Thursday, October 22, 2015

Sameness

My first trip to the US took place in 1985 when I went to Los Angeles to visit the environmental organization Tree People. The founders of this organization (Andy & Katie Lipkis) had been in Stockholm where my dad and I met with them. They invited us and I felt that it was time for me to take a leap of faith and visit them. I was only 24 and had never travelled abroad on my own. That trip was definitely a leap of faith for me and I still remember how much I grew as a person during those 3 weeks when I stayed with Tree People and were taken care of like a "royalty" :) by members of this group.
As it is 30 years ago I don't remember details about everything I did but I was welcomed like Americans usually welcome people - with open arms and enthusiasm.

Despite a really bad cold that I caught I enjoyed myself tremendously during my visit and I still remember that I had thoughts that I wanted to live in the US. At that time I had no idea how hard it is to legally immigrate to the US, which maybe was a good thing. When I realized how hard it was to immigrate I thought that I would remain in Sweden and could not, even in my wildest imagination, foresee that I would meet with and marry an American.

It was pretty hard for me to come back to Sweden even after only 3 weeks as I felt "hit in the head" with the "smaller space" that was - and still is - in Sweden compared to the "bigger space" in the US. It is hard to put this into words but it is a feeling that permeates both countries. Sweden has been a fairly homogenous country for a long time (this is changing now with all the immigrants that are coming to Europe and Sweden) and there is a feeling of sameness in the Swedish society. People seem to appreciate to do things that others are doing, dress in similar clothes, have houses that look very similar, etc.
This is the opposite to the US where almost everything and anything is accepted and part of the American society. The number of people in each country is most likely a contributing factor (Sweden's population is only about 9.5 million people right now) but there is something else that has "colored" how things are done in Sweden. Exactly what that is, I do not really know but the word that came to me when I was thinking about this is "sameness."
A good example is something called "fredagsmys" in Swedish. It is a phenomenon that started some years ago when people in Sweden eat something "cozy" and maybe watch something on TV on Friday evenings. And this phenomenon actually spread to big parts of the Swedish population. Translated to English it would be something like "cozy Friday." The thought of something even remotely similar in the US is not possible.

I am now noticing this "sameness" when I am in Sweden and it feels odd to me as I have got used to the 'bigger space" in the US. One thing that attracted me to the US was the "bigger space" and all the options. This is a big thing for me as I have always felt different and the US is in many ways more allowing when it comes to differences. In that sense I have always felt more at home in the US.

Maybe Swedes are a bit like agent Smith in the Matrix movies. :)

Monday, October 19, 2015

Thoughts about cars

I never had a driver’s license when I lived in Sweden. That might seem odd when you live in the US but the Stockholm area has great public transportation with buses, trams, a subway system, and local trains. Now, I am used to having my own car and it is also needed when you live in a rural area.

When I am now in Sweden I will not rent a car as I do not know all the Swedish traffic signs and regulations so I would most likely be somewhat of a traffic hazard on the roads. ;) Also, most Swedish cars have manual transmission which I have almost forgotten how to use. Michael and I had two cars and one had manual transmission so I did learn how to drive that car at least somewhat decent. However, the car I have had for the past 10 years has automatic transmission which has made my manual transmission skills almost non-existent.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for about 8 days to go to two different parts of Sweden, Värmland and Dalarna, to visit friends and I am taking buses and trains. That feels much safer and I can relax and enjoy the scenery.

When I visited Sweden several years ago I noticed that the cars were quite a bit smaller than the cars in the US. Now I have noticed that people seem to drive cars that are significantly bigger. It must be a trend most likely. Many Swedes love US-related things so maybe the sizes of cars are influenced by the US "standard" size. I saw this pickup truck the other day and immediately felt more at home. :) Pickup trucks are very common in California but fairly uncommon in most parts of Sweden.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Passport and bank account

Time is flying and I do not seem to have quite enough time to write as often as I would like to. This will be a bit long, but I wanted to share these experiences as it is not real easy any longer to be a dual citizen and especially an American citizen.

Nowadays I always travel with two passports when I go to Sweden as I am a dual citizen. I use my American passport to leave and enter the US and my Swedish passport when I enter Sweden and the European Union.

Swedish passports are only valid for five years compared to American passports that are valid for 10 years. My Swedish passport was going to expire in May of 2016 so I thought it would be helpful to renew it now. You can renew it even if it has not expired. As it has become much more difficult and expensive to renew a Swedish passport in the US it is nice to do it when you are in Sweden.

The only embassy in all of the US where you can renew a Swedish passport is the Swedish Embassy in Washington D.C. If you live in that area it is of course much easier, but living in the remote northernmost parts of California would be a very expensive and difficult way of renewing it. There are some mobile passports stations that come to a few of the bigger cities where you also can renew your passport but, again, they are nowhere near where I live.

In Sweden you renew your passport at police stations so I went to one where I have renewed my passport earlier. They wanted to look at both of my passports and my Naturalization Certificate which I got when I became a US citizen. I paid the fee and photos and fingerprints were done and I thought that was it. Nope, that wasn't the case. The next day I got an email from the passport police (they evaluate Swedes who live abroad) and it turned out that the police who helped me had forgotten to give me a form that I also had to fill out. After numerous phone calls I found out that I could come back and pick up the form the same day and have them scan it.

The form, however, surprised me as it was supposed to "test my Swedish citizenship." I did not remember having to fill out anything similar previously and the form had questions that asked for very detailed answers, such as my parents' exact birth places and date of marriage. Luckily I had other documents with me that helped me so I could fill out the form.

When I came back to the police station I asked the woman who helped me why this form was needed and she said that Swedes could lose their citizenships. I must have looked very surprised as I had not heard this earlier. I knew that those who got another citizenship before 2001 lost their Swedish citizenship but after 2001 Sweden has approved dual citizenship.
I asked the woman again if I really could lose my citizenship and she said "yes" and had a very odd smile. Not okay in my opinion to scare people like that without giving more information so at some point I will go higher up with this.
At least I got my passport the next day and it is now good through October of 2020.

Something else that I wanted to do was to try and open another bank account besides the two I have in one bank.

When the US basically forced the rest of the world to adopt the FATCA-regulations it became much harder to be an American abroad and to have foreign financial accounts. Sweden adopted FATCA into Swedish law in February of 2015. Some countries, like Mexico, have even closed bank accounts for Americans. FATCA came about when it was discovered that some rich Americans tried to hide money in Switzerland (which is a tax haven, Sweden not so much). Unfortunately the FATCA- regulations are now hitting regular people who have become "entangled" in this very complex US regulation. All kinds of foreign financial accounts are supposed to be reported to the IRS in the US and if you do not report what you have in different accounts when you do your US tax return you can be penalized with very hefty fines.

I was prepared that I could be hassled by the Swedish bank people and that's exactly what happened. Swedish banks and other financial institutions are having to handle quite a bit of reporting now and I know that they do not really like doing this. The first bank I had contacted basically said that they did not want me as a customer despite a fairly large amount of money that I was going to transfer from my other bank. Another bank was also very hesitant. As I knew that they could not deny me to open a regular saving's account I contacted an organization called Svenska Bankforeningen/Swedish Bankers' Association and the woman I spoke with said that I was correct and she encouraged me to contact people higher up within the bank. I did and after speaking with a very nice assistant to the regional manager for one of the banks, I had an appointment set up for the next day. The account was opened and the money transferred.
You have to be knowledgeable to do these kinds of things and obviously kind of pushy and talk to people higher up. At least I accomplished what I had set out to do. :)

So far the weather has been quite nice here in the Stockholm area with lots of sunshine and mild temperatures. Not as warm as Weed with highs in the 80s but low 50s is really okay for October. My friend (who I am staying with) and I took a nice walk the other day and visited a nature preserve area close to where she lives. We sat by the water and enjoyed the sunshine, watched sheep and boats, and chatted.




Sunday, October 11, 2015

To take a leap of faith

In my first post I shared some things about my next step which seems to be a leap of faith. I have taken a couple of leaps in my life but this one feels a bit different for some reason. Cannot really put words on the feeling, just that it is different.

To take a leap of faith is to trust your inner feelings, heart and gut to dare to do something without knowing exactly how it will turn out. It is scary to some extent and you have to listen inside to know what your next step will be.

When I was in my 20s I started following my intuition more and it is very different compared to just following your brain. It takes some practice to learn to distinguish between your intuition and your brain but once you get the hang of it, you can pretty easily tell the difference. And in my opinion, following your intuition is much more "rewarding" than just following your brain.

I remember very well when I connected with my now late husband and the leap of faith I took when I came to the US. My father and I had a book publishing company where we translated books from English to Swedish and then also published them. We did this in our spare time for about 20 years and it was interesting, fun, and a great learning experience.
We had read one of Michael's books and both liked it a lot. The book is a spiritual novel that takes place in Mt Shasta and after reading it I started getting a feeling that I "had to" visit the area.

I came for a visit in April of 1997 and it became clear pretty quickly that Michael and I were more than business partners. As I definitely was folloing my heart and gut it was fairly easy to decide to take that leap of faith to actually move to the US. It was probably good that I, at that point, did not know how extremely difficult it is to legally immigrate to the US.

If I had not come to the US I am sure that I would not have had the chance to change and develop as a person the same way as I have done in the US. To leave the country where you are born and have lived for a long time is a challenge in many ways and I have gone through many stages of this during the 18 years I have lived in the US. Being in Sweden for a longer time now and experiencing the Swedish culture is a bit of a "culture shock" as well, as I have lived in the US for so long.

Leaps of faith can be scary but they can also be great opportunities to grow and change. Right now I am trying to "land" a bit more in Sweden which I hope to do soon when I can make some trips to other parts of this country. So far I have mostly been doing "busy work" such as applying for a passport and opening a new bank account - both turned out to be a bit challenging due to new regulations that the US has imposed on the rest of the world.

Today I did something more fun than what I have done for the past 1,5 week - I visited one of my few cousins. I only have 4 cousins and they are my closest family now as both my parents have passed away and I do not have any brothers and sisters. My cousin A and I had a nice afternoon and her sister (another cousin) came for lunch as well which was really nice. A lives very near one of Stockholm's biggest attractions - Stockholm Globe Arena (now also called Ericsson Globe). It is currently the largest hemispherical building in the world.
A definitely lives close to this arena. :) I have been there twice to watch a hockey game and a Lucia concert many years ago.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Being a tourist in your own country

Nowadays when I go to Sweden I actually feel like a tourist. It is an odd feeling to not understand how everything is done and having to ask people sometimes. But 18 years in the US is a long time and the country that I left is no longer there and many things have changed.

I had such an experience when I went shopping the day after I arrived. There is a big grocery store close to my friend's apartment in Akersberga - one of Stockholm's suburbs - and I went there to do some shopping to have my "base food" covered. One thing that I noticed was that many people in the store had a scanner and they were scanning the bar codes. As I had never seen this before I asked the young guy in the cash register what this was and he let me know that some people like to scan their food items and then pay for them without going through a regular cash register. This was completely new to me and we do not have these kinds of "novelties" in the small town of Weed where I live. Some of my blog readers who read my other blog in Swedish said that they had seen these scanners primarily on the east coast of the US.

Also, in a big city like Stockholm, there is quite a bit of theft and vandalism so many grocery stores have decided to keep the carts locked and chained. My friend (who I am staying with to start with at least) had given me a small "device" in plastic that she said she was using to unlock a cart. That was easy, but when I came back to return the cart after I was done shopping, it was not quite so easy to understand how to get the "device" out of the cart. An older, grumpy lady said "are you going to be done soon?" without offering any help. I apologized and said that I did not live in Sweden and was unclear how to do this. As I couldn't quite figure out what to do, I asked a younger, very nice woman who gave me the instructions I needed. I felt kind of silly but decided to take it with a grain of salt and some humor. At least, now I know what to do. :)

Also, I have just purchased my very first cell phone in Sweden! When I lived in Sweden cell phones had just started being sold but very few people owned one and they were huge compared to today's phones. The Swedish company Ericsson was the main company for a long time in the cell phone market. Nowadays, there are lots of different companies that sell phones in Sweden.
We'll see if I will manage to set up my phone without issues. ;) I bought a fairly simple phone as I am not planning on using it for being online but mainly for being able to make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages. But again, I felt out of place in the store where I bought the phone as things work a little bit differently in Sweden than in the US when it comes to prepaid phones which this is. I could not even sign up for a phone with a contract as I do not have any credit history at this point in Sweden.

I am noticing how much has changed in Sweden during these years that I have lived in the US and that my knowledge of Sweden is very old at this point. When you do not live in a country you lose touch with the day-to-day activities and it definitely takes some time to get up to speed.

One thing that sometimes makes me chuckle is how narrow Swedish streets are. The street that is outside my apartment in Weed is probably 3-4 times as wide as many roads are in Sweden. This one is a road that many, many cars use every day and it is still very narrow. These differences are pretty interesting and sometimes amusing.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Welcome!

About 18 years ago I took a leap of faith by coming to the United States. I had connected and met with an American man who lived just outside of Mt Shasta in the very northernmost part of California (Siskiyou County). My road to becoming established here has had its ups and downs but I went from coming here as a tourist to an international student at a college, then after marrying I got my green card, and finally I became a US citizen.

Now, I am again faced with another leap of faith as I recently left my job at the college (where I was a student) and have now just gone back to Sweden for an extended period of time to find out if I could see myself living in Sweden again.

I'll go into more details for doing this in later posts, but it has a lot to do with following my gut feeling, heart, and intuition. Those are the same reasons I had for coming to Mt Shasta 18 years ago. This time it also has to do with practical matters that involve being a dual citizen and how complicated it has become in the past year or so.

When I came to the US I was 35 and taking another leap of faith while being older has its challenges. But daring to jump is part of evolving as a human and spiritual being and that is what I am about to do. At the bottom of the blog it says "Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith" and that feels very true right now. As I do not have any real ties to the Mt Shasta area it is a bit easier to dare to jump. My husband passed away some years ago, I do not have any children, and I have left my job. Leaving my job was not easy as I liked working at the college.

Hope you will enjoy this journey!

I live right next to the volcano Mt Shasta and I will for sure miss this majestic mountain while I am gone. Mt Shasta was considered a holy mountain by the Native American tribes that lived here. The mountain is also called Úytaahkoo in Karuk or White Mountain. Due to the severe drought in California, Mt Shasta has not had much snow the last couple of winters so I will share a picture when the mountain looked more like it "should." :) This was taken almost exactly 5 years ago and this is the view I have when I step out from my apartment.