300 days in Sweden

After a short twitter poll people chose I blogged about moving to Stockholm in Sweden. Despite so many angles to look at my last 300 days of life experience, I’ll try to focus on something practical or fun to read. Comments section is for the rest. Statements below change as days evolve — this is how this blog-like long read was designed.

I was born in Ukraine, finished my 5 years of Computer Science studies in Belarus and joined a small startup called Unity Technologies in Lithuania. Now 8 years after I am in Sweden, happy at King. So I did have nomad experience before moving here. Still, dropping everything one has and moving to a different country with different culture is always a challenge. A nice and potentially very stressful challenge to reset everything.

Pull the lever, disembark from the airplane with a small backpack. This is it, my inventory is empty, lets reinvent life, friends, social context, assets… One more time.

Day 01

I am at an aparthotel in Solna for a week. Don’t know what Solna is? Good. I wanted to stay there because the area looked good on the map. Metro, trains, connection to Arlanda airport, green areas, urban areas. But I found myself too spoiled with Vilnius to enjoy sleepy Solna.

Vilnius is where there’s a 30 minutes gap between a thought, an intent of doing something, and actually doing that something. Sports, public, social, shopping, well, anything anytime! More, I wake up at 6AM to get in time for my 7AM flight SK1741.

Vilnius is a small 600K-strong city with extremely vibrant life, green areas, busy nightlife and rich social culture. Obviously I expect same but better from wherever I relocate to. Stockholm in many ways had felt similar to Vilnius, but I had been biased by having a company card on my previous visits here.

Day 02

It is Scandinavian March but I walk to my Solna. A 3–4 km walk, depending on the path I take. Best way to feel the city is to walk it, watch buildings, yards, city transport, people. Also SEK54 for riding 4 metro stops felt too off. €5.5 for 15 min commute!

A week is not enough to experience the price shift from Eastern Europe to Scandinavia. Eventually I learned an SL top-up travel card lets me pay SEK25 for my 15 min commute. It was €0.60 in Vilnius. €3 was my average Uber ride.

I spend so much time in grocery stores because the food is different. Most brands are local with SE, NO, DK manuals, what is awesome. But it takes time to figure out what I like and what I can eat.

I cook now. I haven’t really cooked since my student days. Not that often at least. Eating out in the evening is like… starting with SEK300, lunch menu is SEK100. This is triple or double to Vilnius. So pasta and cheese for now. Svensk hårdost is sold in 0.5 kilo bricks!

My Eastern European consciousness keeps calm and carries on.

Day 13

I am in San Francisco, announcing my new role at King at GDC and doing my best to be useful to my team. Somehow I am at a kind of royal hotel with everything silver or gold plated.

My boss asked for my Swedish phone, I told I did not have one since my Lithuanian tariff in roaming was cheaper. So he got me an iPhone with a Swedish number on company. Cannot complain.

I suddenly need a jacket! I am returning to Stockholm from SF, and the spring is still pending there. It is like +20 in SF. All I have is a hoodie maybe. Straight from the airport I will travel to my new apartment. It will be Sunday, so the landlord will just leave the door open with the keys on the table. Sverige!

Day 24

King has also been very good: nice onboarding processes, lots of internal initiatives and groups, like the books club or the board games club. Very easy to meet new people and spend time in a clever way.

Landing at a 2000-strong company I expected it to be corporate or at least formal. Which was a false assumption. Once I asked Thomas Hartwig, King CTO, for an intro to someone. He had that deep look at me and replied: “we have no intros, just email whoever you want, they will reply”. This worked! Everything else just worked as well.

I still have that Eastern European working hours mindset and often find myself in the office with a cleaning lady. Being late from the office is what I train myself not to.

Swedish result oriented approach to working hours does actually work on me — I am more productive, sleep better and have so much time outside the office. Suddenly life is not that 2–3 hours before I fall asleep.

Day 45

I have my first apartment viewing! There was a King hired agency to look after me, help me sort out tax papers and alike. My EU passport does not require me do any immigration drama. But the housing drama is strong in Stockholm! Especially given how whimsical I am with this question. I knew I would not spend in Stockholm that much time further ahead, but an apartment I’d rent would need to feel home.

I’ve been living in SoFo, a hip area, noisy and full of night life. I needed that change after my Solna experience, and I considered staying somewhere around Södermalm. King pays for the apartment while I am looking for the one to rent. My road home takes a seashore walk or a Gamla Stan walk, then a mountain with breathtaking views on the big cruise ships. About 30 minutes, or more if stopping to enjoy evening sun and young Scandinavian spring.

I failed today’s viewing. I rejected so much proposals, this was the one that looked promising on the paper, but did not feel like it really.

Day 106

We have a new apartment. Just two and a half months after =] Right, Stockholm enjoyed Eurovision and the real estate market went all in to that. But also my expectations evolved so much.

My general feeling now is that there is a stock price for things in Sweden. One can find bargains, but those usually are not good. So an apartment in Stockholm is SEK15000. It is possible to slash a SEK1000 but then the apartment requires a 20–30 minute commute with a monthly pass being SEK800. You slash another SEK1000 and the apartments you get are unfurnished. Or there can be a rare find of a central apartment with basic furniture for SEK12000 but you get a scrap yard view as a free bonus. The apartment would be on the first floor and utilities, bills and internet may come on top.

We ended up in Vasastan, in a boutique apartment with a SEK14500 rate flat. Nothing on top. The catch? It is a 6 month lease. And those are most common here. 12 or more month contracts are even more expensive and often happen to be agency apartments with hotel-like level of coziness.

Getting a new apartment gonna be easier for me later on, as I’ll be able to get a review from my landlord and a proof I am nice. And Christy is nice too.

Day 147

We love Vasastan area so much! So much mountains, lakes and parks for hiking and running. I go swimming to Ulvsundasjön bay nearby. Christy gets a book from the stadsbibliotek nearby and we crash in Vasaparken under the evening sun watching rugby students hugging each other. And Flygbussarna airport transfer stop is by my door steps.

My Vilnius biorhythms have shifted from eternal pubs and hanging out to sports, nature and ekologiskt food. Glad it did not happen before my early thirties, but it makes total sense today.

At this point I feel my local social life beyond the office is getting healthy. I get to a gamedev party at Imperiet and I have lots of people to talk to. An important milestone that had taken maybe a few years after my relocation to Vilnius.

Biking everywhere! The town and the car drivers are so bike-aware. I have a fixie to force me keep myself below 25km/h in the city and a cyclo-cross (ok, this is Christy’s bike) to go wild.

I regret I found out Svenska sommar too late though. I did not know it was only 2 months. I’ve spent June and July in heavy travels, took a week long vacation in Vilnius and it was only August when I got it. Summer in Scandinavia is magnificent, but so short. Learned sommarjacka is a must for comfortable life =]

Day 198

Christy got a Sister and several very good projects in Vilnius. She trains best young professional figure skaters, some of the best young ballerinas and there’s a theatre project upcoming. So we commute. 700 km. Weekly.

I’ve been taking W68072 on Friday evenings and returning with SK1741 Monday mornings. Christy prefers Norwegian airlines because of free wifi and €11 (eleven) one way. Return airfare is often within €30, door-to-door is 2:30 to 3 hours, so the commute works for us.

STO-VNO weekly for 200 days and another 200 ahead does sound crazy, but we can do it. Headphones and backpack. Leave the office Friday evening, moon-walk into the airplane with just an electronic boarding pass — it is Europe, no border checks — an hour later the airplane lands, another 15 minutes till I open our Vilnius apartment door.

Sometimes I combine my work travels so Vilnius is in between. Makes me change 3 countries within a week. Sometimes work trips are longer. I had to travel around the world in 20 days — Stockholm-Barcelona-Vilnius-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore-San Francisco-Seattle and back. I blogged about it, — business class sleeping seats help me be fresh, productive and happy.

With schedule like this travel assistance hot line and automation by Concur and TripIt are what matters. Calendar and expenses are maintained automagically, and should delays/cancellations happen, I just call in to an agent and rest in a lounge until I get a new itinerary.

This ad exposes my worst fears of Swedish winter.

Day 239

I was proclaimed by locals to enjoy a depression in Autumn or Winter at least. Well, no. I bike to work and around, just got some lights and skiing goggles. The roads are clean of snow, it rarely rains, drivers are aware there be cyclists in the dark, so it feels safe to me. I happily swapped this kind of winter for maybe 40 minutes of extra sunlight in Vilnius.

King has wellness benefits that basically mean free gym for me. There’s a huge backlog of games I could not get to play throughout the year, because there’s always been so much to do outside. So winter is a bit of a bike, daily gym and games! Hikes and hang outs are less frequent and happen mostly on weekends. Apparently I am one of few locals without a winter depression here =]

It is a breaking point. 7 months to feel the culture, the language and understand if I like it enough at King and in Stockholm to stay. I actually do. I enjoy the culture of ultimate tolerance, focus on creativity and a clear mission. I meet happy people in the office, I have a quality time outside of it. I am assured I would get help and support, so I can focus on my work and life.

12 month gym membership and 200XP in Duolingo for Svenska were a final dot to my commitment. My King-funded Swedish class is starting in spring.

Day 300

Locals talk about Swedish culture a lot and expect people to get it. I felt like I was expected to get it from the day 0. Quite a pressure. I knew that was expected though. I spent lots of time in Copenhagen during my Unity days and had tasted the Nordic lifestyle.

Probably bringing own rules and customs to Sweden would not work, at least not in Stockholm. The city has own biorhythms people adhere to, so do love it or hate it.

There are cities like Vilnius, designed for young lifestyle of partying, festivals, town-wide sport-events and all kind of crazy things. Bring your own rules and you’ll be welcome, design and craft your life style the way you want it. Innovate, disrupt, do your own thing, then hire a few locals and you’re a hero in the media.

And there are established cities where everything has a design, a defined way for everything to be done. There’s an expected level of quality for everything, and that level is high as well as the prices are. If something is not clear, they would arrange a meeting to plan for a meeting to solve the core of the problem.

So much assumptions, so much local culture and processes. I do like it. It does correlate with my life values and I am willing to import the Swedish culture.