Here is the exterior of the "house". (Swedes generally use
"hus" for all buildings, not just houses. So Intentia's office
building is a house, our apartment building is a house, etc.) It's not
much to look at on the outside. Rather plain. The building is pretty
old -- I think somebody said 1920s-1930s. This is the front entrance.
Our apartment is on the opposite side. The driveway is gravel with a
stone walkway. The street is to the left (outside of the picture). If
you continue down the driveway and go through a fence you would get to
a bike path, and beyond that is Tinnerbäcken, a small river (we
would probably call it a creek).
When you enter our apartment there is a hallway extending to the right,
with the kitchen straight ahead. The refrigerator is on the right, and
then beyond that the room opens up slightly for a small table. The
kitchen is pretty small, especially compared to our house in Rochester.
The oven is small too -- some of our cookie sheets don't fit. Both the
stove and the oven are very slow to heat up. In many cases we have to
cook food in the oven for twice as long as the recipe says. But it gets
done eventually. The kitchen certainly isn't perfect, but the
essentials are there: refrigerator, freezer, oven, stove, microwave,
sink, table. On the right side you can see a collection of grocery
bags -- necessary for going shopping.
If you proceed down the hall to the right you will reach the bathroom.
It is precisely large enough to fit the bathtub, toilet, and sink. But
I guess that's all you really need in a bathroom anyway. The shower head
is typical for Sweden (from what we've seen in our apartment and the
hotels we've stayed in). There is a vertical bar coming out from the
wall, and the shower head can slide up and down along that or rotate
from one side to the other. Seems like a good idea. The bathtub is a bit
deeper than a typical bathtub in the U.S., and it doesn't have an
overflow hole, which means you can fill it up all the way. That's very
nice. The toilet is also pretty typical for Sweden. Although you can't
see it in this picture, there is a knob on the top of the toilet tank
which you pull up to flush. It's also common for Swedish toilets
(although not ours) to have both a half-flush and a full-flush so you
can save water when it's not needed.
If you look to the left from the above picture, you will be looking into
the side of the bedroom. You would be looking through the door on the
left side of the picture here. This picture was taken while standing in
the living room, which means the bedroom is right in the middle of the
apartment. Judging by the apartments we have visited here, it is pretty
common for the bedroom to be used as a living area during the day. This
is a bit of a contrast to the U.S. where our bedrooms are usually more
of a private area. The bed is really two small beds pushed together.
There appears to be only one size of bed in Sweden -- small. We've seen
this in apartments, on TV, and in hotels. One hotel we stayed at
actually had a double bed, but it still had two separate single blankets
on it. Rather strange.
Here is the living room. This picture was taken before we got our
shipment from the U.S. If you took the picture today, there would be a
bunch of boxes in the corner. We're looking forward to moving to the
larger apartment in December so we can finally get everything unpacked.
You can see from the picture that the living room has wood floors. So
does the bedroom and the hallway. Nearly everywhere we've been in Sweden
has wood floors. In some cases they have wood walls and wood ceilings
too. I don't think we've ever seen a carpeted floor here. Of course, as
you can see here, there are usually rugs over much of the floor.
There is a laundry room downstairs. It is shared by all of the
apartments in the building. You have to sign up for a timeslot ahead of
time. This can be a pain when there are a lot of apartments in the
building, but there are only a few apartments in this building so it's
not a big deal. The equipment is rather old and doesn't work very
well. They don't hold very much and it takes a long time to dry the
clothes -- and even then they don't get very dry. But I suppose it
could be worse. (Of course, I'm not the one who actually has to do
the laundry.)
This picture is from the back yard. This was taken back in October when
the weather was nicer. Swedes like nature, and there are lots of fruit
trees and berry bushes and things around. Our yard has an apple tree
and a pear tree. On the other side of the back yard (to the right in
this picture) is a bike path leading down towards the creek. From here
you can bike just about anywhere along the various paths in town.
There are lots of plants and flowers in the yard. Of course they looked
nicer in the summer than they do now. The picture on the right is from
the side of the building nearest the street.
This final picture on the left is back at the front of the house. Here
you can see more fruit trees and plants. There is a bike rack kind of
hidden behind the plants.
