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An erstwhile Londoner here who now lives in Stockholm. Technically I'm Swedish having been granted citizenship this year - another plus, it's relatively easy to

An erstwhile Londoner here who now lives in Stockholm. Technically I'm Swedish having been granted citizenship this year - another plus, it's relatively easy to get residence and citizenship is mostly a matter of waiting. I've been here for a few years and would agree with most of your points. I absolutely love it. Boat trips into the archipelago in the summer months are the icing on the cake of an amazing place to live. As for the language thing - you can (and lots do) live here without learning Swedish. There are also various intensive courses (e.g. at Folkuniversitetet) that will get you up to a dull-conversational level quite quickly. As an ex-Londoner, the house prices seem very reasonable - we've just moved into a 3 bedroom apartment in the suburbs with a view of the lake and adjacent to a nature reserve. In London the same money might have bought us a pokey 1 or 2 bedroom flat. London had more arts and so on, and I miss the English language theatre stuff, but in general it's just an amazing place to live. Now, you must excuse me, we're off to see Candide at Kunliga Operan :P

mayormcmatt 5y ago
Good points, thank you. Language is something I would relish learning in the actual setting of Sweden. Having learned Japanese for three years in Japan, it was (and remains) a difficult thing to master and I suspect conversational Swedish would be simpler to pick up, at least. My short time spent in Sweden, the people I met were very happy just to hear my few halting phrases of their language, as are my Swedish friends here, in California. That's always encouraging. About housing (and prices of things overall), yeah, I suppose things are reasonable relative to our respective hometowns. My impression was that local salaries were also lower, though. My recollection from a couple years ago was that front-end devs (my current employment, 6-ish YoE) were making around SEK 400k-500k/year, which is a good deal less than my current salary. Perhaps my view of tech salaries is highly skewed due to my location, though. Also, this conversation does revolve around remote work, so maybe a moot point.

mayormcmatt 5y ago

Good points, thank you. Language is something I would relish learning in the actual setting of Sweden. Having learned Japanese for three years in Japan, it was (and remains) a difficult thing to master and I suspect conversational Swedish would be simpler to pick up, at least. My short time spent in Sweden, the people I met were very happy just to hear my few halting phrases of their language, as are my Swedish friends here, in California. That's always encouraging. About housing (and prices of things overall), yeah, I suppose things are reasonable relative to our respective hometowns. My impression was that local salaries were also lower, though. My recollection from a couple years ago was that front-end devs (my current employment, 6-ish YoE) were making around SEK 400k-500k/year, which is a good deal less than my current salary. Perhaps my view of tech salaries is highly skewed due to my location, though. Also, this conversation does revolve around remote work, so maybe a moot point.