Interna

After 3 weeks in Sweden, the only word that comes to my mind is "neat." It's clean, it's green, the air is fresh, the garbage is meticulously separated, cyclists wear helmets and leave their bikes in park-and-ride stations to jump on the train. Now I am wondering. Where to they hide the smelly suburbs, the homeless people and the ugly industry areas?

I am trying to find something to complain. So far my only point of complaint is that health insurance in Sweden is so universal it's incomprehensible you could not have a health insurance. Unfortunately, it hadn't occurred to the immigration office that one might hold a German passport but not move to Sweden from Germany. Thus, I was expected to come with an EU insurance card. Needless to say, since I haven't lived in Europe for 6 years, I don't have such a fancy card. I had to repeat this about 4 times to the same person and was met with a blank stare. When it eventually entered her brain that I did move here from Canada, German citizenship or not, she ingeniously concluded then I must have a Canadian health insurance card. Indeed, I do. Just that it expired when I moved out of country.

The bottomline is that in effect I currently don't have any health insurance, meaning I have to pay my bills on my overdrawn Canadian credit card, collect the receipts, and hope that I get a return once the Swedes have sorted out their paperwork.

It took me two full weeks to figure out how the health insurance system works in Sweden, since nobody bothered to tell me, assuming I was born with that knowledge. You see, you don't get a contract with a health insurance company. Instead, everybody who pays taxes is automatically covered by the governmental health insurance, which is processed by an institution called Försäkringskassan. Uneducated immigrant that I am, I was waiting for somebody to tell me the name of the insurance company, hand me a plastic card with a number, and give me a booklet with benefits. I suspect there must be some sort of private insurance companies that one can use for additional coverage, but it doesn't seem to be something many people bother with.

The other news this week is that the moving company announced my household will be delivered on Monday. I've lived out of a suitcase the past 6 weeks and find myself not missing anything. Still, I hope my boxes will arrive in good condition. This also means I will finally move out of the guest apartment that the institute provided, and into my own apartment.

Shortly after this, I am leaving for a conference in Atlanta with the creative name Atlanta Conference. The hotel where I had a reservation let me know two days ago that due to a flooding they have a roof damage. Several of their rooms are unusable and the hotel thus totally overbooked. They are trying to relocate me. It's not entirely clear to me how a flooding causes a roof damage but anyway I hope they will sort things out. Not sure what the internet connection will be like, thus blogging might be sparse.