The Mansion and Newspaper

Alrighty folks, time for update number two! So since our last posting, we have been quite busy scouring the streets of Sweden looking for housing. It’s been quite the challenge, far more difficult than either of us expected – but nonetheless, we were successful!

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit and set the stage. So on Sunday, Matt and I woke up a bit later and I pulled my laptop out to start working on some stuff. After about 20 mins, my computer started warning me of it’s critically low battery level and as anyone would naturally do, I plugged the power cord into the wall to recharge it. A few minutes later, I realized I had to charge my phone as well. Being prepared, I had packed a powerstrip from back home and was going to just use an adapter to switch the prongs and then plug everything into the powerstip – brilliant idea so I thought. Well I plugged everything in and then switched the power button. Holding the powerstrip fairly close to Matt’s head as he slept, when the button was flipped, the powerstrip suddenly made a loud crack, released a flash of light, and proceeded to smoke slightly until I pulled the plug abruptly from the wall.

Unsure exactly what had happened, I soon discovered that in fact powerstrips have to match the same voltage as well, and as I tried to send 240 V through a 120 V device, I easily destroyed it. What I didn’t realize though was that with that flip of the button, I had managed to knock the power out of most of the hostel. I found this out 10 min later when a Swedish girl staying in our room walked in distressed and informed me that the lights just randomly went off on her in the shower – whoops.

The rest of Sunday was not nearly as adventurous, and was spent mostly researching landlords and housing possibilities.

On Monday, we then started the housing adventure. After an orientation at the school, we decided to tour through a bunch of apartments in the area. Most of them were the same as all the others and nothing too special, but that all changed when we decided to look at a random place in downtown Karlskrona (Trosso Centrum) with a smaller landlord. We toured the place and immediately fell for it, but had to wait for another family to look through it and see if they wanted it.

For the next day, we continued to look but found nothing, until on Tuesday afternoon we received the phone call. There were five of us in the program interested in splitting the place and we all sat dead quiet as the one girl answered the phone and talked with the landlord. After a series of confusing facial expressions, she screamed ‘We got it!’ and we all proceeded to jump around in the streets screaming and hugging each other.

The older Swedish gentleman who happened to be walking by on the street at the time just walked on by as if he didn’t even see us acting as fools. Oh well, we didn’t care.

So, to explain why we were so excited, let me describe our ‘pad’ to you. First, to enter our new home (which happens to be located in the dead center of downtown Karlskrona at the heart of the city), we have to enter a combination to enter the main bank through an old set of wooden doors. Rather than walking straight into the bank, we head to the right into a spiral staircase stairwell. The stairs are marble and the walls are lined with stained-glass windows. Our apartment is located on the second floor.

To enter our place, which we are tentatively referring to as the mansion, you walk through a set of double doors. You are greeted by a long, wide hallway with 13 foot ceilings. Scattered throughout our 1800 sq ft of space our a series of rooms, including three bedrooms, a massive kitchen, 1.5 bathrooms, and a ballroom (yep, a ballroom). All the floors are hardwood with fancy patterns and the walls and ceilings are covered in fancy crown and decorative molding, Our windows are 8 ft tall and overlook the main street below. The place has nearly 20 doors in it!

It’s pretty fantastic, and we are currently sitting on the floor in the massive place because we have no furniture. But that’s ok, because we have a sweet place!!

So after receiving the keys to the place on Tuesday, we skipped back to the hostel elated at our find. And that’s when our next adventure began. As one of the guys in our group was sitting working on his computer, a reporter approached him and began asking him a series of questions. After the interview, the reporter grabbed her photographer and headed to our hostel room. A few minutes later, the four of us staying in the hostel were digesting what just happened, and realized that we had just been interviewed and photographed for the Swedish newspaper. A bit unsure about what all had just happened, we made a point the next morning to get up and try and find the newspaper company.

Sure enough, when we walked into the grocery story this morning, scattered throughout the newspaper stand was the Sydostran Newspaper. As we opened it up, there we all were with a center-spread story stretching across the paper. Granted we had no idea what they were saying about us because it was all in Swedish, but we didn’t care. We bought 4 copies and were on our way!

Then a half hour later, a Swedish lady walking by us on the street stopped and turned around and pointed at us and asked us how our new apartment was treating us. She welcomed us to Karlskrona and congratulated us on being famous so quickly. So now all of Karlskrona knows that Matt and I are here and even where we live – pretty sweet, that didn’t take long!

So that was the activity for the last few days, both productive and highly entertaining. We are going to start up a Picasa website to post pics - a lot easier to upload for us - which includes pics from our place. In addition, here's a video of when we first got into our apartment. For the newspaper story, you can check out the article in Swedish here and English here. The actual pic of the article is below - to prove that our story is true! Also, if you want to see where we are living, visit Google Earth and type in our address: Ronnebygatan 47, Karlskrona, Sweden.

-Spud

The cover story for the local newspaper involves a spread picture of Matt and I along with two of our other roomates