Hi,
we are a couple born in the early 70’s. We met in Italy in 1999 and we clicked right away. From a nice friendship our paths crossed again in 2003 and our friendship evolved naturally into a new adventure…. together – as a family.
in 2005 our son was born. We always had the lovely idea that a single child was not an option. Unfortunately for us, in Italy if you don’t have a supportive family structure that can help you have difficulties with one child…. more is just suicidal. We wanted more, we wanted a better, happier life and at least two children. In 2008 we decided after those unfortunate political decisions back than in Italy – we needed to move and create something better for our family.
Nobody tells you what expatriation really means. Nobody explains you how challenging tough and sometimes rough the whole process is. How fragile is the whole family and how demanding is the whole thing! It could be a nightmare.
We were lucky. My wife was born in Sweden and being her a Swedish citizen we expected some kind of assistance in the process. How wrong. Apart of a really speedy obtaining of the necessary documentation, and the bureaucracy being effective, the rest was up to us. We needed to manage our economy and fight for our existence. My wife got a summer job where she previously worked. A job that she loved. But that one was simply not enough. I was lucky enough that I could use my IT skills that I worked with back in Italy and pout those into action and make some money online. Not much, but it helped. Everything helped.
We rented a house just outside the city of Växjö. Those first months were just amazing. We relaxed from the chaos that we left in Italy and we enjoyed a bit that sense of freedom and peace of mind for a bit. During those summer months I understood that the economy in Europe was not performing well and that finding a job would be tough without proper language skills. I wanted as well to be able to understand the language properly and be able to discuss with people, the teachers of my children etc.
After 9 months of intensive learning I was kinda ready to take my first steps into the Swedish society in an active way. I was quite confident with my language understanding and I was ready to search for job opportunities. There was unfortunately one huge obstacle in that. My first and my second name are not Swedish so, I was never, ever even considered when applying for a certain position, not even after years of active professional experience in Italy. That was really depressing and the situation was getting tough for us as well. Our savings were gone and we needed to move away from that old house as well. That house was just a huge waste of out money, especially in the winter. Bad insulation, rotten windows and a huge number of things that needed repair made us seriously question the seriousness of our host. The guy was literally just collecting the monthly fee without investing a single dime of it into the structure. And we were paying the small fixes and the huge energy bills! That was not sustainable, not for us.
Anyhow, you need to fight for life!
During that fight, in between of it all…. a new baby came, and in 2009 one huge part of our family dreams came true – we were a nice, lovely family of four individuals! Amazing indeed! Despite all the problems, difficulties, the ups and downs…. we made a choice and we moved forward…
I decided to expand the radius of my job application search and BOOM, I got the luxury to choose between 5 excellent work opportunities! Not one, five! WOW
After not even two years in the country I had a decent job opportunity where I could evolve properly.
I opted for the job opportunity in Gothenburg and six months after that the whole family moved to the Gothenburg area. A new chapter of our life was started.
This part of our life moved forward in a balanced way, my wife got a chance to learn a new profession at the University of Gothenburg and later on she started her working carrier as well. We were really content to be economically stable. We could finally relax and breathe a bit.
Due to all the trouble we went through we learned how to be careful ans smart with our economy. That lesson thought us how to save and use our money wisely.
In 2022 we started to search for a property to purchase for our family. Unfortunately the prices went up with no control. It’s incredible how expensive the real estate segment had become. I don’t understand what is the purpose of such prices!? The future generations will supper a lot and in the meantime those who bought cheap will be able to sell at dream prices. Not OK in my book.
To find a proper housing solution in the area was impossible for our budget so we started to think. After months of searching and learning we made a decision to expand our radius of search to 100km or 1h. The rest was history! 🙂
Welcome to our Red Cottage! 🙂