My family and I have been living in Stockholm, Sweden, for the past eight months. We are Americans. We moved here from Seattle. Throughout my life I have taken extended periods of time living or traveling abroad. It opens the senses, rejuvenates the soul, and restores the perception there is new in the world. You learn people have much more in common than they have differences.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I spent a couple of years backpacking through Central and South America and Asia. I left a good job, came back and went to graduate school, and had the fortune of returning to a good job. I once thought extended travel would be over when my wife Elizabeth and I had kids. Luckily, another grad student pointed out that we could "just take them with you." And so we did, once on extended parental leave to southern Europe and Japan, and then again on a sabbatical to Indonesia and Australia.
Then, I once thought that extended travel would be over when the kids grew into middle school, an age when socializing and independence starts to move to the forefront. Again, luckily, a manager of mine told me that a year abroad in Japan in 7th grade was one of the best experiences of her life.
So after four years of working post-COVID, Elizabeth and I decided we would spend a year abroad before our daughters reach high school age. Our belief is that those years are best served by continuity, and at three years apart, this means seven years in the same place in America. So before that time we had a final one to two year window to go somewhere new. We scouted out Costa Rica but decided we didn't care for the rainy season and the Americanized beach communities were a bit too unstructured for us. So we looked at Europe instead.
My job was a remote one at a startup and it turned out that one of the founders lived in Stockholm and the other was planning a move there. That gave us an opening, a reason to be somewhere where we would hit the ground running with a social support network. I also had friends from grad school living in the city. We briefly considered Spain, but decided we would try Sweden and I had a corporate transfer work visa arranged for me that would give us at least a year in the country.
We arrived at the end of August and began to get set up. Two parents, two girls, a havanese dog, and no place to live and completely unsure about schooling. Everything in Sweden becomes a lot easier once you are fully accepted into the social system. This requires a valid visa for a stay of at least a year which we had. It takes time but the dominoes all slowly, very slowly, landed into place. We had our visas approved, got residence cards, registered with a municipality for tax purposes (yes we pay the 50% income tax,) received the ever-so-crucial personal numbers, opened bank accounts and got BankID and Swish for identity verifications and payments, and this let us finally get things like a mobile phone subscription.
By October, we were fully in the Swedish system. Stockholm is a notoriously difficult place to find housing. We found a house to rent at the end of Lidingo, a posh island east of Stockholm by contacting the owner two months in advance. By coincidence they were moving to Bali - where we had lived a few years earlier - and we all jived. At the same time we were visiting schools (which had already started!) After considering a few bilingual school options we decided to enroll the girls in the Stockholm International School, which has kids from 60+ countries, with the idea they would make friends more easily. The home owners wanted us to commit at least to June (we were thinking maybe of moving to Spain after Christmas) and along with the enrollment fees and the hassle of having to get set up all over again, we decided to make the commitment.
The girls' school was near the center of Stockholm and so they learned how to take the train on their own to the school from our house on the island and back again (they were 12 and 9.) This helped grow their sense of independence. Stockholm is a very safe city and it is common to see children of this age riding on their own in the metro. The girls don't have phones, but we got our older daughter a dumb phone for calls in case of emergency and they also have smart watches and air tags so we can know where they are and text easily.
My work was located on the same island, Lidingo, a small startup office in the converted garage of the CEO's house. It was a 20 minute drive from where we lived. Since we were out of the city we needed a car (even to get the girls to the tram station on winter mornings,) and after awhile we settled on longer term rentals from Avis. We went through 5 or 6 different cars of the same model - Peugeot 3000 - over the 8 months and paid something like $900 a month for the rental. We could share a car easily, the public transport was always available, too.
Elizabeth wasn't working at this time. Swedes are well known to be less openly friendly than Americans or Southern Europeans. (Asking someone how are you? Har ar du? is a big faux pas if you don't know the person well.) My wife has an outgoing personality that overrides such conventions and she did well in building us up a social life here. Having kids in an ex pat school is a cheat code. You become friends with the parents. We also had the people from my startup and my grad school friends.
By the end of the year we were 100% set up. Swedish is a difficult language to learn, but people in Sweden are very fluent in English and ChatGPT translates photos of signs and documents easily when needed. Eventually, we were accepted into the national healthcare system which makes doctor appointments inexpensive and easy. We started to each receive child support payments (not based on necessity) which we applied to kids' activities. Our friends on the island helped us find after school activities outside of the school for the girls to join - track, soccer, and figure skating.
And we also had easy enough access to all the varied places to visit in Europe. Stockholm's Arlanda airport is easy and not crowded. Unfortunately it is not a hub for SAS any longer so there are fewer direct flights to places, but this is a minor complaint. We were able to manage brief trips to London, Croatia, Rome, Denmark, and Tenerife. Now that the spring is here, we are hosting a lot of visitors and planning more trips. We feel we've barely scratched the surface and want to stay in Europe one more year, somewhere warmer. So now we are looking to do it all again and find a place in Spain or Portugal or Italy as a new base.