Pupletts in Sweden: Return to Malmö (16 June 23)

We arrived back in Copenhagen at around 2pm on Friday 16th June. I'd love to say it was incident free, but Cameron kept us on our toes. When we went through the check-in in Adelaide he realised he had lost his ipad and had a panicked run around the airport looking for it - eventually we found it in the front of the bag where he'd put it. Then when we were clearing security in Doha he realised that he didn't have his laptop. Luckily an attendant was able to call to our plane, where they found the laptop and had it brought to the gate for our next flight.

Then, in Denmark, while we waited to get through passport control and collect our bags, I tried to book our train tickets across the bridge. I was greeted by a big red warning that the trains were currently not operational due to a switch error and there were 'a few' replacement busses. This was a bit of a worry because we had a LOT of luggage. Fortunately the problem was fixed by the time we had our bags and cleared the airport and we were able to catch the train. It was a little daunting when the announcement was "We think we've fixed the problem so let's see how we go."

Luckily the train ride was uneventful and our hotel in Malmö was only about 5min walk from the train station. After dropping off our bags we then had a few more things to sort out. Work had organised us a car to borrow while they finalised our long term vehicle so we needed to pick up the keys for that before 5pm, but until we had the keys for our house we wouldn't have anywhere to park it.

So we walked first to work and collected the keys (but not the car) then walked to the house where we met the landlord and collected the house keys. The house was partially furnished, so we didn't have beds for the night - hence the hotel booking. Despite being midsummer we were greeted by an awesome thunderstorm and some very heavy rain:

We then went back and picked up the car and headed out to Ikea to look at beds and furniture. By this point we were too tired to do much more than select the beds and arrange for delivery ASAP - in this case on Sunday evening.

We then headed back to the house to park the car before walking back to the hotel for sleep. But there was a slight problem:

The garage was pretty narrow and the car was pretty wide... We were too tired to make it work on the first night, so we ended up parking by our hotel (and paying about $50 for the privilege).

The next day we headed back to the house to size up the furniture we would want to order and this time we managed to successfully park:

In between the few rain showers, Midsummer in Malmö was looking nice:

We then headed back to Ikea to order the rest of our furniture and cooked our first meal in the new house. We still had no beds, so it was another walk back to the hotel for sleep.

The following morning we packed and the kids enjoyed a game of Cornhole in the hotel foyer. They invented some new versions - it had to go over one of the wooden beams above before landing:

We then headed out to Gekås, Ullared - a huge shopping centre about a two hour drive away.

After shopping there, Tomas organised a catch up with his friend so we headed back, stopping via Net-On-Net in Arlöv (the north eastern area of Malmo) to look for TVs. We ended up buying them, but then came across a problem. To fit them in the car we would need to fold down the backseats meaning that only two people would fit in the car. Since Tom had the catchup planned, he and Kristine took the car home and Cameron and I stayed behind to take the bus back.

While we waited, I mused about the difference between this expat and the first one. When we first came to Sweden in 2015 Kris and the kids had never been outside Australia and we had no idea what to expect. We had two weeks between arriving and me starting work and in that time we did a few short walks but mostly stayed around near the hotel. We had no idea where to get groceries, phone chargers etc. This time we hadn't even been in the country for 48 hours and we had a house, a car and had been on a 400km round trip up to Gekås. And now Cameron and I had willingly stayed behind in the middle of nowhere to catch the bus back home. And I was due to start work the next day...

While Kris and Tom were at their friends house Cameron and I recieved the beds and we were able to have our first night sleeping in our new house.

Over our first week we got our tax appointment done (to get our person numbers renewed) and our biometrics (for residency cards). The rest of the furniture arrived on Tuesday and by the end of Wednesday we had it all assembled and arranged.

All we are waiting on now is the air and sea freight.

Friday 23rd is Middsommer and we are heading to a friend's for a BBQ, which puts a cap on a hectic but fun first week back in Sweden.