Day 1

Despite getting 12 hours of sleep, it was hard to drag my butt out of bed! Jet lag is harsh.

Minor accomplishments today.

First, I applied for a bank account (which won’t be fully approved for a week or so) so that I’ll have someplace to deposit my pay from IKEA. There’s only one bank/branch that lets IKEA workers apply before they have a Person Number – and that’s by the office in Hyllie, so I got a lot of train time today, out and back. As an aside, there’s lots of things that have to happen in sequence – I need to get a bank account, so that I can get a BankID card, which I need in order to get a local cell number, which I need in order to rent an apartment, etc, etc.

Second, the trip to the bank gave me a chance to see what the commute will be like (not bad at all) and how life will be multi-modaling with a Brompton (kind of a PITA, but not bad). The leg from the hotel to the train station goes right thru the city center, and happens to pass a number of really nice coffee shops. That is going to be NOICE!

Third, I got a haircut, and found out that there’s (at least) one place that doesn’t take electronic payments (cash only) and had to run to the ATM to get some cash to pay for it! But it was a hip little 2-seat barbershop on the way to the city center, so I’ll probably go there again. Aside here, I had stuffed some euros from my last EU trip into my wallet, and realized that I have USD, EU, and SEK (Swedish Kronor) in there and it’s dumb.

Finally, I did some more walking around and did some grocery shopping. I do like my sandwiches. Everything I need to make one that I like came out about 110SEK (or $11.59 for Americans). So, not too bad for a weeks worth of lunches! Yes, the mayo came in a tube. And I excluded the fish from the sandwich total – that was about $6.

All-in-all, a big day!