebreaking boat out to the island.

There were a number of big trees down all over the path. Every tree fell over with a big plug of turf. Because of the topography of the island, trees grew on soil only a foot or two deep on top of solid rock. When the winds came, there were no deep roots to hold onto.

Claes told me that the storm winds were northerly, which was uncommon. This may explain why so many trees were lost, as they were pushed from an unusual direction. Sooz also has the theory of the summer's drought weakening the trees, which makes sense to me.

The island community is banding together tomorrow to clear the path. There will need to be a lot of hands to move the biggest trees.

I will certainly need help to take care of my two trees, they are larger than my saws and skills can handle. It will be Olle to the rescue in the spring! at least I have a project to keep me busy in May.

Most importantly, though, (besides the fact that nobody was hurt), our house and everything on the property are all just fine. That's a big relief.

I have made a photo gallery of my visit with lots of photos of the biggest tree damage.

More to come!

LOTS going on!

I was going to start the new year with a post about my retirement, and our plans to move from London and become full summer residents on Aspö.

However that post will have to wait, because a giant storm roared through the archipelago on New Year's Eve, causing serious damage and power outages lasting nearly a week.

We found out from our neighbours Raymond and Eva (who are resident year-round) that two trees had fallen near our house, and they sent along these two photos:

The good news is that our house isn't damaged; both trees fell away from the house, which is a blessing. The bad news is these were the two lovely pines close to our deck, which provided a great deal of beauty and shade. It's a real loss.

Here's the before and after. The house is looking quite exposed right now.

Annika and Olle came by today and surveyed the damage. Thankfully their house was spared as well. There are a number of smaller trees down around us, and plenty of them down all around the island. We have a big clean up ahead of us!