Monthly Archives: December 2013

On the road again

Sweden, Travel, Uncategorized

Ugh. My shoulders and back hurts like I’ve been trekking  with a huge backpack. I’m in a bad need of a massage.  Unfortunately, massages are one of the things Ola’s not good at… I just left him at Gothenburg’s central station and I’m now sitting on a train to Scania. Free wi-fi all the way down. Good stuff.

 

Christmas has been real nice, as it always is my in-laws and extended family. They live on the countryside on Sweden’s west coast, next to the sea, amidst farms and fields. An insane amount of food, washed down with mulled wine and . This was the last year we celebrated christmas in the house Ola grew up in, his parents have sold it to a cousin and build a smaller house farther to the sea. So I raided the barn on stuff the’ll be throwing away and I must say, I am impressed with how much I was able to push down in my luggage. In my bags I now have a cotton candy maker (which I bought in Sweden but it doesn’t work in Ecuador, so I’m giving it to my sister), 2 bottles of wine and a mortar (christmas gifts), 2 flatirons (on from the fifties, older), a hand drill, long as my forearm and with wooden handle, one copper pot on three legs with a little cup, also with legs, one big bottle, maybe 2liters and one wooden moose, also from the fifties. Good thing my sister is on her way to Scania with a car. Unfortunately I couldn’t bring the window frames with me, but my sister and her bbf are talking about doing a road trip to pick them up. One person’s junk, another one’s treasure.

It was nice to get some rest, now with Scania, the friend and family tour really begins. This time I’m spending a totalt of 4 days in south Sweden, which is one more day than usual, so I’m a little less stressed. But, normally I have my schedule done before I arrive. But I’ve been too exhausted, I haven’t even started to make it. But I’m not that worried, my friends are understanding to my lack of time and try to be flexible. Which is needed, 5-6 friends+my grandma and my cousins family and a birthday celebration in 3 full days and 2 half days is nothing you manage without some help.

Home, at last

Moving

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So, turned out the water leak wasn’t a made up thing. That was Wednesday, about one and a half week ago. I wanted to shoot myself. On top of it, we had the delivery of the bed the following Saturday which obviously couldn’t happen when there were piles of plaster and shit all over. I was told that they for sure were going to be done on Saturday. I was sceptic, but lo and behold, they were!

I came here on Saturday morning, preparing for the worst, but found a woman and her 2 kids cleaning the place. The kids not cleaning so much, given they were about six and one and a half. ACK! My Swedish, socialist, rich global north heart broke! Small children with runny noses should be with a baby sitter or something! But what can you do? Some hours later, when I returned, big sister was carrying her baby brother in a shawl on her back. No complaints were heard but it was a bit too much for me, so I took her outside and bought some fruit and candy.

Yesterday I managed to go to JapOn (where we bought washing machine, oven and fridge) and explain to them that the display on our oven doesn’t work, that I don’t know why and that I didn’t try the oven immediately after it was installed because we had a water leak and the place was full of workers, and that i DID ask if there was problem because the the outlet was for 220v and the oven’s plus for 110 but that I was told over and over again that there was no problem. “No problemos/no preocupe” are frequently used frases here. But yeah, I did manage to tell them there is a problem now and they are sending a technician on Monday or Tuesday. I am mighty proud of myself.
Then I went hunting for a table, which took the rest of the day. I was close to giving up, because everything is very big, heavy in dark woods or glass, which is not our style. Finally, with help of Vivi, I was taken to a market and found a dark table with 4 chairs plus cushions and home delivery for 130. Vivi was a big help with price negotiation.

In the evening we had our huasipichai, the moving in party, which was pretty successful.

No end in sight

Moving

Friday November 22, when we signed the contract for the apartment, the landlady’s brother asked to keep the keys until Tuesday, so they could finish the apartment. When we were there to receive the delivery of internet and the kitchen appliances this Saturday they still weren’t done. There were still holes in the ceiling for lamps, not all the lamps that were installed were functioning and the fan over the stove was only up, but not connected. We were obviously pissed and threatened to go look for another apartment. The real estate agent was duly mortified and promised to fix it before this weekend. Today he called and told us there have been a water leak in the apartment above us and 2 of our rooms are damaged and they need 8 days to fix it.
I’m suspicious but also WTF? This is a completely new house, how the FUCK did this water damage happen?!!?

Friday, last week

Ecuador, Moving

Bleh. This has been a hard week and at first I didn’t have time to write and then I got stressed because I hadn’t which made me so anxious so I couldn’t. Vicious circle of my life.

So, anyway! We got an apartment! Whoop whoop! I found it through , we looked at it last Thursday and signed on Friday! Huge relief, since this was the only one of the 12 we saw that we really liked. Ok, true, we saw some nice ones in Carolina, but we said from the start we didn’t want to live among all the other gringos, and the only reason we even looked there was because it was impossible to make the real estate people to understand we didn’t want to live there. This was -not- a language barrier, it’s quite simple to say “We don’t want to live in Carolina” but it just didn’t go through.

The rest of the Friday was hectic, Ola had meetings and we had to by hinking shoes and swimsuits since Rebecca and Panchito had invited us to come along to Baños. We left around 6.30, thinking it would take around 3 hours to get there, but of course there was traffic so we didn’t get there until 11.30. Also, in the dark it was pretty hard to find the hostel, we were told to turn left at the police station, but of course we drove straight pass. It didn’t help that the road to the place was a dark, suspicious looking dirt road either. But we got there, safe and sound and crashed.
In the morning, we were served freshly baked bread, coffee, juice, honey and jam and local produced tomatoes before we hit the road again.
And hit it we did. First thing that happened, as soon as we left the dirt road and joined real traffic, was a flat tire. Ola and Panchito managed to fix it and were very proud. Rebecca and I hanged out with a puppy. When we got to the meet-up place in Baños we were just 15 minutes late and after signing some papers and been given rain boots, we and 4 others and 2 guides was off to adventure!