Recycling Adventures in Eskilstuna

Recycling is taken very seriously in Sweden which is pretty cool. I have seen it handled differently in different areas of Sweden. In Uppsala, my friends work very hard to compost the food scraps, and sort through plastic and glass that can be returned for the deposit, plastic and glass that should just be recycled, newspapers separated from other paper packing materials, egg cartons, milk cartons, etc.

I am on my summer vacation and just spent a week in a small town located about 45 minutes west of Stockholm, near Eskilstuna. They have a recycling system there that involves sorting everything into different colored plastic bags. The bags are then tied off and all are put into the same trash bin which is set out at the curb and collected once a week.

I found it was actually a lot easier than sorting the trash in Uppsala where everyone tries to figure out their own system and it's awkward. Also, there you then have to take the assorted recycling in your car or on foot to the nearest recycling bins.

The Eskilstuna system, which is managed by Eskilstuna Energi & Miljö (website only in Swedish) is so simple, they wrote the directions explaining which color goes with which recyling in the form of a toddler's board book (a thick-paged book, the kind toddlers gnaw on when they are not reading). Here are a few pictures:

The book explaining the color-coded recycling system was designed to look like a toddler's board book.

"It's childishly simple to color sort!" (wait, is "childishly" a real word?)

Pages explaining what goes into the green bag and what goes into the orange bag.

You can ask for more bags at any time. I believe there are six colors used to split the trash into 6 different kinds of recycling. You are to use a regular, recycled grocery bag for the few things that fit into none of the categories.

It takes a little time to learn what goes where and one must dedicate an area somewhere for all these bags. They were just in the cabinet under the sink where I stayed. Some were held open by small containers and some were just sitting on the floor of the cabinet. The friend that owns the house where we stayed rents out part of the house in the summer, usually to people from Germany or Poland. These guests have to learn the system as well. But hey, it's childishly simple in any language!

Signs of Confusion, Part 2

...So, continuing on in my commentary about my lack of understanding when it comes to many pictoral signs in Sweden, I present my next case for your examination...

Here's part of the oven controls on the oven in the apartment where I live in Stockholm. I have no idea what most of these buttons do. Since I have lived there less than one week, I have managed to avoid using the oven. OK, I get that it's "bell" but what does it do? And the "clock" sets the clock--that I get. But I have no idea about the other ones.

I guess as a Technical Writer I should be willing to find the manual and then actually read it...

Nah, think I'll wait for my flat mate to come home and explain it to me!

Finding a Place to Live in Sweden

Oj! Finding a place to live in either Uppsala or Stockholm is extremely difficult!

I have stayed with my good friends ever since moving here, nearly six months ago. Picture me in a teenager's room: single bed, no closet, a nine-year-old boy's room directly over head--he jumps around so much that the light fixture over my head threatens to come down.

Time to give my friends their privacy back. Time to be a big girl and find a place of my own.

Another friend (a guy, of course) told me that all I need is a "place to put my milk" and that's it when it comes to finding an apartment. I thought to myself that I actually required a little more but what he told me has been stuck in my head for months.

I am registered in housing queues in three cities but you have to be in the queues for a long time before you have enough "points" to actually win an apartment. In some neighborhoods in Uppsala, the wait can be 10, 15, even 20 years. Isn't that amazing? People take the apartment after all that time whether they need it or not. Then they sub-let it out.

I have also been actively searching for and responding to ads on blocket.se. For those of you in the U.S., it's the equivalent of craigslist.com--a place where you can buy and sell stuff, find apartments, etc. A lot of the apartments are just people looking to rent their place for the summer while they travel or go live with mom (students) or whatever. A lot more people seem to live in apartments here than where I am from. It is much easier to own an apartment than to find one to rent.

In a short space of time I almost got caught by two (not one but two!) scammers. At least I think they were scamming...

Scam #1

The first was an apartment in Stockholm that was really near to work. I started thinking about how I could walk to work and how great it would be. It's too dull to go into all the details but suffice it to say that my email correspondence got weirder and weirder with the guy who supposedly owned it. He said he was in England and could only show me pictures of it. He said there were three rooms but only two were available as a German woman was soon moving into one of the three. Later, he said he was going to be back in town in June and would be staying there in one of the rooms. I saw pictures and even talked to him on the phone but the connection was very bad. Then he suddenly got sick of our correspondence and wanted me to send him, among other things, my passport number. Huh? Then he would send the lease (any amount of time I wanted), then send him the rent and security deposit (never specified what that would be) and he would send the keys.

This after we have never met each other and I had not even been in the apartment!

Scammy, no?

I told him to forget it and he actually wrote back and asked why. Who knows what he was up to?

Scam #2

The second one I almost fell for was also in Stockholm. I responded to an ad and received a response about how this guy (the owner) was actually in Malmö...There were "so many people interested" that he could hold it for you if you me if I paid a rent in advance of 8300 kr ($1196.00) before seeing it (to ensure that I would show up on the one day he was going to be back in town to show it to people). If I wanted to go forward (and I got the impression this was going to more than just me), he would send pics, I would Western Union him the money and then... 

Yes and then what? It was all very shady...what exactly that money was for, how I would get it back if I didn't rent the apartment, etc. He didn't seem particularly worried about whether my schedule permitted meeting him on the one afternoon he was to be in Stockholm.

I didn't even bother to reply.