Two months in.

We left our home in North Devon a month ago (more like 8 weeks now - apologies for being  bit slack!)

It's been eventful, scary and tiring.  There's been good times, bad times, illness and a whole lot of weather!

We arrived in early April, to a beautiful warm day - blue skies and sunshine, and since then we've had pretty much everything!  Rain, hail, snow, high winds, fog so thick we couldn't see the end of the garden, let alone Denmark!  The Danish coast is about 5/6 km away, so we use it as a measure of how bad the weather is if we can't see it!  And today as I write, it's an odd sort of weather - warm, windy and overcast!

We're starting to recognise people in the village, but let's be honest there aren't that many (read none) people walking huskies or women screaming calling 'Ned', given that in Swedish, as in Norwegian, it means 'down'.

We've been brave too.
Ned and I visited his preschool twice now, and have another visit in a week or so. I wasn't quite sure how he'd feel, but he's said that he wishes he could start now, and not in August (the Swedish school holidays start in July).
I've had comedic phone calls with Swedes - texts I can cope with as I cheat and use google translate, but actual people.......!
Jim and Maisie have both survived their first weeks a their various new establishments, and Maisie has started coming home on the bus by herself.

After being in Sweden for a week, we drove to Norway for the Easter holidays.  It took 11 hours of driving, and actually most of it was okay.  We used just one motorway from here all the way past Oslo (about 8 hours away), and then we picked up a local road.  I won't say much about it, as I feel it'll probably make a blog entry all by itself one day.
However we did discover an enormous moose!

Easter in Norway was lovely, very sociable, snowy and we had our dogs with us for the first time!  They absolutely loved the snow - it was lovely to watch them bouncing around in it, and eating it!  And thanks to them we were able to show Ned why you must not eat yellow snow.
We did a little bit of skiing, Jim went cross country skiing with a friend and took the dogs, and there was lots of sledging.

We've settled into our new routine; up at 6.30am, Jim leaves at 7.20 to catch the bus to go to work, whilst I leave at 7.57 - not a minute later! to take Maisie to school (until she catches the bus!)  Ned and I then get home at 8.15 and begin our day.  Mostly it consists of watching ships going past and then looking up on the very wonderful boat finding app we have!

It's 'Cruise Season' so every couple of days there will a MASSIVE boat going past, which results in a flurry of activity to find out what it's called, where it's going, how many passengers and where else is it going!

But Ned and I have something new to do every day now.  About a 5 minute cycle ride along the coast is a little rocky outcrop, usually home to lots of cormorants, herons, swans and various other seabirds whose names I don't know yet.  There's a telescope, and this being Scandinavia you don't have to pay to use it, and today we saw the seals that come here every May/June to breed.  Its very exciting, although Ned gets bored after about 2 minutes and wants to go and play on the rope swing in the woods, but still - seals!

Personnumers

These are ID numbers. Sort of like national insurance numbers.

As a newcomer to Sweden you have to apply for one of these numbers (and the kids). 

Without a personnumer you can't do important things like open a bank account, register with a doctor, join a gym (let's be honest that's not really like to happen anyway!) Nor, as I discovered this evening, can you set up an online account to top up your jojo card - Helsingborgs equivalent of the Oyster card.

These are great, and we're still discovering how they work exactly. Maisie gets one for travelling to school for free, as will Ned when he reaches 7. I think we've probably overspent a bit on bus journeys, by not fully understanding, but Jim did find a helpful driver who explained things a bit more. 

We also can't apply for loyalty cards without the wretched numbers, so I haven't been able to a Coop store card and my Norwegian one won't work in Sweden (don't understand why, when my IKEA family card works here 😉).

However today they have arrived. Hurrah! There is nothing to stop me now.....or there won't be when I get my ID card..........🙄

Difficult day

Ned was poorly just before Easter. It appears he bought a vomiting bug with him from North Devon. 

Sunday was a day spent mostly at home with a poorly boy, and when we eventually attempted a walk up the coast path, it became apparent that Ned's tummy wasn't as settled as we hoped, so we cut our losses, came home and crossed our fingers that all would be well for Monday's visit to register at the tax office, but more importantly Tuesday's Even More Epic Drive to Norway for Easter. 

I think we were feeling fairly confident that Ned would be okay, until 5am on Monday morning when he came into our room looking for some water.  Quick bedding and pj change, which Maisie slept through, and he was back asleep.  

We decided the best course of action was to let Ned sleep whilst we pottered about, and about 2pm, leaving lots of time before meeting our relocation lady who would be assisting us at the tax office, Ned threw up again, this time all over himself, Jim, the wooden floor, door and glass tv stand.

A frantic 30 minutes of tidying, cleaning, washing on and clothing changes and we were off. I think it's fair to say that Jim and I were a little bit fraught by this point; we needed to go to the tax office, our previous visit had been called off due to incompetence (not ours you'll be pleased to know), and in order to be able to get a bank account we have to be registered, so for every day we're delayed it means we have to keep using our UK bank accounts. Ned was clearly poorly and should we even be taking him?  I will point out that we had quite a lot of stuff with us just in case he was ill again.

So this is the part where it all went a little bit wrong 😖

We found a car park, I got a ticket. I put the ticket in the van, only the passenger door was also open thus causing a through draft which sucked the parking ticket down between the dashboard and the windscreen, trapping it with no way of reaching said ticket (well only if you remove the windscreen and that seemed a little extreme!). So with various angry shouty words from Jim ringing in my ears, I went back to get another ticket, handed it to Jim.  

And the van locked itself.

With the keys inside.

And my keys were at home. 

Not in my bag. 

But at home, in the locked house to which we had no way of gaining entry.

I can laugh now, and indeed there is a little smile playing on my lips as I write this, but you can imagine there wasn't much laughter going on at the time. 

The kids and I left Jim shouting at the van and trying desperately to see if the window would unwind, whilst thinking it was probably a good job I'd 2 hours of parking rather than 1, but it seemed prudent to keep that comment to myself 😉

We headed off to the tax office in stony silence, each of us, I think, trying to be grown up and not get all shouty. 

The only logical solution was to call the breakdown people and see if they could come and sort us, but before we could do this, the lady from the relocation agency arrived, and after a flurry of 'hello, how nice to meet you's', Jim explained that we weren't really having the best of days, but at least we were here.

Once we'd explained what was going in, her response was perfect.  We had an actual responsible grown up adult with us, who said, oh I'll just call your landlady she'll have left a spare key with someone. 

Now why the hell hadn't we thought of that? 🤔

Whilst we completed various bits of paperwork, she called the owner, found out who had the spare key, yes they were home and expecting us, she would take Maisie and I home to collect the keys, then bring us back to rejoin Ned and Jim with the van.  

It's clearly quite simple, but we just couldn't see it at the time

So once our applications were in, she did indeed drive Maisie and I home to collect the keys and drive us back again.

My keys now live in my bag. Like they're supposed too.

Here we go!

I am writing this post from our new sitting room in Sweden! We did it!

Don't mention the swedish chef ;) ps he's our new van mascot

So after a couple of hectic days cleaning the house around the removal guys, Friday dawned reasonably sunny.  Jim headed off to work, and the kids were taken out for a walk by Grampa so I could finish packing and repacking our bags that were to accompany us on, what has become known as, our Epic Drive Across Europe.

After a few chores, including collecting the dogs from our very lovely friends and leaving them my car, we started the drive in earnest.

Last few times we've driven to Gatwick, the channel tunnel is in the same direction, we've had nightmare journeys, so given that Friday was the last day of term for most schools we were expecting the worst. Imagine our surprise when we made it to our hotel in Ashford without mishap or mayhem! Frankly most of that is due to the purchase of an in car DVD Player for the kids, and their love of Star Wars!

Darth Vader, the dark lord and saviour of long car journeys

After an incredibly grumpy start (me and the stupid woman at the hotel), we rocked up to the euro tunnel terminal in a state of extreme excitement - well the kids did, I think Jim and I were too knackered, and or grumpy in my case!

Still bacon baps and a cuppa tea soon worked their magic, and we boarded our train in high spirits.

Ned couldn't quite understand how we managed to end up in France when we got off the train, but was soon ensconced in Star Wars and only really paying attention to Europe when we passed into the Nederlands - which apparently is Ned's own country (according to him)!

Ned's homeland

The drive to Germany seemed to pass in a blur, but Germany was the biggest single country stretch we had to make. It was slightly fraught around the autobahns of Duisberg and Essen, where it seems there are soooooooooo many roads in every single direction, but we made it without a) getting lost; b) going wrong and c) not shouting at each other or the kids.

Tiredness eventually took over Jim, so I took over the driving.  Now our van is a VW T5 long wheel base. I'm used to driving a very compact Audi A2. So after a few nervous minutes whilst I adjusted to the van we were off. Jim and the kids all fast asleep, leaving me to exclaim to the dogs 'Ooh look there are some deers!', but of course with them being in back, they couldn't see them, even if they knew what I was talking about.

Driving on the autobahns, is, as one friend commented, like being in an episode of Top Gear. The Germans really do drive fast! At one point I was doing 140kph - I'm metric now (@90 mph), and was overtaken as if I was standing still!  Mind you the roads are amazing to drive along; wide, smooth and empty, so it was quite fun.

A quick pit stop to cook pasta and pesto for tea and walk the dogs, and we started our last stretch from close to Hamburg to Travemünde where we would catch the ferry.

We arrived in Travemünde without mishap and found the ferry port.  I must warn you, that should you decide to follow in our Epic Drive, the ferry port is not like Brittany Ferries! It's a proper truckers port.  Hundreds of lorries waiting to board ferries to Malmo, Helsinki or even St Petersburg.  The possibility of ending up on the wrong ferry was actually quite high (actually it wasn't but I'll explain more later).

We were booked onto the ferry at 1am, with boarding due to start around midnight, so when we rocked up at 8.15pm, we thought we'd ask if we could catch the earlier ferry which left at 10pm. A very short chat with the man in the ticket office proved fruitless, so we settled down for a bit of wait.  

As the loading for the Helsinki ferry began (the cars were queued next to us) our attention was drawn to a little white van with flashing yellow lights.  It became apparent that, when it was your turn, you would follow said little white van to the correct ferry, thereby ruling out the possibility of ending up on the wrong boat.  If, however, you were in a lorry, it seemed that you were allowed to follow the correct signs and board without following the man in the little white van with the flashing lights!  Although it didn't stop several lorry drivers having to reverse as they'd gone wrong, but that may have had something to do with all the duty free beer that was being drunk (which might not have been the truckers!). The ferry terminal building was basically a beer supermarket with slightly overweight rusky truckers carrying trays and trays of beer to their lorries!

Midnight came and went, the kids were beside themselves, they'd been so good, but the last 30 minutes was just a bit too much for them. So when the little white van pulled up in front of us and then took the other queue out first, Maisie actually cried at this point. 

There were only 12 passenger vehicles on our whole
 ferry, all the rest were lorries

Anyway we joined the queue of about 12 passenger vehicles and followed the van. Now our next conundrum was that we needed the loader to leave space behind the van so we could open the boot and let our the dogs, so, in a very daring and brave moment, I hopped out the van, Whilst It Was Still Moving! So it was about 2 mph, but still! Jim had already told the chap we had to open the boot, but I did open it so he could see how much room we needed.

Our cabin

The ferry ticket was rather cheap compared to Brittany Ferries, and as we were travelling with the dogs, we'd booked a pet cabin - a cabin where you can take your pets (a maximum of 2, consisting of either dogs, cats or ferrets which for the life of me I can't quite understand why you would take your ferret on holiday!?) - so we were expecting something similar to the crappy Travelodge hotel we'd had at Ashford, but it was more like a cruise state room! Even the shower was better!

Apart from the dogs tap dancing in the night - their claws on the hard plastic bottom of their crate, we all got some much deserved sleep, and woke up about an hour before we passed under the Bridge!

I think it was at that moment it all became properly real, and just a bit more scary!

The start of something new

Merry Christmas / God Jul my Nordic Snø friends and chums :)..... (said in a Antoine de Caunes voice)

It's time for  a new blog post (cue the fanfare) and a slight change in blog title for 2017.

As our Norwegian adventure continues, this year has been slightly busy to say the least, and hence the slight slackness in blogging. For those eagle eyed you will note we are still having our Norway adventure, but have decided to take a slight detour via their/our favourite blue and yellow neighbours.

2017 is the year we finally depart England and head north on a full time basis! Why not Norway I hear you ask?   ...................Well I've landed a job in Sweden and we've decided to start our full time life up north in southern Sweden. I will be working for the people who we spend most of our time shopping with when in Norway! Thats right - IKEA.

Whilst we could change the blog title to maybe 'Adventures in meatballs', 'Allen key adventure' or possible 'Flat pack adventurer' our original Nordic Snø idea of a family adventure is still now even more true then ever, and the farm and barns in Norway live on and continue to be developed and we are still hopeful that we'll start welcoming more visitors. In the words of our 8 year old when she was asked if we should move to Sweden 'we've had lots of adventures of Norway daddy, why don't we start to have some in Sweden as well'..........ok! only need to tell me once.

So Happy New Year and lets hope 2017 continues to be full of adventure in both Norway and Sweden.

Apparently it's ok in Sweden to walk down the street in your dressing gown......

.......ah I see! they were going swimming!

btw. below is a post I wrote when I told my fellow directors and business owners I was leaving and at the time I didn't have a new job to go to.....funny how life turns out sometimes! Excuse the slightly more than usual train of thought ramblings.

(Wednesday 27th July 2016) It's 7.00 in the morning and I've been up since 5.30. The brown terracotta tiles of the waiting room floor provide a great surface for the very loud tapping of the business ladies shoes who's just hustled in looking rather stressed and clutching a very large coffee...'..maybe she should drink less coffee.....or quit her job and move abroad......Whilst I'm sat here looking relatively relaxed waiting for the train to birmingham, the honest truth is that my heart and head are jumping all over the place! 

And the reason? Well last week I handed my notice in (loud fanfare) and since then have agreed a timetable for leaving and methodology for selling my third of the business. So the road map, on which we started has passed a pretty critical stage! But why are you not full of excitement and happiness I hear you ask.  Well the honest answer is that I am! But the chimp on my shoulder is now tearing me apart saying what have you done (queue internal loud screaming). You see whilst we've pondered, planned and mused this scenario for quite some time, it's now finally here!* 

Having never had a run of unemployment or full time education in 43 years, the step, whilst exciting, is also making me feel a little nauseous to be honest! 

As one chapter comes to a very rapidly approaching end (about the same time as we could have a baby in and we all know how quick that happens....(btw I'm talking pregnancy, not conception ;) ) a new one starts to unfold. Albeit the new chapter is not fully planned out or written. 4 years ago when the olympics were held in London there were some often bleak times in our household, however, as a family we rose above those and got to where we are today.....and whilst I know/hope the nausea will pass I'm hoping it will be before the next olympics hit in 2020! 

Now,  on with the new chapter! 

*However, unlike Boris and Nigel we intend to see it through

Some pictures of the waterfront at Helsinborg, Southern Sweden to keep you interested...... there is surf nearby (or so the internet tells me!)

Hvor bor du?

Kath very kindly bought me a book recently about how to right the best blog and make a living from blogging......as you can tell so far I haven't had time to read it yet.....but hang on in there as the next 6 months are likely to be quite fun for us and anyone who is actually still following what we get up to! :)

We've just returned from our October half term trip and we are officially 2 years old (Gratulerer med dagen to us!). I can't believe it was 2 years ago that Maisie and I travelled to Norway, did the worlds largest shop in Ikea, Bilteema and Clas Ohslon and then tried occupying a house which hadn't been lived in for 30 years before the second wave of Ned and Kath joined us a few days later. On that initial visit there were 2 pieces of good fortune.....the first was that we hadn't been conned by some swindling major money scandal and we had actually bought a house and the key to it was really in the jar in the woodshed and secondly it didn't snow!

The first is that within 2 years, we now have running water (including hot water) thanks to our neighbour Kjetil, electricity thanks to Jan, the house now stands up straight again (thanks to Jon and his team (and some help from Mr B) and we now have some new triple glazed windows, an insulated roof, some bedrooms (thanks to Magnus and his crew), our neighbours and new friends in Ålen and Trondheim (you know who you are ;) ) for making us feel welcome and providing wood so we don't freeze to death and more importantly a home thanks to my crazy family. 

The crazies....

When we actually get to call it home will be for discussion (and the subject of some later posts i'm sure) but for now, at least, it is our little retreat from the UK and the hustle an bustle of city life.....oh hang on.... we live in rural north Devon....well retreat from the all the tourists.........oh hang.....its now winter and we are back to normal again! 

In perfect harmony

The second is that when we got the house for the first time, Maisie and I actually had lunch outside on the verandah.....well this time it was snowing! and for an English family from the south it felt like it was proper snowing! I do think however that for our neighbours it was just a shower and a probably just an inconvenience.....but whatever it was snowing!

The upshot of this was beautiful snowy mountains (until it melted on the lower slopes), our little beach and lake was frozen, and the edges of the higher mountain lakes were just starting to freeze over and as usual it feels a million miles from 'normal' life , whatever 'normal' life is!

Hessjøen just freezing at the edges

So we often get asked "where is your house / or where do you live (Hvor bor du?) so in true style, and with the aid of modern CGI techniques here's Kath explaining to grandpa roughly where things are. Speak soon - Vi Snakkes

FFS it's over there.......!!

Life's a beach

Our summer trip is now finished and we are back to the usual routine of school, work and making lists of things to sort out!

Our Norwegian summer was brief, but pretty amazing and enhanced by exploring some areas and places we haven't ventured to before and making some great new discoveries.

Having grown up by the sea, the lack of sand in our vicinity is always quite disturbing, (but for others who shall remain nameless and don't appreciate the feel of it between your toes or in your picnic) are less keen. As I mentioned in an earlier post we are due to start work on the barn conversion later in the year and prior to travelling we did a few bits of research on nearby properties, what available and prices. One of the nearby places, had some great photos of the cabin but also a shot of the beach in Haltdalen! I'm sorry......what!  The beach had golden sand, crystal clear water and back drop of mountains!

So from a photo and and what we thought could be a place name, we googled earth and consulted the map. There were 3 possible places in the vicinity, one of which was just off the main road, so we thought we would start there first.

On our first day we decided to find the beach and after looping back on ourselves and stopping along at a few different places we found a small right turning off the main road. 

How can you not find this place!!!

Driving the hire car down a dirt track we came to a clearing (with one other car in) parked up and proceeded on foot! The anticipation for me was building, but for  Ned it was just too much (he shares my love of sand and water) off he shot, squealing his head off, topped the ridge ) and there it was. An oasis in the middle of nowhere, not signposted from the main road, with free parking, a composting loo and rubbish bins which are kept are empty (see previous rants about our local beaches in the UK)

Ned's ability to immerse himself in any water he comes across was not lost on this particular day.  Despite rolling his shorts up he was soon quite wet, with me yelling 'noooooooooo'......it was at this point I noticed another family with 2 children looking slightly alarmed at Ned's efforts and my ignored bellowing fatherly instructions across the golden sand.

I needn't have feared though, as the gentleman in question proceed to strike up a conversation with us (it didn't take long for to him to realise we were english....we are very noisy!) ....and he was equally surprised that we lived nearby and it turned out his brother law (who had a cabin nearby) was British. We had a great chat for about 20 minutes about various things and then he asked if he could take our number so his brother law could maybe get in touch and say hi!

Now...... this is the point where your Englishness kicks in and you immediately think -"I'm not giving you my number you could be a murderer, con man or about to abduct my children....(maybe not a bad thing some times, although I'm sure they would be returned very quickly). After swallowing my English paranoia of strangers......after all this is Norway and people are still trustworthy and honest we handed over our number, said farewell and departed happy with our new discovery, vowing to return and then promptly stripped Ned of his sopping clothing so he didn't soil the hire car any further.

Fast forward 24 hours and imagine my surprise when Kath said we had a call from said brother in law, and an invite to their cabin for waffles and coffee. We met our hosts at their beautiful cabin near Glåmos which was beautifully set with a wonderful view thought the tress. The kids snaffled most of the waffles (the best piece of advice was given about waffle makers...........will share next time....there's a whole post coming on waffles), they were lovely hosts who gave us great advice and we arranged to give them a guided tour of our 'småbruk'' a few days later. 

More to come on waffles!

They also showed us around their adjacent family home (which belonged to the brother we met at the lake!) and was a beautiful timber house with blue shutters set in a tranquil lawn and worthy of the cover of Norske Hjem magazine.

So our trip to the beach was more fruitful then we ever thought and I can now rest easy that the beach is within short distance.......roll on more crunchy sandwiches, sandy toes and friendly chance encounters.