It has been a busy month. I continue to go to my Swedish language lessons two evenings a week. I’m understanding more, but it isn’t easy. The classes are probably my least favorite thing I have to do here, but it is important to learn the language (and culture). On the plus side, I do meet lots of interesting people from all over the world in the class.. It is certainly different from my previous life where pretty much everyone I met had something to do with the submarine force, and if not at least the navy.
The past few weeks has also been spent working on jumping the hurdles to get my driving license here. I started by taking what they call “Risk 1” which is a 4 hour class on not drinking and driving and not driving while too tired. Sounds pretty dry. And I guess it could be. But the instructor was really good and made the class engaging. Crazy to realize how much safer it is driving here in Sweden – the traffic fatalities per 100k people is about 1/5th of that in the US. They have a goal of zero traffic deaths per year here. Granted that is an impossible goal, but they certainly take an engineer’s approach to the problem. They analyze what causes accidents and make changes.
The second hurdle was what they call “Risk 2” which was a few hours on a closed course with a car that had been modified so the instructor could make the car lose traction. It was a pretty cool contraption and was a lot of fun. There were 4 of us taking the class that day and we all got to experience spinning the car around, hard braking, and other hazards that one (hopefully) doesn’t get to do on a real road.
This week I did what I hear is the hardest hurdle. The theory test. I’ll just say that it is hard. There were 70 questions. I spent a lot of time taking practice tests online and passed. But not with a perfect score. Anything is fair game. How far a warning sign is ahead of the hazard (which is based on the speed of the road). The excessively complicated parking signs all over Sweden.
I am taking a driving lesson early November to make sure I am prepared for the driving test that I’ll take in mid-November. I figure it won’t hurt to know what specific things the examiner will be looking for when I take the test. I think it is a more comprehensive test than the ones at least in Connecticut were for the kids.
The workshop has been somewhat busy. I picked up some work with a local window company repairing some defects on a door that they had sold to a customer. That customer then asked me to repair/repaint a few old doors they had. The first two doors were just to update the color to match the new door. Plus repairing and repainting an architectural decoration above the door to the house. The other door is a more major repair. It is an old and very heavy door. However it was outside for a few years, so there is a section of rot that I’ll have to replace with fresh wood. It also had two panes of glass broken so I had to make templates to get the glass on order. The final part of the project will be to build a door frame for it so it can be installed (i.e. pre-hung door). The glass will take a few weeks to get in, so the door will live in the shop for a bit.
Next week is Izzy’s fall break and I’m taking the week off of work. The forecast is rain every day (welcome to Swedish fall), so our plans have to be flexible. We can’t go too far, I have progress tests in Swedish next week that I can’t miss.
