Migrationsverket; more Stockholm

Because we are staying in Sweden longer than 90 days, I had to apply for Swedish residence permits after getting an official hosting agreement from KTH.  I applied for the permits in October, was approved back in December, but still needed to do the final step of fingerprinting at a migration agency office after arriving in Sweden.  I checked online back in December and there were tons of appointments, so I thought I'd just wait to book the appointment until after I got here and was a bit settled.  Big mistake.  When we left the US there was no war, but the day we arrived Putin invaded Ukraine.  So when I went online after arriving, all the appointments in Stockholm were now gone due to the offices being overwhelmed by Ukrainian refugees.  In fact there were no appointments in any nearby cities, so I ended up booking an appointment at a city 2 hours away for the end of March.  Without getting our residence cards, if we leave Sweden after 90 days we won't be able to get back in.   I have mostly foreign graduate students and I am always hearing about their woes getting the appointments they need to get visas to get into the US to begin with, then not being able to travel to international meetings because they won't be able to get back in.  I now truly understand.

Thankfully when I checked the website first thing on Monday (which is when they add new slots), I saw they added special Saturday hours in Stockholm and I was able to get us an appointment.  So we went yesterday.  All I can say is that immigration services (unfortunately) seem very similar as in the US (not that I have any experience except at the US airports).  There were armed guards outside the building and the waiting area itself was extremely dingy.  We arrived early for our 12:45 appointment and it must have been lunch break because no one was being called.  But at 12:30 the board started dinging, and we were called a bit before 1.  Now we wait 7-10 days for the cards to be mailed to us.

This trip was also our first use of the Stockholm tunnelbana (metro/subway). Many stations are themselves considered works of art.  After the fingerprinting we decided to explore the city center so got out at Kungstradgarden subway station (click link for station photo).  When we emerged onto the street I heard bagpipes.  Turns out we had found a St. Patrick's Day festival.  I hadn't seen anything earlier in the week so had been wondering whether it was celebrated here.  

We then wandered around and took a lovely walk home.  The weather was in the mid 50s and everyone was out sunning.  We passed by the opera house (seeing an opera is high on my list, but it seems like the supertitles might only be in Swedish), found waterfowl and surprisingly big chunks of ice, checked out several of the many impressive bakeries that are everywhere, and payed homage to Linnaeus in Humlegarden park (originally a royal food garden, where a major crop was humle/hops).

When we got back to our apartment we looked out the window and saw that the public barbeque was being used for the first time.  My kind of people!  We'll have to figure that out soon.