Hello money! I missed you.

Finally, I have scored a bank account. Not at SEB (nope, they lost my business three queues ago), but with Swedbank, which actually has far better benefits for students. Now I have free internet banking, a free debit card, and a free personal account as a student at Göteborgs Universitet.

I am realizing today just how useful this personnummer thing is. Swedes apparently use their social security number far more than Americans use theirs. Aside from bank accounts and hospital uses, the personnummer is used as a pin code for a variety of things, such as library cards, university logins, document validation, internet banking---you name it. It's a funny juxtaposition to go from a country where you safeguarded a number that gave you limited benefits, to a place where it is used all the time, practically as common as a driver's license number, and it gets you everything.

Actually, I learned something else lately. Yesterday, I went to one of the first welcoming parties for those in my masters program and met some of my hilarious and very interesting classmates. For about three hours, we stood around with weak European beers and laughed about all the things were were getting used to, all the commonalities between our languages, and all the things were were going to miss about home. It felt good to meet them; for so long, we had been mainly communicating on Facebook---laughing in person is far better than laughing digitally...

Anyway---it was talking with them that I realized just how lucky I was with finding accommodation.

Getting student housing in Sweden is a ridiculous undertaking. I don't remember whether I posted about this earlier, but it's notoriously difficult to find a place to live in the city. Apparently, the waiting list to own an apartment in somewhere like Stockholm or Göteborg is something on the order of five to ten years. For much of your time in these cities, you have to live off of shady subletting agreements while your name slowly moves up the list, and eventually, you will secure yourself a nice home if you're patient.

That said, there's, like, no way you can find a place in Göteborg that could fit all your requirements. There are simply not enough buildings, too many people, and not as much choice. Which brings me to my incredible luck; my bright, spacious, decently-priced apartment is five minutes away from class, and in one of the coolest places in town. In contrast, half of my classmates either live way outside the city, have to commute on the bus for 30 minutes, or have not found homes at all...

I bet you're wondering, while hearing all of this, why the school isn't helping? You'd think there'd be student accommodations for international visitors, wouldn't you? Well evidentially, that same beautiful law that lets you hike and camp anywhere on Swedish land is the same law that prevents universities from owning land to build residence halls on. The Swedish government owns all the land. No private plots. So all student housing that is available is actually regulated and distributed to tenants by the government. And once it's up, there's no more.

Makes you appreciate a roof and warm bed, right?