One month from today, our little family will set off on a new adventure. We will be leaving the idyllic town of Guildford, Surrey UK for a much bigger city, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Guildford High Street

Prepping for this move has been both easy, because my husband’s new company is handling a lot of details, but also hard, because there are so many variables to consider. Visas? Handled. Moving company? Handled. Temporary housing? Handled. Lucky, right? Absolutely.

Now why is anything stressful? Well, when you have a toddler and a pet to consider, everything gets just a bit more complicated. Here are just a few things to consider:

Moving date? Dependent on Visa processing. Pet moving date? Dependent on Visa processing.How to handle check out and cleaning of rental when leaving the country with a pet? Thank goodness we have an amazing landlord… New nursery? Eeks!!! Where will we live after the first month? No idea until after we get there.

That’s just a few things to consider. So far I’ve contacted the pet movers to tentatively set things up, gotten an EU pet passport, emailed several Swedish nurseries to learn about them, contacted women’s groups to try to set up a network, cancelled my gym membership, cancelled the current nursery, the charitable donations, posted belongings for free or sale on the internet to de-clutter…the list goes on. There is always a lot involved in a move and moving to a new country just compounds that.

I’ve also spent countless hours after the toddler goes to bed researching our new city—AMAZING! And trying to learn how to cope with 3 hours of sunshine in the winter (hint: fancy lights and lots of layers!)

After trying and failing to do a fun blog when we moved to England two years ago (thank you, toddler for trashing the laptop…); I’ve decided to really commit to this. One of my biggest sources of angst has been the lack of information about moving to this awesome city with a toddler and with next to no knowledge of the new language. My hope is that as I overcome these hurdles, others who are embarking on similar adventures will stumble across this blog and realize you are not alone, this has been done before, and in a way, we will do it together. Alternately, maybe you will stumble across this blog and realize you too can have a big adventure, it is possible for ordinary people to live and thrive in new places. Or maybe just have an occasional vicarious thrill.

I hope you stay with me during this adventure. Grand adventures are always better when shared with friends 😃

Gothenburg, Sweden