Oh my god! I almost can't believe it, but we made it! We went through the horrible week and soon, we will enjoy this nice view:

There are so mucht things to do until then, but i think we are really happy! I write i think because i am not really myself today. I am totally sick and my head works slowly. Whatever, this will be nice soon, our first own home for M and me :)

Hello my fellow readers!

i cannot understand why, but some of you are stil coming on here to see if there is something new, but i may dissapoint you every day... I promised to write a litle more about Berlin earlier but time flew and here we are: a poorly updated blog and the automn is here. 

We have been working since a couple of weeks after our long vacations and i feel quite happy for a couple of things. For the first, i manage to wake up at 6 every morning. This may be peanut butter for a lots of you who maybe get up even earlier but before my vacations, it was almost impossible to put my body out of my bed, even with violence, before 7 or so. Now, i AM at work around 7, this makes a big difference!

M says that i am crazy who sleeps so little but here is my secrets: 1) i sleep deeply and good with him and 2) i've got a big motivation to be early in the morning at work. The motivation is that i can be early at home and it helps a lots for the project i have. I began to study law at university and it asks a lots of disciplin to make both. There is a looooot to read and even if it's (so far) not very complicated, it is a loooooots of new informations and to memorize it isn't a piece of cake. I need time and to reread things several times. I went out of school 10 years ago, so it is kind of a new habbit. So no lazy sleeping mornings here for me. Up around 8 on saturdays and sundays and studying is on the calender.

I also felt that i was in a good training period as well, so i try to get out and take a run very regurlarly, which i did pretty well, except the last week. I had a good excuse: i gave blod, as i do every 4th month and now i know that i have to be less ambitious after that, so i just rested. But tomorrow, run it will be and hoppefully on wednesday too. J and i planned a long run (maybe 20km) in three weeks, so i have to step up a little.

For the rest, i am trying to come back to my usual shape, the one before last xmas, meaning 5kg less. This is a very slow travel down, i tell you but i just hate the idea to make a hard diet and then to gain all the weight after a week. So i eat less but the same things, i drink less and i try to move my body more. I will succeed: theses dresses that are hanging in my closets will be on me soon again!

For the rest, M and i are trying to buy an appartment and it could be a big and long post for itself. I am beginning to become desesperate about it actually. This market is crazy in Sweden and not at all working as in France. There is no obligation to pay off your loan here, so people borrow money, a loooots of money, a way too much of money if you ask me. M and I have the strategy that we want to pay back off our loan before to retire, or at least close to this date and this gives us a pretty clear dead line. And with that a pretty clear amount of money we are ready to pay back every month. We are not looking for a very fancy place or something but we are not the only one to look at this kind of appartment, which would work for a little familly. So it works here ( i didn't want to write a post about it, but here i am!).

you see beautiful pictures of a lots of flats on the internet. The website hemnet.se is a goldmine for that. Choose your day one close to the end of the week, like thursday or friday and you will see a lots of nice things. It takes some times to learn how to read the pictures: everything looks nice, big, light and the flats most of the times look styled. And you think: "oh cheap, how cheap! we can buy this one and stil go to the restaurant every week and when i turn 40, we're done with the lawn!".

you dreamt of this flat during 10 or 11 nights and now it's time for you and your love to rush to the flat during the organised visits of it. you have to fight with maybe 30 other couples coming here with the same purpose: to find everything that is going wrong. If it's your first time, you will for sure find a lots of little things that could be changed, fixed or simply better but when you spend all your sundays since half a year back at going to visits, you make the round in like 5 minutes. You meet a real estate people and leave your phone number when you arrive in the flat and you hear how cool this flat is, with, quite often, some ridicoulous remarks of this person. Exampel: "you have a washmachine in the flat but there are two others in the basement for common use. They are very practical to wash your frotté". hum, ok, i would like to know how a washmachine can be more practical for frotté than for other clothes?! Well, you have to learn to translate real estate langage and believe me, swedish was more difficult to learn.

You had a bad night: you both thought that you would so much take your breakfast every morning on this balcony but you recounted the whole night how many couples were there. You even looked at this lady with the big belly meaning that another kid is on its way and you almost wanted to call her and tell her "you know, this flat will be a way too little for you". Or this 50 years old lady who just got divorced and has the money of half a house and wants to live downtown. Or this couple of 65 years old people, who wants to have a nice flat in town and have the whole cash of a house to put in a flat. You did not dream about the young single lady who just turned 22 because she won't have the 15% of the account. You know it and somehow, this is better to focus on the real problem: the other like you!

This is also time for visit number 2 of the same flat. We never have the time to make it and honestly, 10 minutes from the day before are enough. This is like "the second chance visit", for people who have a real life on sundays and others things to do than to fight with the eyes with a lots of other ones. They may have money, they may like the flat as well, but you will only know on the...

the circus continues. The real estate agent calls one by one all the numbers of his/her list and asks if someone wants to make an offer. You got a text message everytime someone is putting some more moeny in his/her dreams and your are becoming a little smaller with every sms. This is a very depressing part, because you stil have in the head you dream of the night number one, the one of the cheap and perfect flat.

You spend of course the whole night making speculations about the finances of people who made offer. You don't know any name, just just know that people 1 made an offer for so much money at this time of the day. Speculations, speculations, speculations... Did this person wait that much because she/he needed to rethink the max offer? or did she/he had a meeting durning the 2 hours of silence? or is this person simply out of the game? why is she/he willing to pay that much or money? is she/he desperate? homeless maybe?

You get new sms, showing offers from people that were just silent on the first day. It just makes you explode: why did they not show off their cards on the first day?!?! You try to be in the game, but somehow, there is always someone that wants the flat more than you. At least that want to pay more money than you for the flat. If everyone is thinking as M and i do, then i can tell you that the retirement age is close to 150 years old in sweden... The average period of remboursment of a loan is 130 years here. And you can see it in this speculation game.

You go to bed on day 14 pretty angry often.

you left the game and you get some sms from the other, who still are in and you wonder: why do people put so much money in a flat here!?!? this city is only Linköping, 140 000 inhabitants, no cultural events, no good buss communication, no big standard anywhere, no airport with communication other than to Amsterdam, not even close to Stockholm (takes 2 hours in train or car). I mean, Linköping is a assembly of houses in the middle of a field and you will have to pay 2 500 euros for a square meter of a flat, that needs to be fixed somehow. How comes?!

But you are lucky, because Day 15 for a flat is day 1 for another, and hop, you are again in the spiral!

This description is made only for one flat but you have to think that we go to 2 or 3 visits every sunday and that there are always as much people willing to buy the flats much more than we are. It doesn't matter how you look like, it's all about how much you can promise with a loan on the bank. I really don't get it and if i did not want to have my own home somehow, i would have let it down since a long time ago. this is totally crazy and that shows how people have no idea of their real ecnomical power (meaning weakness in this cas). How many people do live above what they should? how would they react if the rent who be 5% higher? This is unbelievable.

Well, i wanted to write a short article but i noticed that time flew again. This is raining, this is colder outside and M is on his way down to Småland, so i'd better shut this computer off and study.

Bye for this time!

and i haven't post here since then! We have done a lots of things and i swear that i will tell you about it, i just wait a boring evening next week, when M is in Ljungby and me alone at home, with some mini depression because the automn is coming and i'd prefer not. So some days of patience and you will read a little :)

and by the way, i began my race toward the weight under 60kg. To my help, i found a program in a german running magasin, i will tell you more about it as well. 

Have fun this week end!

If someone was missing my posts on here, i am deeply sorry. I promised to write a little bit more often but for my defense: the app is not working on my phone anymore, the overblog plattform should make something about it and i have been a lot less on the road, so little less to tell.

This was how our midsommar week end began. Sunny on the balcony with bubble and strawberries. M doesn't like strawberries, sp he got nuts. Well, nice but i never really felt this feeling of "oh, this is midsummer!!". I think i will never be swede enough to feel it, this must be something you have to grow up with i assume?

The day after, we went downtown to see some traditional things, look by yourself the nice grey scale:

We did not do anything special during the week end, we just went to eat on a restaurant by the sea on sunday, it may have been the only place in Östergötland without rain just for lunch.

And then back home, we met:

And when i went to stockholm yesterday, i saw this:

So you see, we don't have any problem with water here. And so long as we are working, i think it's ok. The office is almost empty now, so it would be hard to focus on work if it would be very sunny... But in some days, i hope for more sun!

Ok, time to cook for my man, have fun!

Hello fellow readers!

i dunno for you, but for us, we got to taste a little bit of summer the past days. It was sunny and warm, so sunny and so warm that we had our fridays bubbles on the balcony!

We even met like 4 neighbourgs, everyone was enjoying the nice evening! We slept along half the day yesterday, but whatever, we were tired! Then, we went and watched "the great Gatsby" and it was a nice film. Leonardo Di Caprio is still so cute and playing really well. If you have the time, go and watch it!

Oh and i forgot to tell: i finally received my bday gift, which is a new table for our living room. Here is a pic of it, so you can judge by yourself:

I like it very much, it fits the soffa nicely me thinks! A propos soffa, this is the place where i will spend the rest of the day. I woke up at 8 and met my friend H for a 10 km running in the wood. It was a lovely hour and on the way back home, i did the grocery as well, which means that the "must" are done for today! yeah for me! M has to work unfortunatly, but i hope he will be soon done, so that we may lay here together and maybe watch a movie or something? for the record, the weather is all grey today :)

Have a nice sunday!