And so the story begins… Sunday, 26th of July 2020 was going to be the day we leave New Zealand. Me, my three kids and a lot of luggage! Leaving hubby and Lexi behind 😦 Roughly 14 years after Oli and I arrived with nothing but two big backpacks and a lot of enthusiasm for a new country. Remember these 2?
After checking in our big amount of luggage including Sam’s bike and three scooters, we had to wait for Auckland airport’s security area’s door to open. I had never seen this closed EVER but since there are hardly any flights these days, they only open the gate certain times a day. Nothing major and soon we were off to Sydney from where we had to gear up with mask and visor to our next destination Doha. After a bumpy ride we make it to Doha to wait another 2 hours to board the last flight to Munich. In Auckland and in Sydney, there’s a weird mood at the airport since it feels deserted other than at the gate. I found it strange that no staff at Sydney airport were wearing masks but I had to although arriving from a country that apparently has no cases – makes you wonder…
The last 5.5 hours in an almost empty plane with three seats to each of us were a breeze with Ella and Alana sleeping pretty much all the way and Sam and I watching TV. In Munich, we had to wear our masks and were greeted by balmy 27 degrees!! The next couple of days we spent our days catching up with friends and family and soaking up the sunshine of German summer.
Daily life in Germany, other than wearing a mask when inside public places, has pretty much resumed back to normal. People get on with their lives. At first I had this strange feeling I could be infecting someone having been on a plane etc. Until a friend told me that one of the mums at school was tested positive and that now more people will be tested. I realised that contrary to New Zealand, Sars Cov 2 is in the community here in one form or another, so no panic needed. From that moment, I started to relax! Another couple of days went by and we got to welcome Oli back into the pack who joined us Saturday 1st of August. We then had to figure out our way to Sweden 😊 My dad and I had bought our new car in Germany in the meantime so we hired a transporter as an extra, packed everything and off we went – direction North. I already started to regret the trip with the kids when the first “When are we there?” sounded from the back of the car 45 minutes into a 1.5 day drive.. However, our kids were troopers and we managed to break up the drive and got to Quickborn in Northern Germany where we stayed the night. Early next morning, we went further north, got checked at the Danish border only to be able to pass without a hitch, another couple of 100 kms, two massive bridges gen West and a Swedish border crossing (again without any problem) we arrived at our final destination Hjaerup, south of Lund.
The last couple of days, we have been melting away as we managed to bring a heatwave to Sweden with temperatures ranging from 27 to 31 degrees! Our house is in a new development in Hjaerup and we are surrounded by families with 2 or 3 children each. There’s a park and a pond at the back of the house and a skatepark only a stone’s throw away. There is a constant “mum we are going biking”, “mum we are going scootering” sound in the house. The neighbouring families are very lovely and welcoming and we already feel rather settled just after a couple of days.
Most of the trips here are done by bike and Sam can’t get over the fact how many bikes there are around. Everywhere you go, there’s heaps of bikes parked up somewhere. Today, we rode our own bikes to the kids’ school to check out the area and it does feel a little unreal to ride through the fields on perfect bike paths to be honest.
Life in Sweden seems pretty normal, there’s social distancing markings in shops etc and people generally keep a distance but not more than usual – I never hugged a stranger in the supermarket or sneaked up on someone at the checkout prior to this, so nothing new! We are trying to learn Swedish but as predicted everyone speaks English so as soon as they notice you can’t speak Swedish, they switch the language 😊. I am slowly getting used to pronouncing my first name how it is supposed to again rather than the English version I have been getting used to over the last couple of years. The landscape is dotted with harvesters that trawl through the corn fields and there’s still a really nice summer vibe everywhere. One of the neighbours said it feels like the Swedes are taking a summer break from the Covid drama 😊. Don’t we all need a break?!
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