It is a great view looking west, towards the lush and opulent Holland Park - to the south over Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, north over Bayswater and Hamstead Heath in the distance and East with the towers of the City glimmering though the fog. I will surely miss this view, as after ten years in London I am partly relocating back to Sweden.
Our current plan of action is to spend somewhere between five and six months in Sweden, and share the rest of the year between the US and the UK. I will still be operating my businesses from London, and I will most likely be spending quite a bit of time here as well.
The purpose of this little blog will be to share my experience of returning to Sweden with both Swedish and English friends. As I have more Swedish friends with a command of the English language than vice versa I have chosen to write in English.
I will not only share my experiences, but I will also review and compare the two countries to one another. How are we treated by people, the government and corporations in these two countries? What are we allowed to and required to do and not do? What obstacles and benefits come with living in the UK versus living in Sweden?
At the end of the year I will evaluate the pros and cons of each country and make a decision on where to live more permanently.
The past decade has surely changed me a great deal, but the United Kingdom and Sweden as countries have changed greatly too.
When I arrived in Clapham South on the 2nd of September 2002 you could get a vegetable pilau at Safeway for 69p. Blair had not yet moved English forces into Iraq, and The 7/7 bombings were yet several years off in the future. The English pound was tremendously over-valued and Gordon Brown was exclaiming "the End of Boom and Bust".
When I left Sweden you were still not allowed to buy painkillers in corner shops, few had heard of Stieg Larsson, and Wallander was not yet an international export. The Swedish economy was puttering along with little sign of growth, with the Krona still bobbing up around at an undervaluation of around 20% due to clumsy trade barriers and a long-standing deficit-problem.
Clearly an expensive time to relocate as I converted my life savings into just over four grand and moved into a sublet in a Council Estate near Balham.
* * *
As we have not yet moved into the lovely new Swedish flat (I will be maintaining accommodation in London too) my first comparison between the UK and Sweden will concern getting passports for our two girls.
UK:
My wife Jaana spent better part of two weeks collecting and filling out paperwork. She went to the post office twice to collect the appropriate forms, brought over a friend with "Good Standing in the Community" to attest to the validity of the four photographs we had taken of each girl. I got in touch with my accountant and had the last six years of tax return sent over. She then spoke to no less than THREE government officials to ensure everything was complete and filled out correctly before waiting 3 weeks for an appointment at the passport authority only to be told an additional six forms from two separate branches of government were also required. Each of these forms could take up to 3 months to receive, and then a new appointment at the passport authority needed to be made.
Our clerk could only apologize as to why the government officials we had conferred with earlier had been unaware of these additional six forms - as the matter is "complex". We could be given no guarantee that the application would be complete even after complying with this additional 4-month ordeal, though it would "Probably - most likely go though".
Sweden:
In Sweden, the first thing the government requires from an individual is get assigned an "Identity number" which is kept by the Tax authority. This is what would be considered infringement of personal integrity in the UK, and it is symptomatic that it is held by the tax Authority - which in breach of EU law has been granted the power to administer legal punishment without a trial.
The upside of this perversion is the incentive to quickly expand the tax base by getting more people into the system, and although we initially were told we would have to wait 8 weeks to get the Identity Numbers as all the Swedes go on vacation at the same time (more on this absurdity later) we eventually managed to acquire taxable status for our infants in less than two weeks.
Once the identity numbers were cleared the process of getting temporary travel passports were expediently dealt with in a matter of hours.
UK:
+ The ability to fast-track your passport application by paying an extra fee
- The inability to tell you how to fill out your application
Sweden:
+ Friendly and efficient service once the Identity numbers had been established
- The idea of a complete shut-down of civilization during the summer months labelled "The Industrial Vacation"
Winner:
Sweden beats the UK in terms of bureaucratic efficiency hands down.
Don't all Swedes go on vacation at the same time, because the period of vacation-friendly weather is rather short?
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