First full day in Stockholm

So here we are, waking up to our first full day in Stockholm.

I feel very very strange indeed. The last days have been pretty dan freaky frankly. James & Prima's wedding was totally great at the weekend, both nights were amazing fun. Sunday night then we went out with Tom, Karen, Steve and Jon and had some tapas and beers and a few laughs together. It was a fine was to spend my last night. Since then I've been a huge mix of really string emotions ranging from excitement, fear, trepidation, sadness, and some which I don;t really have the vocabulary for which could only be described as "come on then - I'm mad for it" - and "we're here - we've done it".

Monday during the day was spent packing and we saw all our parents at various points during the day, which was nice, but difficult as we hadn't alot of time to devote to them at that point as we were just running around packing madly.

In the morning Airpets came and took the cats away, and that was pretty damn tough. Sarah was in tears and I was quite choked. I know they'll be cool - but we're just a bit soppy about them, it'l be good when they arrive here. But that'll be a few weeks yet I expect.

Up until that point I'd fairly held it all together, with saying goodbye to everyone and all the organisation. I was just treating it like a project of things to do I guess and some of the size of it all hadn't really hit me. That night my last task before going out to grab some food down the road for dinner, was to take the compost up to the top of the garden. Now the top of the garden is probably my favourite place of all within that house and I just lost it completely and was in floods of tears, standing looking out across the park and the downs, the sun was setting, the sky was orange and beatifully lit, the birds were singing a dusk chorus and frankly it was a stunning evening and seemed to encompass everything that was good about living there. For about 30 minutes I was just absolutely gone, couldn't talk, couldn't communicate, just sobbing incessantly (as I am now a bit writing this!). This just kinda brought out everything else for me, and I was wailing at Sarah and well, it was both good and bad. Good to get it out I think. I thought alot at that point about all the people I was leaving behind. The thing is however much I know I'll see the people the question, I will miss them terribly and i will miss being able to just give them a call and meet up that same day or whatever. That's a tough thing to let go. When you're feeling like that everything seems a bit intense eh.

anyway.....

So last night, having arrived and sorted out the car hire etc. We checked into our apartment hotel. Its right next to work and it's just like a normal hotel really, apart from only part time reception and no restaurant. Obviously the benefits above that are that we have a small kitchenette and a fridge / freezer etc, with various pots and pans. Basically most cooking is possible apart from there is no oven.

We then went off to see 2 houses. The first was nice but they wouldn't take cats (mistake by the estate agent there) so we left fairly quickly. The second was really nice in a fantastic location overlooking a big lake with loads of great woodland and lakeside walking right outside. the owners were the most friednly people ever and we ended up staying for 90 minutes having loads of tea , cake and ice cream with them, and they then took us on a walking tour of the local area!! It was quite strange at first because of not being used to the hospitality of that type, but once you get over that, then it was fine. The only thing was that we didn't really want their house, as its not available until the end of June earliest, and I don;t want to live in a hotel until then. But hey, it was a great evening, we chatted alot and asked them questions about life and stuff, it was useful, and they got to chat to us about England as well because their son was going to university there in October.

So then we came home, grabbed a couple of snacks, because we'd stayed too long in that house viewing and all the supermarkets were shut, and had an early night. It had been a long and strange and quite emotional day, but surprisingly I slept quite well.

Categories: stockholmlife, moving