Parties, parties, parties...

I am so incredibly hungover today.

In the last week, I made ambitious social plans. On Thursday, I went out with a group of other expats that I met with a meet up group. A couple of girls from Africa, who are here with their families of diplomats, and an English guy studying in Uppsala. It's been incredibly entertaining to hang out with them. They are all highly educated, smart and funny people from very diverse backgrounds and it's been so refreshing to go out with people I can joke with.

I woke up a bit hungover on Friday. Of course, we went out with Fredrik's friends to a bar. AG it's called, it's a Spanish inspired restaurant with delicious meat. We had hamburgers and drunk quite a lot. It was a laid back event and I had quite a few glasses of wine.

On Saturday, I was feeling tired. My liver was showing signs that something was wrong. We went to a double birthday party with Fredrik's high school friends. They were incredibly sweet and I had a laugh. But I think I went a little bit crazy on the booze. I woke up this Sunday with my head requesting a quick and painless death.

The thing is, it's much more acceptable and common to get hammered here, and it can be quite hard to not try to keep up with everyone. In all three occasions, the drinks just kept appearing in my hand all night long from I don't know where. In Sweden, people will drink hard. If you keep up, they will compliment you on your skills, haha.

I am legal - about the bureaucracy of getting registered in Sweden

I was born and raised in Brazil. My whole family is Italian and for that reason I am legally Italian too. That means I have an Italian citizenship and, with it, a passport. I can be treated like an EU citizen whenever convenient or a Brazilian if that suits me best. I have the papers to get by as either.

When I moved to Sweden, I relied on my EU citizenship to allow me to stay here. Getting all my documents in order has taken a little under two months. Well, technically: I haven't received my ID card in the mail yet, but I already have the number and can use it if necessary. If you don't wanna know the bureaucratic road there, please skip the next paragraph, the conversation continues after that :)

I first had to submit an application to move to Sweden as an EU citizen planning to move in with their Swedish relation (boyfriend/girlfriend). It required mostly detailed information about my situation here as well as Fredrik's, and stating that our relationship was real. They didn't require any proof of it, as some people on the internet have described experiencing. After a couple of months, they sent in my approval in the mail. (As I said in a previous post, it never really arrived because my name wasn't listed by the building's door. I did end up emailing my case officer and she was generous enough to email my approval so I could continue the process) With the approval, I booked an appointment at the Migration Board (Migrationsverket) and had my picture and signature taken. When your permission of residence arrives in the mail after a few days, you can go to the Tax Agency (Skatteverket) to get registered and get the much anticipated Personal Identification Number (personnummer!).

In my case, after having gotten my permission, when I went to the Tax Authority to get my ID, the lady taking care of the papers informed me that I couldn't register as someone moving to Sweden and get an ID number simply because I didn't have a job or a document from Italy stating I was covered by their public health system. Although I am a citizen, I never lived in Italy and never registered in their social system so that problem was a little bit more complicated to solve: either I had to go to Italy, get registered as a permanent resident there and then request to have my address moved to Sweden, or get a job.

Going to Italy was an option, yet an extremely bureaucratic one: I would have to take a plane there, stay with any of my relatives, register as living there and wait for my Italian ID to arrive. Then I would have to ask for permission to move to Sweden. That could take months to happen, and sounded rather unpractical.

Finding a job seemed like something that is more in my control, so I started looking right away. The few days after the Tax Authority lady told me I needed a job, I sent out a lot of resumes and have been navigating the dreaded waters of the job searching world for quite some time now.

Misteriously enough, the Tax Authority lady was wrong. My 'mother-in-law' and I were a little disappointed at the fact that despite me having official permission to live in Sweden I couldn't register as someone living here. So we went back to the Tax office the next week to ask about that crazy rule. We were helped by a much nicer lady that basically told me that as long as I had received my permission, I should be okay. My Identification Number arrived on the mail that same afternoon.

The next day I just went back to the Tax office thing and had my picture and measurements taken for my official ID card, and now I'm 100% legal and registered here. I still have to wait for my notice to arrive with the mail so I can pick up my card, but that is just more bureaucracy to have physical proof of who I am.
The good side of having all that done is that I have registered for the Swedish for Immigrants class, or SFI, which is a government-funded class to help immigrants learn Swedish and become part of the society.

I am happy that didn't take too long. It was a little bit stressful, but I can't complain that it has taken a long time. Also, I compare to the experience one of my best friends has had getting registered and legal in Brazil and I must say this was not bad at all. The only problem is that no one actually had clear information about what needed to be done, and the websites were confusing and unhelpful. Maybe leaving this registered might be helpful by letting others know how it went? :)