Hej,

Finally my laziness in changing back to summer tyres paid off when we ended up moving house across the country last week in the middle of a surprise April snowstorm.

There’s a Swedish expression: tur i oturen (“good luck amid bad luck” – similar but not quite identical to the English “a blessing in disguise”) and our house move certainly ticked the boxes for that.

Normally, I’d make the drive from Stockholm to Skåne in one day, but as we were travelling with a car, van, and a toddler, we had scheduled in an overnight stop in Vadstena on Lake Vättern.

A potential blizzard hadn’t even been considered as a factor when we planned that stop, but it turned out to be a good call, as it meant we spent the night in a warm hotel just north of where a lot of people spent the night in their cars as they got stuck on an icy and snowy E4 motorway.

Our plans for a leisurely stroll through the lovely town of Vadstena (most known for its impressive castle and its connections to Sweden’s first saint, Saint Bridget, in the 14th century), were however scuppered.

Funnily enough our Italian guests turned out to be the ones best dressed for the snow as they had presumably just assumed Sweden would be cold anyway. I turned up in my new cloth sneakers.

The following morning, which was the day before we were due to arrive back in Skåne, sign the final paperwork for our new house and get the keys, we found out our bank had messed up, by never sending us the documents we needed to have the mortgage ready by the move-in date.

Cue a frantic phone call to the bank, a hurried, sneaker-clad walk through the snow to Vadstena public library (bless Sweden’s public libraries) to print out the documents and sign, then post and hope we could trust the Postnord postal service to get them delivered by the next morning.

Thankfully Postnord did deliver, so it all worked out in the end.

And on the upside, the delay in the morning meant that the E4 traffic jam had been cleared by the time we were able to hit the road anew, blue sky above and a beautiful white landscape around us.

The three main things I’ve learned from moving house are:

1. It’s going to take longer than you think.

2. You have more stuff than you think.

3. You have more friends than you think (so get them to help you).

In other news

Here are some of the stories we worked on this week.

The Local’s trainee reporter Gearóid Ó Droighneáin interviewed IT consultant Debjyoti Paul for our My Swedish Career series. Debjyoti spoke about Sambandh, the Indian society he co-founded in Helsingborg, and why local Swedes’ reputation as closed off and reserved may not be true.

A new Swedish party which wants to scrap asylum rights and renegotiate EU membership claims to have an open ballot where anyone can sign up to stand as their candidate. Out of curiosity, our Nordic editor Richard Orange wanted to know what would happen if he signed up. So he did…

An awful killing in Skärholmen, a Stockholm suburb, grabbed headlines this week after a dad was gunned down in front of his 12-year-old son – apparently simply for telling off a group of young men on his way to the swimming pool. It’s the third shooting in the area in less than two months.

The Swedish job market poses unique challenges for newcomers who may not have an extensive network to help. We asked The Local’s readers to share their best tips for finding a job in Sweden.

Are you going to Malmö for Eurovision in May? Malmö isn’t a particularly touristy city and it’s easy to be underwhelmed if you don’t know where to look. Here are Becky Waterton’s inside tips.

Fifty years of Abba, Sweden’s image makeover and suburban slang under attack. Those are some of things Richard and James Savage are talking about on the latest episode of Sweden in Focus.

Should you tip at bars and restaurants in Sweden? In this week’s mid-week podcast bonus episode for Membership+, we ask if you’re expected to tip when you go out for a drink or a meal in Sweden.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Best wishes,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.